Various female speakers presented the history of women’s suffrage in a teach-in hosted in the Alumni Lounge on Thursday to celebrate the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment.
“The right to vote has a very contentious history, not just a contentious present,” said Professor Karen Hansen of the Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies departments.
The focus of the event was women’s suffrage and the years leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment, said Hansen in her introduction. The teach-in was divided into four presentations, which detailed component parts of the journey to gain suffrage. The ending of each presentation was marked by a reading of a speech from each period on the journey of women’s suffrage that was being discussed, according to the agenda given to the audience created by the co-sponsors of the event.
The first speaker, Anja Parish, a Ph.D. student from the Department of Politics, spoke of the beginnings of suffrage and the political alliances that were formed at the time. Parish noted that the beginnings of suffrage extend as far back as 1776 with Abigail Adams in a correspondence with her husband, John Adams—one of the founding fathers of the United States. Adams wrote to her husband asking that he “remember the ladies” while he helped create the new nation. According to Parish, however, suffrage for women would not come for nearly 144 years, and it came after many political moves.
Parish broke down the amount of work suffrage required in her presentation, with 56 campaigns of referendums from male voters; 480 campaigns to legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to state legislatures to get state level suffrage; 277 campaigns to state party conventions to make women’s suffrage a platform; 30 campaigns to presidential party conventions and 19 campaigns to 19 successive congresses.
Parish acknowledged how it is a common belief that women’s suffrage began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls convention—however, she notes that the movement’s roots can actually be traced back even further. The suffrage movement, according to Parish, was influenced by other social reform movements in the 1830s, such as abolitionism and the temperance movement. Toward the end of the 19th century, third parties like the Populists and the Progressive Party endorsed the suffrage movement, according to Parish, because helping women would help improve social conditions. Parish ended with the reading of the “Declaration of Sentiments,” which was signed by attendees of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
The next speaker was Theo Tyson, a guest from the Boston Athenaeum who curated an installation called Anti-Suffrage. In her presentation, Tyson focused on the Anti-Suffragist Movement and the intersectionality of class, race and gender.
Tyson noted that at this time there was a political priority which forced people to “choose a side.” Activists had to prioritize whether they were to support recently emancipated men of color in their right to vote or to focus on women’s rights, according to Tyson. In the interest of political progress in the United States, it was decided to focus on the rights of recently emancipated men of color, said Tyson. Women took a backseat at this point, making race and gender polarizing in the movement, according to Tyson. She said support for the women’s suffrage movement became conditional and it was no longer women’s suffrage but instead it became white, wealthy, well-educated, married, mother’s suffrage. This lessened the universality of the movement, according to Tyson, and equality between women. Traditionalists were only semi-accepting of the idea of women’s suffrage as long as they were “properly domesticated,” said Tyson.
The next speakers spoke of the later half of the suffrage movement closer to the passage of the 19th Amendment. Despite having gained suffrage, people in the audience noted that many of the grievances women in the suffrage movement brought attention to are still a problem today—such as the unequal pay between sexes.
The event was set up as a teach-in—an extended meeting usually held on a college campus for lectures, debates and discussions to raise awareness of or express a position on a social or political issue, Hasen explained through a definition from Merriam Webster. This set-up allowed those in attendance to come and go as their schedule permitted, said Hansen.
The event was co-sponsored by many cross-disciplinary groups across the university including the Women’s Research Study Center; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program (WGS); the History department; the Politics department, the American Studies Program; the Sociology department and the Hadassah Brandeis Institute. There was a table set up at the event where attendees were encouraged to register to vote if they were not registered already.
