THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508260468
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By Elinor J. Brecher
KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
LENGTH: Long : 185 lines
``Remember: all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.''
- Abigail Adams, in a March 31, 1776, letter to her husband, John Adams, a drafter of the Declaration of Independence and later second president of the United States.
Pity that the nation's second first lady didn't live long enough to witness the rebellion she'd predicted, fomented by ``ladies'' indeed unwilling to live by laws they couldn't help create.
The movement for woman suffrage, as it was then called, ended Aug. 26, 1920. That day, alone in his office, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution into law.
It had taken 72 years of determined and sometimes violent struggle, as well as 56 referenda voted on by men, before women won the battle for the ballot.
As the amendment's 75th anniversary is celebrated today a nation that routinely lets half its eligible voters choose its president might do well to ponder the suffragists' precious legacy.
The suffragists knew before they had it what too many Americans haven't fully appreciated since they got it: that only through the power to change laws have women and minorities overcome much of the fear and prejudice trapping them in second-class citizenship.
Many freedoms and choices Americans of both genders take for granted wouldn't be available had the early activists - Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Victoria Woodhull, Lucretia Mott, Carrie Chapman Catt, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and others - chosen to stay home instead of march in the streets and go to jail.
The movement seeking this fundamental right and rite of American democracy for women begat a wave of socio-political change that immediately doubled the electoral base, and inevitably transformed the country.
From suffrage flowed the determination for equality and self-determination in other arenas, from education to economic autonomy and reproductive freedom.
Without the vote, married women might still need their husbands' permission to buy or sell property. Divorce might still condemn most women and children to poverty.
Woman suffrage is the great-grandmother of the ``women's liberation'' revolution of the 1960s and '70s, the feminism of the '80s, and the post-feminism of the '90s. Without it, Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wouldn't be on the Supreme Court. Janet Reno wouldn't be the nation's top cop. Sally Ride and Dr. Mae Jemison wouldn't have flown in space.
``Achievement of the vote was extraordinarily difficult,'' writes historian Eleanor Flexner in ``Century of Struggle.'' ``Women had to prove that a woman's brain was capable of the same intellectual activity as a man's; that she wouldn't sicken and die if exposed to logarithms.''
Many felt women didn't need to vote - their husbands, fathers and brothers represented them. They were too emotional to be trusted with the ballot, others thought. Woman suffrage was sure to encourage family quarrels and divorce.
A half-century later, when a new generation of anti-feminists attacked the Equal Rights Amendment - insisting it would force men and women to share public restrooms, subject mothers to the draft and abolish the right of a wife to be supported by a husband - the spirit of a popular anti-suffrage ditty seemed to echo:
``It's all over with the men, as soon as women get the vote . . .
``They'll start to wear the trousers, men will wear petticoats . . .
``We'll have to nurse the baby, do all the housework too . . .
``And they'll roll home in the morning, just like father used to do.''
The struggle began July 19, 1848, in Seneca Falls, N.Y., when 300 men and women met to discuss women's rights and social reforms. One-third signed a ``Declaration of Sentiments'' that included the rallying cry: `` . . . it is the duty of the women of this country to secure for themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.''
Some states permitted women to cast ballots in local or state races in the 1790s. But women's ``sacred right to the elective franchise'' remained a privilege bestowed and withdrawn at the whim of all-male legislatures.
By 1850, the feminist tide rising around the world - in Great Britain, Australia, Sweden - began to swell in North America. That year, the first National Woman's Rights Convention met in Massachusetts.
In 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, and abolitionist Henry Blackwell and his feminist wife, Lucy Stone, formed the American Woman Suffrage Association.
Anthony's group was considered the more radical of the two, seeking suffrage by constitutional amendment. The latter favored local-option suffrage.
Anthony - a Quaker teacher and temperance and abolition organizer, honored in 1979 on a dollar coin- and supporters were arrested in an 1872 demonstration after ``voting'' in the presidential election in Rochester, N.Y. The movement seized as a rallying cry her defiant declaration at the trial: ``Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.''
The groups merged in 1890, becoming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), dedicated to what these days would be called ``consciousness raising.'' It evolved into the contemporary League of Women Voters.
A woman suffrage amendment - written by Anthony - was introduced in Congress in 1878. It failed, and was reintroduced at every session for the next 40 years.
The effort got a boost in the 1880s from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which was seeking to outlaw alcohol. The WCTU believed that women would support anti-liquor laws, since most drunks were men.
As the 19th century ended, some states enfranchised women, even as others stubbornly refused. Women began marching all over the country in increasing thousands, and with increased pressure came philosophical fissures within the movement.
Alice Paul of New Jersey and her ``militant'' followers formed the National Women's Party in 1916, after moderates expelled them from NAWSA. Paul, trained by the British suffragists in confrontational tactics, generated enormous publicity by being hauled off to jail after she and her followers chained themselves to the White House fence.
They responded with hunger strikes, and some were force-fed, which galvanized public sympathy and secured their release. (Paul later authored the ERA, introduced in Congress in 1923 and passed in 1972. Ratification by 38 necessary states fell three short, and the ERA died in 1982.)
President Woodrow Wilson finally endorsed the ``Susan B. Anthony Amendment'' before the Senate in fall 1918.
In 1919, the 19th Amendment was introduced in the U.S. House. It stated: ``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.''
The measure passed - 304-89 in the House; 66-30 in the Senate - and went to the states.
Tennessee's legislature, the last of 36 needed to ratify, did so on Aug. 18, 1920. Florida, which almost became the first state to ratify, ended up dead last, finally making it official in May 1969, nearly a half-century after the issue became moot.
Jeanette Kuehner Jones, who turns 100 on Sept. 2, recalls voting in the 1920 presidential election: for Democrat James M. Cox, who lost to Warren G. Harding. She lives at a Plantation, Fla., adult-care complex, where she still follows politics on television.
``We just went in and voted, without much excitement,'' remembers Jones. ``It was historic, but I didn't give it much thought at the time. . . . It was something to be proud of.'' MEMO: Anniversary celebration opens
``Celebrate Women,'' a festival commemorating the 75th anniversary of
the constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, will
begin today at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg.
The two-day event will begin at 10 a.m. with remarks by Sen. Louise
Lucas of Portsmouth and former U.S. Senate candidate Sylvia Clute.
Musical performances, educational exhibits and seminars on politics,
work issues and personal finance are scheduled today and Sunday.
The event is free. (One concert, of the Blessid Union of Souls, had
been billed at $8. Those who bought tickets can get refunds at the
point of purchase.)
The entertainment lineup:
Saturday
Sunken Garden:
Noon - Bad Sneakers
2:30 p.m. - Red Letter Day
5 p.m. - CommonbonD
8 p.m. - Blessid Union of Souls
with guests Dag and River
Sunday
Sunken Garden:
Noon - Ban Caribe
2 p.m. - Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women
4 p.m. - Betty
Call Infoline at 640-5555 and enter category 7575 for more
information.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
19the AMENDMENT
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any stae on account of
sex,"
BUT IN VIRGINIA
True to its conservative heritage, Virginia didn't take kindly to
the notion of letting women vote.
The suffrage amendment was passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and
submitted to the states for ratification. Seven states, including
Virginia, immediately rejected it.
A year later, in August 1920, Tennessee ratified the amendment,
providing the necessary three-fourths majority.
That made women's suffrage the law of the land. But the Virginia
legislature withheld its approval for 32 years, finally voting for
ratification in February 1952.
KEYWORDS: HISTORY SUFFRAGE by CNB