The American Equal Rights Association

In May 1866, just after the close of the Civil War, women’s rights and anti-slavery advocates joined together in Washington, DC for the annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association. The government was rapidly working to “reconstruct” the Union after the war and quickly passed legislation to ban slavery and consider the status of formerly enslaved people. Wrapped up in this was the status of women of all races. The AERA initially hoped to get women and Black people the right to vote at the same time.^[1] The goal? Disband Lockean conceptualization of the family unit and instead move to a system of individuals within a collective society. A system where adults of all colors and genders could represent themselves, not by proxy through a patriarch. This was called “universal suffrage.” But male leaders in the organization feared they risked losing both battles if they kept the causes united. They decided there was less support for women’s suffrage and leaned into voting rights for Black men. Failing to give Black men power to represent their homes threatened the legitimacy of the overall structure.

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass had been friends for years, but even their relationship was tested by the strategic split in the AERA. Douglass made comments to the press prioritizing Black-male suffrage over women’s suffrage. Anthony responded, "I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman." Her friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton went further. In their suffrage newspaper The Revolution, Stanton used racial slurs to describe uneducated Black men who might get to vote before her.

Everything came to a head in 1869 at the annual meeting for the AERA. Anthony and Stanton were asked to resign from the organization on the grounds that their comments were not in the spirit of “universal suffrage.” Douglass defended Stanton as a friend to Black people but also said, “I must say that I do not see how anyone can pretend that there is the same urgency and giving the ballot to woman as to the Negro… When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities… when they are drag from their houses and hung up on lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outraged at every turn; When they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.”

There was great applause. An unknown voice asked, “is that not all true about black women?”  Douglass replied, “yes, yes, yes; it is true of the black woman, but not because she is a woman, but because she is black.”^[2]

Susan B. Anthony was not impressed. She rebutted, “the old anti-slavery school say women must stand back and wait until the Negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. Mr. Douglass talks about the wrongs of the Negro; but with all the outrages that he today suffers, he would not exchange his sex and take the place of Elizabeth Caddy Stanton.”

Her remarks were met with great laughter. Lucy Stone of Massachusetts weighed in, “Mrs. Stanton will, of course, advocate for the precedence for her sex, and Mr. Douglass will strive for the first position for his, and both are perhaps right… We are lost if we turn away from the middle principle and argue for one class.” On the one hand, Stanton argued for “educated suffrage” perhaps a euphemism for racism. On the other, the writing was on the wall: men and women who had once shared in her cause were abandoning her. What was evident is that the former abolitionists were fighting over scraps instead of uniting to get the whole loaf. Stone advocated for taking what they could get.

By July 1866, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution passed Congress and was on its way to be ratified. The Amendment gave everyone born in the United States citizenship, effectively granting rights to formerly enslaved people, but it also accomplished something the Constitution had failed to do: it made women’s subjugation explicit. Section 2 explicitly used the word “male” where the constitution had only ever used the term “persons.” Then in February of 1869, the 15th Amendment passed, the last of the Reconstruction amendments. It read:

“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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The list failed to include the word “sex” making it perfectly legal to deny women the right to vote. For the first time, women’s exclusion from government wasn’t just “self-evident,” it was law. The 15th Amendment accomplished something the Constitution had not: it made women’s oppression overt.

Sojourner Truth, a former slave, also weighed in on the suffrage debate at a Women’s Rights Convention. She said, “There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”^[3]

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper^[4]

One notable advocate for Black women was writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper from Pennsylvania. One of the first black women to be published in the United States, Harper was famous in her own time.  Drawing on personal experience, she specifically pointed out the constant plight women (of all races) were in financially. After her husband died, she faced poverty. She warned without equal rights, any woman could be in her same situation.

​

Western Liberty

Interestingly, newly forming western states were more open to the ideas of women’s suffrage. Wyoming became the first to grant women suffrage in 1890. The West may have been more open to women’s rights for a variety of reasons. In some areas, male politicians recognized women’s significance to settling the western frontier.  In other states, granting women the right to vote could solidify conservative voting blocks. In other places, folks thought more women might be drawn into the lonely, rugged frontier territories if there were at least some rights waiting for them. Anyway, as western states considered women’s suffrage for whatever motives, the momentum was stagnant in the east.

