Women's Suffrage

1. Movement for Women’s Suffrage

2. Women’s Suffrage Movement
• Split into 2 factions over support for the 14th
Amendment
– National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA)
• Led by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1890s)
• Opposed
– American Women Suffrage Association (AWSA)
• supported

3. Reunification of the Women’s Suffrage
Movement:
– Occurred under the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NAWSA)
• white middle-class women and some working-class
women
• African American women experienced a lot of racism in
the women’s suffrage movement in the North and in
the South

4. • Why did African American women join a
movement led by white women who were
often racist?
– If they did not stay involved in the movement,
then white women could have won the vote and
left black women out

5. Early 20th century: Mainstream vs.
Radicals
• Mainstreamers:
• Anna Howard Shaw and
Carrie Chapman Catt:
• argued that during WWI
women should work hard to
support the war effort and
after the war, the US will have
to grant them the vote.

6. • Carrie Chapman Catt

7. Alice Paul, leader of Radicals

8. Alice Paul
• Argued that the campaign for suffrage should
continue in spite of WWI
• Formed National Women’s Party
– Focused only on gaining the vote
• Picketed at the White House, mocked
President Wilson

10. • Picketers were harassed
and beaten by people
passing by
• Neither the President
nor the police provided
them with any
protection

11. • President Wilson had
them arrested, July
1917 on charges of
“obstructing traffic”
• ~ 168 imprisoned
• Paul led a hunger strike
in prison for 5 weeks
– Force fed
• Others joined, 8 died
• They were released

12. “Turning the Tide”
– November 1917: The state of NY gave women the
right to vote
– Jan. 1918: Wilson announced that he would
support an amendment (he needed women’s
votes in the upcoming election). The vote to grant
women suffrage narrowly passed in the House
and needed a 2/3 majority in the Senate.

13. • June 4, 1919: The Susan B. Anthony amendment
passed the Senate by one vote, and then went to the
states for ratification (had to be ratified by 36 states
to become law)
• After the ratification in 35 states, suffragists turned
the campaign on the state of Tennessee and the 19th
amendment to the constitution was passed by one
vote in Tennessee (Harry Byrd). The Amendment
became law in 1920.