Content
Event 1- The First Women's Rights Convention
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott met one another in London, England at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention. All the American female delegates to that convention were excluded from attending the meeting on the floor, but were permitted to sit, in silent observance, in the balcony to watch the proceedings. When William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent newspaper editor from America, arrived a day or two after the start of the convention and learned the fate of the American women, he was outraged. In solidarity with the women and to protest the injustice, he sat with the ladies in the balcony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided that she liked this man and later they came to have a close working relationship within the women's movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton also got to know Lucretia Mott quite well, and they both decided that they would organize a Women's Right convention in America. It would be eight years before that convention would come to be, but the important thing is that the convention was held, and it signified the beginning of a long and arduous movement in America for women to gain the franchise and equality with men.
The Road to Seneca Falls
Students will learn that this was a time of change. Change does not happen easily in areas deeply entrenched in traditions. Historically, women were essentially and for all practical purposes the property of men; if not their husbands then their brothers or fathers. All political decisions were made for them by the men in their lives. There was no reason for women to be able or even to want to vote for that matter, because they were represented by the men in their lives. Husbands and fathers spoke for the entire family. Women could not hold property in their own names. If money or material things were bequeathed to them and they were married, it immediately belonged to their husbands. Women going into a marriage were to obey their husbands. Husbands could treat a wife in any manner they chose and there was no recourse for women. Violence against women would occur, but women could do nothing about it. The laws were stacked against them. There was no divorce. The law was always on the side of men. A woman's duty was to take care of everything in the home and the family. They bore the children but did have control over their children. There was widespread agreement among most of the men and many women in the 19th century that the family was a sacred institution. Education was not readily available for women and job opportunities into what we call today careers or professions were practically nonexistent. The very idea that women would want to travel outside the home or work for reform was incomprehensible to men and threatening to the institutions of family and marriage. Women were deeply entrenched in this tradition of dependency on men; yet often those men were undependable. Women were angry about this condition. As a result of dissatisfaction and anger about their place in life, often referred to as the "woman's sphere," they began to attend female academies and form ladies benevolent societies. These associations helped to form the "bonds of womanhood" and the start of a movement, although it was primitive and disorganized, for social change was on the way. The era of feminism was on the horizon.4
It is important for our students to understand what constitutes a movement and we might define the term movement in this context. "A movement is a process by which rebellion generates rebellion."5 In the beginning there is much fear to overcome and confidence may be low, but over time, as the movement grows, much like a child grows, members of that movement gain strength and confidence. It may be important to spend some time with students to discussing what a "movement" is. Is a social movement the same as a reform? Would a revolution be the same as a movement? DuBois suggests that a movement constitutes "an accelerating transformation of consciousness among a group of oppressed people and a growing sense of collective power.6 While it might be difficult to overcome some challenges facing the oppressed group, once social change begins to happen, people in the movement may not be able to understand how they were ever able to accept the conditions under which they previously lived. The women's movement started with a few isolated women in the middle of the nineteenth century. Those first pioneers of the women's movement include Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Martha Coffin Wright, Frederick Douglass, Mrs. Richard Hunt, Mary Ann McClintock, Sojourner Truth, James Mott, Henry Stanton, and Thomas McClintock.
The Women's Right Movement loosely organized itself before the Civil War, but soon gained some expertise of organization as they aligned themselves with the anti-slavery movement. Women were able to conceptualize their plight as "institutionalized oppression"7 and now focused intently on social reform. Still the process by which the women's rights movement grew remained rather informal.8
The Seneca Falls Agenda
Women were so reticent through tradition about speaking in public or asserting their own beliefs that at the start of the convention on July 19, 1848 Lucretia Mott's husband, James, was called to preside over the meeting.9 Lucretia Mott spoke first, as a way of introduction, followed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who read The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. This first convention was the impetus for other Women's Rights Convention. In 1850 in Akron, Ohio at another women's rights convention, Sojourner Truth made her famous speech "Ain't I a Woman." When the students read this speech, it may be interesting to ask that they consider foreshadowing of the black freedwoman's fate. The Civil War changed many aspects of the society and impacted many lives in America. Its influence did not spare Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. For example, after the Civil War frequent charges were levied against these women for their racist attitudes.10
The women's movement closely aligned itself in a political relationship with the anti-slavery (abolitionist) movement. The women leaders saw this alliance providing many benefits to their cause, among them publicity in antislavery newspapers using antislavery funds. Often women speakers were on the stage during antislavery gatherings and in that way were able to keep their cause alive. But there were also inherent disadvantages to the close association with abolitionism. For example, this partnership hindered women's direct experience with organizing events for social change. Someone else was doing all the organizing. Also, there was a question of support: Was their constituency composed of abolitionists or women righters? The women had no way of determining how many supporters for suffrage they had. When Civil War broke out, women prominent in the women right's movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, and the McClintock ladies just to name a few, agreed to table their own issues in favor of working on the slavery issue. However, "[w]hen they returned, four years later, to consider the future of women's rights, the political context within which they did so had been completely altered."11 After the war, the name of the movement shifted from "women's rights movement" to "the women's suffrage movement."12 The emphasis on suffrage, did take a toll on the movement as a whole.