Arguments over whether to support the 15th Amendment, split the women’s movement in two with Stanton and Anthony founding the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York and Douglass and Stone founding the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston. Both groups published newspapers and advocated for women’s right to vote, but they differed in their approaches and, of course, in their support for the 15th Amendment. NWSA lobbied for a federal amendment while AWSA worked state-by-state to change voting laws.

These divided organizations forced suffragists to choose a side. South Carolina suffragists, for example, aligned themselves with AWSA. Charlotte “Lottie” Rollin and her sister Frances were free Black women born into wealth in Charleston. In 1869, Lottie made a speech on the floor of the South Carolina legislature, urging the members to enfranchise women, becoming the first Black woman to do so. By the way, “enfranchise” can also mean “giving the right to vote.” In another speech, Lottie said, “We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the grounds that we are human beings and as such entitled to all human rights.”^[5]

The Awakening^[6]

Rollin became the sole representative from South Carolina to the AWSA, but the AWSA support did little to change the situation.

A New Hampshire husband and wife duo, Nathaniel and Armenia White, formed the States Suffrage Association and kept suffrage in the state press, successfully getting a bill through the legislature before it failed.

Shifting Approaches

By the 1870’s Anthony adopted a more radical approach, shifting from a legislative focus to the courts. She registered to vote with over a dozen other women in Rochester, NY in 1872. She hoped if the government as a whole wouldn’t condemn the injustice against women, maybe a judge would.  She was convicted of violating federal laws. Similarly, Missouri suffragist Virginia Minor challenged her inability to vote in court, citing language from the 14th Amendment. She lost.

In 1879, Frances Willard, head of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the largest and most powerful women's organization of the era, endorsed women’s suffrage and put the full weight of the temperance movement behind it! Willard also pushed the WCTU to support other social causes including labor and prison reform. The WCTU support eventually created challenges for the suffrage movement because the alcohol industry was a powerful opponent.

Indigenous Women and Suffrage

The question of how race influenced and impacted conversations regarding the suffrage movement extended to Indigenous women as well. After all, in addition to the inspiration suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Gage, and Lucretia Mott drew from Indigenous matricultures, Indigenous women themselves had been a part of debates surrounding women’s rights since the eighteenth century.

Indeed, women from Indigenous communities such as the Onondaga, Cherokee, and others oftentimes critiqued Euro-American society for their treatment of women. For instance, in reflecting upon the past and present, Jeanne Shenandoah of the Onondaga noted that “we Haudenosaunee live within the traditional structure that we’ve always had, the structure of equality among all members of our community… and so, when we met these white women so long ago, I am sure that our women were probably shocked at the lack of human equality that these other women had to live under.”^[7]

Suffragists, as evidenced by a publication history spanning from the 1870s to the 1890s, engaged with similar critiques by Indigenous women. For example, during the first meeting of the International Council of Women’s that had been organized by Stanton and Anthony in 1888, one Ms. Alice Fletcher—an ethnographer who lived and worked with numerous Indigenous communities over her career—presented a paper on the legal conditions of Indian women. Fletcher began noting the prevailing and persistent myth that Indigenous women were effectively “slaves, possessing neither place, property, nor respect in the tribe.” In reality, however, she recounted her experiences among Indigenous women, particularly their reactions when she explained white women’s legal status. More specifically she recalled that when “I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: ‘As an Indian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law.’”^[8]

Women’s Opposition to Suffrage

The women’s suffrage movement varied in strength from region to region, city to town, and class to class.  Elite, white women were among the strongest opponents to woman suffrage. They benefited from the current system in many ways and valued their gendered privileges. Why would they want to uproot it?

There was also a distinct difference between northern anti-suffragists and southern anti-suffragists. While both tended to be white and wealthy, northerners were worried that the vote would corrupt and politicize women’s philanthropic and charitable work. Meanwhile southern women worried that the vote would disrupt white supremacy.

