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19th Amendment to the US Constitution —
Women Suffrage approved by Congress 6/4/1919
ratified 8/18/1920
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When women's suffrage was gained in the U. S. in 1920, my mother Carmen
González Prieto was newly come to the U.S., not yet thirteen. She did
not become a citizen of the United States until 1957 while I was serving
with the Marine Corps in Kaneohe Bay, the territory of Hawai'i. Shorty
after she died at the age of 86, while I was visiting my brothers in El
Paso, I accompanied them to vote; everyone at the voting place asked
where Mrs. Carmen González was; they had never known her to miss voting
since she became a U. S. citizen. (She always voted Democrat.)
— Rafael Jesús González
19th Amendment to the US Constitution —
Women Suffrage
by Deborah Tutnauer
(2010)
This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers
who lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The
women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless
for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards
wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against
the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'
(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above
her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for
air.
(Dora Lewis)
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against
an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought
Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits
describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming,
pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at
the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson
to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket
Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the
women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it
colorless slop--was infested with worms.
(Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike,
they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured
liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks
until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory.. Some women won't vote this year because - why,
exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote
doesn't matter? It's raining?
(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie
'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women
waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my
say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But
the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote.
Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege.
Sometimes it was inconvenient.
(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw
the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she
looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me
as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of
the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for
granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to
learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all
over again.'
HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social
studies and government teachers would include the movie in their
curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women
gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are
not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock
therapy is in order.
(Conferring
over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at
[National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington ,
D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer,
Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to
persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could
be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the
doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't
make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for
insanity.'
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
?We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard
for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic,
republican or independent party - remember to vote.
(Helena
Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for
carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed.')
History is being made.
-------------------by Deborah Tutnauer
(2010)
The Declaration of Sentiments
Seneca Falls, New York, 1848
(Source: U.S. Dept. of State)
The
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was drafted by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton for the women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in
1848. Based on the American Declaration of Independence, the Sentiments
demanded equality with men before the law, in education and employment.
Here, too, was the first pronouncement demanding that women be given the
right to vote.
Sentiments
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a
position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one
to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the
causes that impel them to such a course.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to
insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation
on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should
not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all
experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their duty to throw off such
government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such
has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and
such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal
station to which they are entitled.
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations
on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts
be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the
elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to law in the formation of which she had
no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and
degraded men, both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective
franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of
legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has
taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
He has made her morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many
crimes with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her
husband. In the covenant of marriage, she is compelled to promise
obedience to her husband, he becoming, to all intents and purposes, her
master-the law giving him power to deprive her of her liberty and to
administer chastisement.
He has so framed the laws of divorce, as to what shall be the proper
causes and, in case of separation, to whom the guardianship of the
children shall be given, as to be wholly regardless of the happiness of
the women-the law, in all cases, going upon a false supposition of the
supremacy of man and giving all power into his hands.
After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single and the
owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it.
He has monopolized nearly all the profitable employments, and from those
she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He
closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction which he
considers most honorable to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine,
or law, she is not known.
He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all
colleges being closed against her.
He allows her in church, as well as state, but a subordinate position,
claiming apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and,
with some exceptions, from any public participation in the affairs of
the church.
He has created a false public sentiment by giving to the world a
different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies
which exclude women from society are not only tolerated but deemed of
little account in man.
He has usurped the prerogative of Jehovah himself, claiming it as his
right to assign for her a sphere of action, when that belongs to her
conscience and to her God.
He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence
in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing
to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of
this country, their social and religious degradation, in view of the
unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves
aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred
rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights
and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.
In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount
of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use
every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall
employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the state and national
legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our
behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of
conventions embracing every part of the country.
Resolutions
Whereas, the great precept of nature is conceded to be that “man shall
pursue his own true and substantial happiness.” Blackstone in his
Commentaries remarks that this law of nature, being coeval with mankind
and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to
any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all
times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such
of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their validity, and
all their authority, mediately and immediately, from this original;
therefore,
Resolved, That such laws as conflict, in any way, with the true and
substantial happiness of woman, are contrary to the great precept of
nature and of no validity, for this is superior in obligation to any
other.
Resolved, that all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a
station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her
in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept
of nature and therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, that woman is man's equal, was intended to be so by the
Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be
recognized as such.
Resolved, that the women of this country ought to be enlightened in
regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer
publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their
present position, nor their ignorance, by asserting that they have all
the rights they want.
Resolved, that inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual
superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is preeminently
his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity,
in all religious assemblies.
Resolved, that the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of
behavior that is required of woman in the social state also be required
of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal
severity on both man and woman.
Resolved, that the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so
often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes
with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her
appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.
Resolved, that woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed
limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the
Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move
in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
Resolved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to
themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
Resolved, that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the
fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.
Resolved, that the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous
and untiring efforts of both men and women for the overthrow of the
monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman an equal
participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce.
Resolved, therefore, that, being invested by the Creator with the same
capabilities and same consciousness of responsibility for their
exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with
man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and
especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is
self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching
them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any
instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be
held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely
implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to
it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be
regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1848
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Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
(Lucy Burns)
(Dora Lewis)
(Alice Paul)
(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)
(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )
(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)
(Conferring
over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at
[National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington ,
D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer,
Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))
(Helena
Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for
carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent
of the governed.') 