Event 2 - The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
Stanton and Anthony, based on their experiences, believed that the Emancipation Proclamation was not enough. They quickly formed the National Loyal Women's League for the purpose of lobbying for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Petitions were circulated and they were able to collect more than four hundred signatures.13 In addition in 1865, the American Anti-Slavery Society changed its focus to black suffrage. This shift brought the goals of the two movements closer for a time, as now both movements were working for suffrage: black suffrage and woman suffrage. However, the defeat of slavery brought more political power to members of the antislavery group, yet women were still hopeful that the goal of woman suffrage could soon be a reality. This newly gained power was treasured by the abolitionists and now they believed that they were in a position to directly impact congressional Reconstruction.14 The women's strategy was to work for suffrage, for woman's suffrage and black suffrage at the same time. Politically though, especially for the Radicals in the Republican party, there was now an urgency to assure that black suffrage was guaranteed by law so that the Reconstruction policies of the Radical Republicans would succeed. It was important to the Republicans that the Reconstruction programs garner as much support as they could. After the assassination of Lincoln, the United States was now led by a President, Andrew Johnson, whose political views were unfavorable to Reconstruction policies. In fact "the 1867 Reconstruction Act, which required rebel states to include black suffrage in their new constitutions, was passed over the President's veto."15 The fight for woman's suffrage did not have this urgency and thus became less important. In an effort to try to reconcile the growing differences between the abolitionist and women supporter, some pleaded the case of the black woman. According to DuBois "[t]he black woman's double disfranchisement transcended the hostility that Reconstruction politics were generating between the black and woman suffrage movements."16 Anthony also spoke on behalf of the black woman as well as Stanton when she said that without the right to vote, the freedwoman would experience "triple bondage that man never knows."17 It seems that the embrace of the freedwoman in the arms of Stanton and Anthony was short-lived. The disparity between the antislavery movement and the women's movement became heated and led to a split between the two movements and it became clear that the term "woman" or "sex" would not be part of the language in the 14th Amendment.
Not only was the proposed amendment concerned with the political rights of the freedman to the exclusion of the demands for woman suffrage. It strengthened the disenfranchisement of women by making explicit their exclusions from its provisions. Two decades of women's rights agitation had destroyed the centuries-old assumption that political rights applied only to men. Accordingly, the Republican authors of the Fourteenth Amendment, including Sumner, had to decide between enfranchising women or specifying male citizens as the basis of representation. They chose the latter, writing the word "male" into the amendment and introducing an explicit sexual distinction into the constitution for the first time.18
The next issue to consider in this unit is the dissent about the Fifteenth Amendment. "The Fifteenth Amendment was intended to do what the Fourteenth Amendment did not-explicitly prohibit disfranchisement on the grounds of race and commit the federal government to enforce that prohibition."19 Conflict grew stronger from inside the women's movement. Some such as Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell and others, while disappointed in the Republican's lack of support for the women, still believed it prudent to support the Republican Party. On the other side of the road were Stanton, Anthony and others who doggedly challenged the Republicans for their abandonment of the enfranchisement of women. Stone and others placed their support for and faith in the Republican Party in hopes that woman suffrage would be supported in the near future. Stanton, Anthony, and Olympia Brown were among the first to publicly defect from the ranks of the Republican Party. Brown declaring boldly, "The Republican Party is a party and cares for nothing but party."20 Stanton and Anthony did not support the Fifteenth Amendment, their objections were considered feminist and racist, and their behavior was becoming more militant as they firmly believed that its ratification would intensify sexual inequality. The women's movement split into two organizations; the National Woman Suffrage Association led by Stanton and Anthony and the American Woman Suffrage Association led by Stone and Higginson. The two factions did not unite again until 1890 and the failure to achieve the franchise for women was impacted by internal conflict.21
Event 3 - The Nineteenth Amendment
The last section of this unit forwards to the time surrounding the Nineteenth Amendment. It was becoming clear for women that democracy, consent of the governed, and justice were concepts that were intimately involved in this long-time mission to secure the vote. To the suffragists, democracy was incompatible with force. Justice was equity, the quality of being just, impartial, or fair and seeing to those ideals through law. Thus the government in order to be just, in order to be a democracy, should allow all of its citizens to vote. In other words, a democracy is governed by the consent of the people.
By this time, younger, more energetic women were rising to take leadership roles. One young woman was Alice Paul, a Quaker who was educated at Swarthmore College, and had just returned from England, where the woman's suffrage movement was in full motion, with new ideas for the suffrage movement in America. Lucy Burns was also a younger suffragist, who eventually organized a hunger strike after the women were arrested and taken to Occoquan Workhouse. Carrie Chapman Catt was a good politician who became the new president of NAWSA. The new movement suffragists were characterized as educated, white, middle or upper class women who concentrated on strategies and tactics. While the older National American Women's Suffrage Association was informally organized and wanted their numbers to be large, the newer view was to be tightly organized, almost businesslike, and fewer in numbers. The new guard believed that was the way to accomplish more. They often found themselves in conflict with the old guard suffragists such as Stanton and Anthony, and broke away form the National American Women's Suffrage Association to form the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU) later to be known as the Woman's Party (WP).22
An amendment, known as the Anthony Amendment, asking for woman suffrage to the constitution was proposed to United States Senate in 1878, but it was rejected. It was proposed in 1887 and again defeated. It was introduced a third time in 1914 and again defeated. World War I broke out and again women put their political efforts on the shelf to help with the war cause, but this move proved interesting because now there was proof that a woman could work just like a man.
Alice Paul organized a large women's march for suffrage the day before newly elected Woodward Wilson came to Washington, DC to be sworn in as President of the United States. Paul continued to organize protests, often in front of the White House. She was arrested and jailed for seven months. Finally, President Wilson gave his approval for the "Anthony Amendment" and in June, 1919 both houses of Congress passed the amendment. It was ratified by enough states on August 18, 1920, and became the Nineteenth Amendment to our Constitution. Alice Paul believed that the Nineteenth Amendment was not enough to guarantee equal rights to women in marriage, at work or by laws. She worked for the equal rights amendment, which was first introduced to Congress in 1923 by Susan B. Anthony's nephew. "Legislators reintroduced it (without ever acting on it) in every congressional session until 1970."23 The amendment was finally approved by both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but failed to garner enough States to ratify it. Today, there is still no Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
Soon after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, groups in opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment moved swiftly to see that the interpretation of the structural significance of this amendment was confined only to voting and nothing beyond that with respect to equality in social (family and marriage), political, or economic domains.24 In other words, this amendment, historically, has been seen to deal only with voting and not with any ideals of equal citizenship for women. The courts, including the Supreme Court, and Congress understood the broader significance of this amendment as illustrated by the decision in Adkins v. Children's Hospital. Yet neither the courts nor the Congress acted consistently in terms of a new more liberal standard or normative view of women as a result of the Nineteenth Amendment. Consequently, interpretation of the Nineteenth Amendment was confined to that of voting with "no direct bearing on marital law"25 or other issues of equal citizenship. Thus years of work toward equality for women was undermined by the "domestication"26 of how the woman's vote in elections would affect everyday life. "... [C]ourts... domesticated the woman suffrage amendment, erasing the deep structural and symbolic significance that for generations had been imputed to this constitutional reform."27 Basically, it wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that the issues surrounding equal rights for women were once again on the nation's radar.
Comments: