Suffragette in the 1910's - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages... New leaders of the movement such as Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton came from antislavery movement. Relations between the two movements were cordial at different political, personal and ideological levels but a turn came when Wendell Phillips set aside the issue of women suffrage to work for enfranchisement for newly independent blacks: “I hope in time to be as bold as Stuart Mill and add to that last clause ‘sex’!! But this hour belongs to the Negro.” From there on the movement split into two camps: the “moderates,” headed by Lucy Stone followed the Republican strategy while the radicals were led by Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, focusing the movement nearer to the New York Journal, The Revolution. Christine Stansell, “Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America by Ellen Carol DuBois,” Feminist Studies, 1980, 70-71. Introduction The history of women suffrage movement in the United States begins from 1848 when a call for the right to vote was made at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Right Convention. Initially, the movement vouched for equal rights in all areas of public interest such as civil, political, economic, and personal related to property, guardianship of their own children, equal salaries and reach to top-tier professional jobs besides freedom to right over family planning. The demand for the right to vote was not on the top of their agenda and there was no unanimity over demanding suffrage among the leading women functionaries of the movement. The new line of suffragists gaining national stature were the “New Women,” like Carrie Chapman Catt, Nettie Rogers Shuler, Harriet Taylor Upton, Anna Howard Shaw who saw no logic in running two parallel bodies and assimilated the associations into The National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA). This was a lackluster phase of the movement, as it was passing through “the doldrums,” period from 1896 to 1910. Presidency of Anna Howard Shah in 1904 could not revive the movement. After she stepped down, Carrie Chapman Catt was appointed the president of NAWSA. Her “winning plan,” made it sure that in stead of running state-level campaigns attention should be given on federal amendments to effectively get the right to vote for the American women. 2 ________________________________ 2. Elna C. Green, “Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question,” (The University of North Carolina Press), p. 2-4. There was no doubt over Catt’s capability of organization; she could handle NAWSA resources and staff in two states effectively. Finally, the nineteenth amendment was made on June 1919 by the Congress and was sent to the states for ratification. From 1910s onwards, the second wave on suffragette started on a forceful note bringing the movement out of “the doldrums,” recruiting women in large numbers with every southern state having a permanent suffrage organization by 1913. 3 Fanny Wright led the movement by supporting the cause of abolition of slavery, free secular education, birth control, and softer conditions on getting a divorce by women through her books such as Course of Popular Lectures (1829) and writing in the Free Enquirer. In 1840, the suffrage movement got another push when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were not granted permission to speak in the World Anti-Slavery Convention, as Stanton remarked on it: "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women." The American Equal Rights Association came into existence in 1866 but no decision could be made in Kansas on Negro suffrage and women suffrage. Later, in 1869 the National Women Suffrage ...Download file to see next pagesRead More