Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 24, 1995 TAG: 9508240019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
And it has been nearly forgotten.
It's hard to even grasp what the leaders of the Women's Suffrage Movement went through to get the 19th Amendment ratified on Aug. 26, 1920.
For 72 years, they fought. These women guided the movement through a snake pit of challenges, including setbacks during the Civil War and World War I, prison sentences, disputes over strategy, pelts and jeers on the campaign trail, protests at the White House and marches down Pennsylvania Avenue.
They somehow managed to get a majority of Congress and 36 state legislatures - all men - to commit to this simple sentence: ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.''
Susan B. Anthony introduced those words to the 1878 Congress - and died in 1906, 14 years before her sentence became the 19th Amendment.
She had been arrested by U.S. marshals on Election Day 1872, after intimidating the young registrars at a New York barber shop into letting her vote. Always media-savvy, she demanded they take her away in handcuffs, guaranteeing national press for her arrest and subsequent trial.
When a judge directed his all-male jury to find her guilty of the federal crime and then sentenced her to pay $100 plus court costs, Anthony huffed: ``I shall never pay a dollar! Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.''
Think about it. Just two generations ago, women couldn't vote. Anti-Suffragists argued that women voters would:
Increase the ``irresponsible vote,'' since they would always choose the best-looking candidate.
Take away from women's duties as wives and mothers, and increase the odds of them cavorting with strange men at the polls.
Create, in the words of one pamphlet, a ``menace to the home, men's employment and to all business.''
Said Harriot Stanton Blatch, who helped rekindle the movement at the turn of the century: ``Man is moved by emotion, not reason, and what is more convincing than women carrying banners and marching, marching, marching?''
So they marched - in uniform rows, wearing starched white dresses - to show that women can be disciplined.
To show their political savvy, they recruited labor-union leaders and rich women to the cause. And to show that empowered women could also be ladylike, they lobbied politicians hard, but courteously, remembering that ``a badly digested lunch in the stomach of a Congressman could change the entire course of history.''
Alice Paul's National Woman's Party protested more outrageously, staging a sit-in at President Woodrow Wilson's front gate, and even referring to him as ``Kaiser Wilson'' during the height of World War I.
Young women and grandmothers alike were hoisted into paddy wagons on charges of ``obstructing traffic,'' and force-fed when they staged a hunger strike in jail - ``iron-jawed angels,'' one newspaper called them.
What did they do in retaliation? They turned it into a golden P.R. opportunity, traveling around the country on the ``Prison Train,'' describing the abuse they'd suffered in jail.
``As a P.R. person myself, I'll tell you what - these women were amazing,'' says Kathy Reese, the Norfolk marketing executive who is organizing this weekend's Celebrate Women festival in Williamsburg.
Reese and her business partner, Bev Sell, have spent the past 18 months preparing for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage - a two-day festival featuring music, speeches, health screenings and a voter registration drive. Proceeds from the $8 cover charge will go to nonprofit groups serving women and their families.
Expected to draw 25,000 people from Virginia and beyond, Celebrate Women is the only suffrage festival being held in the country.
And it came about almost by accident.
Sell was researching an article about voting in April 1994 when she called the library to get the date of women's suffrage. Realizing the anniversary was approaching, she and Reese decided not to let it go unnoticed. Their idea for the celebration quickly mushroomed from a short ceremony into a two-day event.
``It's important not to forget,'' Reese says. ``Many younger women really are not aware of what women, and some men, too, went through to get women the vote.
``I mean it would be remarkable today if women were doing these kinds of things right now. And you think about it happening back then, when they really weren't supposed to be [asserting themselves], it's just amazing.''
Think of how many news shows and magazine covers were dedicated to, say, the 25th anniversary of Woodstock last year. Think of all the bands you can recite that played there. Have you seen the movie? Have you listened to the CD?
Now think of how many news shows and magazine covers are being dedicated to the anniversary of women's most basic democratic right. Do you know, for instance, that a 24-year-old Tennessee legislator cast the deciding ratification vote - after being admonished to do so by his mother? Can you name five leaders in the movement?
Even the late Woodstock strummer Jerry Garcia, this month's poster child of entertainment news, would agree with me on this one.
Something's wrong with this picture.
Celebrate Women will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. at The College of William & Mary in the Sunken Garden, Williamsburg. For more information, call (804) 857-1794, or the InfoLine of the Virginian-Pilot & Ledger-Star at (804) 640-5555 (category 7575).
Hollins College will show the PBS film, ``One Woman, One Vote,'' at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 6 in the Babcock Auditorium of Dana Science Building (admission is free). Narrated by Susan Sarandon, the documentary-style film depicts the battle for the vote and features Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Carrie Chapman Catt, among other movement leaders. Call 362-6225 for more information.
by CNB