Womens Suffrage and Civil Rights

Modern America

Womens Suffrage and Civil RightsWomens Rights before the Civil War

The cult of true womanhood portrayed the ideal woman as pious, pure, domestic, and submissive.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and Margaret Fuller believed that giving women an equal education to that of men would do more to improve womens position in society than voting rights.

The Temperance Crusade

The radical abolition movement had the greatest impact on womens rights.Women in the abolition movement recognized parallels between the legal condition of slaves and that of women.

1840: The World Anti-Slavery Society denied women delegates the right to speak.Elizabeth Cady Stanton attended the 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention and her experience led her into the struggle for womens rights.

"We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women."

The Seneca Falls Womens Rights Convention, 1848

The demand for woman suffrage presented a vision of independent women that seemed to threaten social structures.

1848: New York passed a Married Womans Property Actother states followed.

But calls for divorce reform were less successful.Two new demands:

War, and the Reconstruction that followed, split the Womens Rights movement.Impact of Reconstruction:Radical Republicans demanded black male suffragebut not universal suffrage for all adults.To enfranchise women, black and white, would give the vote to large numbers of white Southern women, who would probably vote Democratic.This image made the point that, in being denied the vote, respectable, accomplished women were reduced to the level of the disenfranchised outcasts of society.Both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were furious that Congress had given the vote to black men but denied it to women.

Black male suffrage v. Universal adult suffrageNational Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)Founded by Anthony and StantonThe more radical woman's suffrage group. Accepted only women and opposed the Fifteenth Amendment since it only enfranchised African-American men. American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)More moderate in its views than the NWSA. Allowed men to join and rallied behind the Fifteenth Amendment as a step in the right direction toward greater civil rights for women.Leaders of the AWSA included Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone.

When the two groups reunited in 1890, the new National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) followed the direction set by Anthony and Stanton.

Blanche Ames, Two Good Votes Are Better Than One, Womans Journal (October, 1915) A New Argument for Woman SuffrageThe nation needed women voters because of their special moral leadership.A New Argument for Woman SuffrageFemale voters could sweep out the scoundrelsFemale voters could ensure that reforms in child labor, temperance, and womens work would occur.Only a woman who was truly a citizen could teach citizenship to her children.

Suffrage supporters began to adopt the class and race prejudices of their white, middle class base.The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly obtained. Belle Kearney

Some African-American suffragistsfounded their own separate suffrage associations.Overt racism expressed by many suffragists created an atmosphere hostile to the participation of black women.

Women voting in Wyoming, 1869The initial success of the post-Civil War suffrage movement came on the frontier.

Why the West?Special frontier conditions?the Turner thesis.Womens vote would offset votes of black men?Womens vote would attract women settlers to the West?

Emmeline Wells and other Mormon suffragists in Utah.The second Western territory to grant women the vote was Utah, in 1870.A close correlation exists between the success of woman suffrage and states where men voted in large numbers for Populist, Progressive, or Socialist party candidates.Colorado (1893)Idaho (1896)Washington (1910)California (1911)Kansas (1912)Oregon (1912)

Arizona (1912)Montana (1914)Nevada (1917)North Dakota (1917)Nebraska (1917)

After 1890, increasing competition among political parties made womens suffrage a hot political issue.

Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), women's suffrage leaderBetween 1900 and 1920, the woman suffrage movement modernized, adopting new tactics of lobbying, advertising, and grass-roots organizing under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt.

"The Stomach Tube""The sensation is most painful," reported a victim in 1909. "The drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and breast. The tube is pushed down twenty inches; [it] must go below the breastbone." The prisoners were generally fed a solution of milk and eggs.

The Womans Party was one of the first groups in the United States to employ the techniques of classic non-violent protest.

The actions of the NWP made the NAWSA seem moderate and reasonable by comparison.

In 1916, neither party endorsed woman suffrage in its platform, but both parties called on the states to give women the vote.Civil Rights in the Early 1900s Review: After the Civil war the 13TH, 14TH, AND 15TH amendments were passed by congress. 13- Freed the Slaves14- Citizenship to all MEN15- Voting rights for MEN. What happened during reconstruction: - For a while Black citizens were given new freedoms and the rights to vote- Groups like the KKK formed, which interfered with voting rights. - By 1900 the conditions for the black citizens had reached a new low. Conditions for Black Americans in 1900Plessey V. Ferguson: Separate but equal

Jim Crow Laws: de jour laws that enforced Plessey v. Ferguson. Segregated schools, stores, busses, etc.

Blatant Racism, especially in the South

Groups like the KKK were basically given a free pass.

Jim Crow Laws Made segregation legal.

Allowed people to segregate everything

Gave white Americans a sense of justification that what they were doing was ok.

Permitted racism

African American Lives in 1900 Black Citizens had very few rights.

Many did not own land, could not vote, and feared for their safety. -Lynching

Abject Poverty

Mostly farmers or industrial workers

Ida B. Wells Led anti-lynching crusades

Worked with early Black leaders to start the civil rights movement.

W.E.B. Dubois Harvard Graduate who promoted African America rights .

Founded the NAACP

NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Founded in 1909 after the NIAGRA CONVENTION

"to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination"