Giving Justice to All, 1900-1920
All know that no permanent peace will triumph until all are ready to
do justice and give justice for all.
-- Mary Burnett Talbert, Oberlin College Class of 1886
Introduction
Between the turn of the century and World War I, a new leadership took over the women’s rights movement. Marches and parades, often characterized as militant, were held more frequently, gaining enough attention for a bill to be introduced in the House of Representatives.In western states, women won the right to vote early - Wyoming Territory, for instance, extended full voting rights to women in 1869, prior to even becoming a state. When the territory achieved statehood in 1890, it was the first state in which women had full voting rights. The women’s rights campaign treated these western states such as Wyoming as beacons for the rest of the country to follow, citing the success of female enfranchisement in those areas. In the 20th century, the battle for suffrage was being fought in the midwestern, eastern, and southern states.
Building upon the increasing zeal of the late 19th century, the Equal Suffrage League was founded in 1900. This organization worked to promote information about women’s suffrage through events such as meetings and lectures. The Equal Suffrage League quickly became popular on college and university campuses, and rallied a large number of young people, both women and men, to the cause of women’s suffrage. Oberlin College was no different, and the students participating in this group had the support of staff and prominent faculty members, such as Esther Close (OC 1893), Azariah Smith Root (OC 1884), and Albert Benedict Wolfe.
Apart from the increase in the number of young people involved in women’s suffrage campaigns, the national movement changed drastically in the early 20th century. In the 1910s, the women’s suffrage campaign began to use methods which were often described as militant. Parades and protests were organized in major cities, often receiving major backlash from more conservative community members. Anti-suffragists commonly attacked women marching in these events, and received little disincentive from law enforcement. Nevertheless, the women persisted. Because of this, they were branded as radical and became the objects of increased ridicule in society.
Despite the violent reaction to women’s suffrage events, women gained partial voting rights in many midwestern states, with most of these states extending the vote between 1917 and 1919. Much as they had in the Civil War, during World War I women largely managed the war effort on the home front while the men were off fighting. They were then able to leverage these contributions to gain voting rights. While women in many of these states had the right to vote in municipal elections prior to World War I, after the war their rights were extended to presidential elections as well.
Suffragists’ success in the west and the midwest did not translate to the east and south, however. An effort to pressure the federal government into passing a constitutional amendment enfranchising women made its way to Washington, D.C. Doris Stevens (OC 1911), along with a group of women who came to be called the Silent Sentinels, picketed the White House, demanding that President Wilson openly and immediately support women’s suffrage.
The protest, which began in January of 1917, transfixed national attention to the women’s suffrage movement, well beyond the print campaigns, lecture tours, and parades which had come before. The protesters stood silently outside the White House gates, with placards enumerating their demands and sashes with various place names, showing the universality of the movement. The media coverage of the protest sparked outrage at the women’s audacity in directly picketing the White House.
In late June of that year, law enforcement began to arrest the Silent Sentinels on grounds of obstructing the sidewalk. The arrests continued into July, when Doris Stevens was among the women arrested and forcibly removed from their picket line. Many of the women were sentenced to time in the Occoquan Workhouse, a notorious labor camp for prisoners. During their time in Occoquan, the women were beaten and abused. When they began a hunger protest, prison officers force-fed them through tubes, often causing serious injury.
As the news of these abuses came to light, the public reacted strongly against such measures. Even people who had been adamantly anti-suffrage condemned the actions taken against the Silent Sentinels, and the anti-suffrage movement started to lose legitimacy. Having finally begun to sway popular opinion, the women’s suffrage campaign lobbied to introduce a bill proposing an amendment to the Constitution.
Representative Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to be elected to Congress, introduced such a bill in January 1918. First drafted by Susan B. Anthony, the bill retained the original wording exactly. Congress proceeded to debate the bill, and seventeen months later passed the proposed amendment, sending it to the state legislatures for ratification.
In August 1920, the bill passed the Tennessee legislature by one vote. Tennessee thus became the thirty-sixth state to approve the amendment, providing the requisite two-thirds margin for ratification. The amendment was signed into law on 26 August 1920, officially becoming the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. On 2 November of that year, eight million women voted in the presidential election for the first time.
Upon achieving its goal of women’s suffrage, the National American Woman Suffrage Association disbanded. However, the women involved in the organization, rather than simply retiring their activism, espoused a new mission and formed the League of Women Voters, aimed at educating women on their rights and mobilizing this newly enfranchised group to engage in political life. Many activists continued to work for women’s rights and to fight against other inequalities, improving social justice for the generations to come.