One of the most famous female opponents was a prolific writer and author of the era, Molly Elliot Seawell from Virginia. She wrote a book in opposition to suffrage titled The Woman’s Battle. In it she argued:

“It has often been pointed out that women could not, with justice, ask to legislate upon matters of war and peace, as no woman can do military duty; but this point may be extended much further. No woman can have any practical knowledge of shipping and navigation, of the work of trainmen on railways, of mining, or of many other subjects of the highest importance. Their legislation, therefore, would not probably be intelligent, and the laws they devised for the betterment of sailors, trainmen, miners, etc., might be highly objectionable to the very persons they sought to benefit… The entire execution of the law would be in the hands of men, backed up by an irresponsible electorate which could not lift a finger to apprehend or punish a criminal. And if all the dangers and difficulties of executing the law lay upon men, what right have women to make the law?”^[9] In other words, since women had limited knowledge of any of the things they would legislate on, it made no sense to provide them with the right to vote.

Some anti-suffragists argued that the reforms proposed by suffragists would dismantle the home and erode womanhood. Political cartoons of the era depicted men doing women’s work, neglected homes, or motherless children crying because no one was there to care for them. Others depicted women selfishly pursuing their own interests at their families’ expense.

Ida Tarbell from Pennsylvania, the first investigative journalist who exposed the monopoly-producing policies of the Stanford Oil Company, had a pretty nuanced anti-suffragist take. She took issue with the claim that women were inferior because they could not vote. She said:

“A harmful and unsound implication in the suffrage argument has been that a woman’s position in society would improve in proportion as her activities and interests become the same as those of men. This implies of course that man’s work in society is more important… than women's. But both are essential to society.”^[10] 

Tarbell herself was an accomplished woman, why should she feel oppressed just because she didn’t get to vote?

Laura Clay, suffragist from Kentucky^[11]

NAWSA Merger

Despite their opposition, NWSA and AWSA carried on. In 1887, NWSA proposed a federal amendment that actually made it to a vote! ... But 34 of the votes against women’s suffrage came from Southern States. With this humiliating defeat, both groups decided enough was enough. Anthony, Stanton, Stone, Stone’s daughter Alice Stone Blackwell, and Rachel Foster met to put the past behind them and unify their efforts. After long negotiations they decided to work solely for women’s suffrage and reorganized as the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

NAWSA was able to provide considerably more weight to state campaigns for suffrage--so state campaigns became more powerful. For example, Virginia Durant Young from South Carolina, transformed the suffrage cause in her state by publishing a weekly newspaper and quickly aligning with the merged organization. She and her allies worked tirelessly across the state bringing powerhouse speakers from within NAWSA to South Carolina to rouse support, but nonetheless, suffragists continued to struggle to universalize support for the vote for women.

The narrow focus that NAWSA held limited their ability to view the full scope of the female experience. They did nothing to combat prominent issues like racism, lynching, alcoholism, corrupt divorce, and inheritance laws. However, because their aim was simplified, membership grew from seven thousand to two million. Yet their singular goal remained distant as southern states continued to be a massive barrier.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is not always the best strategy, but it’s the strategy NAWSA went with. Anthony and Stanton began actively recruiting prominent southern suffragists to work toward women’s suffrage. And some of these southern suffragists were pretty darn troubling. Kate Gordon of Alabama became the vice president of NAWSA and argued that white women’s suffrage would help counteract the new Black male vote. She was not alone. Laura Clay of Kentucky and Belle Kearney from Mississippi also adopted these arguments. Many southern white women were just plain uncomfortable working for suffrage alongside Black women. Meanwhile, white Southern society clung to deeply conservative gender expectations, believing that public roles for women would threaten their status as good Southern "ladies."^[12]

Black Women’s Resistance

In 1895, NAWSA held its annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia at the urging of Georgia’s leading suffragist, Augusta Howard. Howard believed that southern states would continue to insist southern women didn’t want suffrage until they could see more southern women rallying. Characteristically of southern suffrage, no Black women were invited to attend the event. Neither was Frederick Douglass, who used to be an annual speaker for the NAWSA annual event.

