Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309120289
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by LUCY LEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The woman's suffrage movement in America struggled along for more than a half-century, hitting peak periods in the 1890s and the decade preceding passage of the 19th amendment in 1920 _ a mere 73 years ago this August 26.
As one would expect, the movement, especially in the South, involved blatant gender discrimination, but it was also rife with racial and class discrimination. The interplay of these three factors made the Southern suffragists' battle even more difficult than their Northern sisters'.
The Southern mind-set regarding women in 1890 was not amenable to women's rights of any sort. A woman's "divinely appointed role" dictated that she rely on the chivalrous Southern male to protect her from the harsh realities of life outside the home (business and government). Her main function was to transmit Southern values to future generations of Southern statesmen. She was said to rule through "Indirect Influence," although as Virginia suffragist Mary Johnston noted, the "indirection ... is extreme indeed."
As for racial discrimination, Wheeler reminds us that, although the Negro (man) had won the ballot in 1870, Southern politicians erected several barriers which prevented most of them from voting. The Southern suffragists never meant for black women to share their enfranchisement. In fact, they promoted their cause as a means of further safeguarding white supremacy, knowing black women would face the same voting restrictions as black men and only they - upper-class, educated white women - would be added to the electorate.
The suffragists saw themselves as not only "more fit" to vote and govern than Negroes and poor whites, but as morally superior to the current crop of white male politicians. One suffragist explained that "Among thoughtful people there is a growing belief that American institutions can not be preserved without the infusion into the body politic of a new moral force, and there are not a few who think that only the womanhood of the nation can furnish that moral fervor." (1992's "Year of the Woman" rhetoric was, obviously, nothing new!)
The suffragists' desire for the vote was not solely for personal empowerment, although they had learned that women's (and children's) welfare would not be given priority by male politicians. They felt a keen sense of duty in righting such wrongs as exploitation of children in the labor force, the convict lease system and prostitution. They agreed that a woman's place was in the home, but claimed the world, not the house, as their home.
Wheeler goes into considerable detail (too much, it seems to me) about the tension between the Southern suffragists and the Northern-dominated National American Woman Suffrage Association. The main point of conflict was whether the ballot should be acquired through state action only, or via a federal amendment. Most Southern suffragists adamantly opposed the latter, feeling that they should be enfranchised by their men, in recognition of their inherent equality.
Thus, the passage of the 19th amendment left Southern suffragists with mixed feelings about their "victory." Wheeler aptly entitles the last chapter of her book, "Bitter Fruit: An Incomplete Victory, Courtesy of Uncle Sam."
The organization of the book into six chapters that explain the resistance of the South to the woman suffrage movement is good in that it focuses on large themes which allow a comprehensive interpretation of the times and the region. However, we never get to really know the eleven women leaders she follows, and that's a shame. These brave and noble women are not remembered in American history books, yet they risked as much (perhaps more, considering their milieu) as their more widely- known Northern sisters, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt.
"New Women of the New South" does provide a much-needed and more inclusive treatment of the woman's suffrage movement. Wheeler suggests one reason the Southern experience has been largely ignored by historians is that it was unsuccessful and therefore perceived as insignificant. Her careful examination of the very conditions that made it unsuccessful, though, is what makes this account so intriguing. The facts that the leaders of the movement had to maintain their roles as Southern Ladies while being `New Women,` that they fought for expanded gender rights in the most patriarchal region of the country, and that they were part of a movement that originated in the hated\ North and was closely associated with the abolitionist movement, make this\ account of the woman's suffrage movement an unusual one.
Lucy Lee is glad to be a woman in today's South.
by CNB