Black women remained in NAWSA, but had to fight racism internally, and consistently advocated for NAWSA to support causes like anti-lynching. Thankfully, throughout the 1890s, Black women’s clubs popped up around the country to take on the issues that women’s organizations led by mostly white women wouldn’t. Ida B. Wells-Barnett from Memphis and later Chicago, rallied Black women to these clubs and boldly denounced lynching in the press. In 1896, the clubs merged to form the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs under the leadership of Mary Church Terrell from Memphis, Tennessee--one of the first Black women to earn a college degree. Their motto was “Lifting as We Climb.” Clubs often promoted the politics of respectability, encouraging Black women to be thrifty, show sexual restraint, be clean, and work hard in order to counter negative stereotypes. Terrell understood that some women simply could not solely focus on suffrage because there were too many urgent needs. She gave a passionate speech in her 1898 NAWSA address in DC: “Not only are coloured women with ambition and aspiration handicapped on account of their sex, but they are almost everywhere baffled and mocked because of their race.” After petitioning NAWSA for years to create a subcommittee for concerns of Black women, Terrell decided to focus her attention on the club movement.^[13]

Ida B. Wells-Barnett^[14]

Women Office Holders

Despite lacking the federal vote, women in states around the country were eligible to vote in state and local elections. In the early years, women ran for lower-level offices, like school boards, which were seen as an extension of the domestic sphere and not out of bounds for a position women could hold. Overtime, with experience in public life and exposure as leaders, women sought higher offices.

Martha Huges Cannon ran for office under the most remarkable circumstances and not only won the first ever State Senate seat, but she beat her husband in the race. In 1884, became the fourth of six wives of prominent Morman church leader Angus M. Cannon, just two years after Congress made polygamy a federal felony under the Edmunds Act. Because she could be forced to testify against her husband or other church members, Martha joined the secret Mormon “underground,” moving from safe house to safe house. Pregnant and still wanted for testimony by federal marshals, she went into self-exile in Europe, where loneliness and jealousy over her husband's continuing plural marriages strained her relationship with him.

Cannon was a walking contradiction. She was a doctor and a fugitive, a feminist and a polygamous wife. Eventually, Cannon returned to Utah determined to expand women’s rights. When Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, stripping all Utah women of the right to vote, she became a leader in the Utah Women’s Suffrage Association. She traveled with Susan B. Anthony, spoke at national conventions, and argued fiercely that educated, independent women made better citizens and mothers.

Her greatest contradiction became her greatest victory. In 1896, the year Utah entered the Union with women’s suffrage restored in its state constitution, Cannon ran for the Utah State Senate as a Democrat against several Republican candidates, including her own husband, Angus. She won decisively, becoming the first woman state senator in American history, and defeating her husband by over 2,000 votes. In office, she authored major public health reforms, established Utah’s State Board of Health, expanded protections for working women and girls, promoted compulsory education for disabled children, and helped enact Utah’s first pure-food laws. Her work during smallpox outbreaks, pushing for vaccinations and modern sanitation, put her at odds with some church leaders, showing again her willingness to choose science over social expectation.

In the late 19th century, long before women could vote, a few bold women decided not to wait for the law to change—they ran for public office anyway. The most famous of these trailblazers were Victoria Woodhull and Belva Lockwood, who even ran for president of the United States. While their campaigns were historic, they also revealed the enormous obstacles women faced when seeking high-level political positions. The fierce public backlash they endured helps explain why, after 1888, women shifted their focus to lower-level offices like school boards, where they had a much better chance of being taken seriously and getting elected.

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president, and she did it in 1872 as a candidate of the Equal Rights Party. But instead of being treated like a political pioneer, she was met with intense hostility, much of it personal and rooted in prejudice. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a famous author and moral leader, mocked the idea of a woman candidate by describing her as a “brazen tramp” in her novel My Wife and I. Stowe suggested that any woman who ran for high office must be shameless or immoral. Newspapers also attacked Woodhull, lumping her with scandals, “free love,” spiritualism, and other “dangerous” ideas. Even her sister Tennie’s German accent was used to make the sisters seem foreign and suspicious. Political cartoons portrayed Woodhull as “Mrs. Satan,” a corrupting figure trying to tempt respectable wives away from their families. These portrayals reinforced the idea that a woman seeking power was threatening to both men and women. The press also took aim at her personal life, calling her unethical, untrustworthy, and unfeminine, labels that stuck for decades and discouraged other women from following her path.

Woodhull’s willingness to expose the adultery of the preacher Henry Ward Beecher only made things worse. Even though she argued that she was attacking his hypocrisy, not his morals, the press responded by calling her a liar and a menace. She and her sister were arrested and jailed for libel just three days before the election, an event that showed how easy it was to use legal and social pressure to shut down a woman candidate. The message to women watching was clear: running for high office came with enormous personal risk, public humiliation, and the threat of legal trouble.

Belva Lockwood, who ran for president in 1884 and 1888, was treated somewhat differently, but still with a great deal of sexism. Lockwood had strong qualifications—she was a lawyer, a reformer, and responsible for important legal victories. She even won thousands of votes from men. Yet newspapers still portrayed her as part of a circus, a joke, or an oddity rather than a serious candidate. Cartoons made fun of her appearance, her voice, and her ambition. Even though she was polite, professional, and scandal-free, she was still not treated with the respect given to male politicians. Like Woodhull, she became a symbol of how far a woman could go intellectually—but also of how far society was willing to drag her down.

By the late 1880s, these attacks had taken a toll on the Equal Rights Party, and the party dissolved after Lockwood’s second campaign. Woodhull’s reputation had improved slightly by the 1890s, but she was still remembered mainly for scandal rather than the groundbreaking ideas she promoted. The intense mockery, harassment, and scrutiny aimed at both Woodhull and Lockwood sent a powerful warning to politically minded women: the higher the office, the harsher the backlash. This is a major reason why the next woman presidential candidate did not appear until 1940.

At the same time, opportunities were opening up for women in local elections, especially school boards. Newspapers described these candidates as respectable, capable, and motivated by maternal concern for the community. In places like Ogden, Utah, and Fairbanks, Alaska, women were welcomed as candidates because managing schools was seen as an extension of motherhood. Since women were already expected to care about children, education, and morality, many people viewed them as naturally qualified for school-related roles. Some articles even argued that women were better suited than men to supervise teachers or set school policies. Because of these gendered expectations, women faced far less criticism when they ran for school boards than when they sought higher offices. Instead of being mocked as “unfeminine,” they were praised for helping children and improving communities.

Newspaper coverage also shows that women were considered less threatening in these local positions. School boards had no military power, no national political influence, and no control over topics traditionally reserved for men. This meant women could run without facing the intense public attacks that Woodhull and Lockwood endured. In some places, male candidates even worried about speaking publicly in front of groups of women—revealing the bias that men’s political authority was fragile and uncomfortable when surrounded by active, opinionated women.

Overall, women chose lower-level offices before suffrage because those positions aligned with society’s beliefs about women’s “proper” roles, avoided national controversy, and came with significantly less harassment. These offices gave women practical political experience, allowed them to improve their communities, and helped them build networks that later supported the movement for full voting rights.

The Final Push for Suffrage

As the women’s suffrage movement in the US entered a new century, most of its original leaders were now gone. Elizabeth caddy Stanton, Susan B Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and the other white women who were instrumental in the founding of the national American women’s suffrage Association were dead. It was up to a new generation of young college educated women to navigate the tricky dynamic of advocating for political reforms without having an official voice in politics. New leaders emerged like Carrie Catt, Ida B Wells Barnett, Alice Paul, and Lucy Burns. Although their advocacy and focus may have varied, these women lead the national movement in its final push to gain women’s suffrage. State to state suffrage leaders emerged and helped advocate for reform on a state level. There are also leaders like Zitkala Sa and Mabel Ping-Hua Lee who advocated for groups that were yet to be even recognized as citizens, like Native Americans and Chinese Americans. 

What were these women and their allies after? A democracy that recognized them as full citizens. Named after Susan B. Anthony who first introduced in 1878, the amendment stated simply: “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.” That one sentence took decades of work, sweat, tears, and violence to pass.

College Degrees

To discuss women’s suffrage in this period, it would be impossible to ignore the role that educational reforms played in the lives of the new generation of women leading the charge. Young women at the turn of the century were attending college at rates never before seen. These women entered into college classrooms where no women have done before. Most often they were not greeted with open arms. In fact, they were greeted with hostility. They were often seen as taking a seat from a young man, “who would actually use his degree.” Young female college students were ridiculed, jeered, bullied, and sexually harassed. That harassment was not only from their peers, but also from their professors. In some cases, women were allowed to attend classes, but not earn degrees. Oberlin college, which was one of the first to admit women, was still incredibly discriminatory towards them. For example, on Mondays female students were released early from class so that they could do the laundry for the male students. In other places, their male professors refused to teach them. Or in one instance, as women sat for an exam, their male peers rioted in protest. 

Elizabeth Blackwell^[15]

Colleges for women were treated like a dangerous experiment: what might these women possibly learn? Colleges that were designed for men who are modeled on the idea of an “academic village.” Boys would cross from their dormitory to the academic buildings where they attended classes. Colleges designed for women however reinforced traditional ideas of modesty. There was no quad for them. Girls attended classes in buildings modeled after seminaries, or religious buildings. 

Yet, across every field, women were joining the ranks of those college educated. Higher education for women was relatively new in the United States. Mississippi college became the first institute for higher education to actually grant a degree to women in 1831: Alice Robinson and Catherine Hall. Then in 1839, Wesleyan College opened and exclusively granted bachelors degrees for women. A decade later, Elizabeth Blackwell, who was born in England, became the first woman to earn a medical degree at an American institution. She had received 10 rejection letters from various colleges. One person even told her that if she really wanted a college degree, she should dress like a man. She did not cross-dress, instead writing, "It was to my mind a moral crusade. It must be pursued in the light of day, and with public sanction, in order to accomplish its end." In 1850, Lucy Stanton became the first Black woman to earn a degree in the US, from Oberlin College. Mary Fellows was the first woman to receive a degree from west of the Mississippi River. It wasn’t until 1873, that California declared that girls should have equal access to higher education. It would take years before that same philosophy was applied across the country.

Between 1880 and 1930, 50 years, colleges of higher education went from about 50% being coed to 75%. The Ivy Leagues were some of the last holdouts, with some exception: Cornell began admitting women in 1870. But most opted for having sister colleges, like the Radcliffe to Harvard. Radcliffe contracted with Harvard professors to teach classes to the female students. But others resisted women’s education like it was the plague. Most Ivy League institutions did not give women equal access until the 1960s and 70s under the women’s movement. And even then there was much resistance. One Dartmouth alumni wrote: "For God's sake, for Dartmouth's sake, and for everyone's sake, keep the damned women out."

At Princeton, outright misogyny ruled the day: “What is all this nonsense about admitting women to Princeton? A good old-fashioned whore-house would be considerably more efficient, and much, much cheaper."

Eventually, pragmatically, the Ivy Leagues, too, began to accept women into their institutions. Unfortunately it wasn’t because they suddenly embraced women’s liberation. It was because male undergraduates were opting to go to coed institutions rather than male-only institutions. In order to stay competitive and get the best male intellectuals in their doors they admitted women as a “perk” for male students.^[16]

Anna Howard Shaw ^[17]

Doldrums

But what did all of this education have to do with suffrage? Everything. One of the best anti-suffrage arguments was not granting women the vote would introduce yet another largely uneducated, potentially illiterate, group of people into the voting population. Remember it wasn’t too long ago, and was still within recent memory of most in power that men of color were also granted suffrage. How could women, who do not work in industry, possibly vote in any informed way on issues of economics or politics? The growing numbers of women graduating with college degrees was proving that narrative false. Women can be informed voters. 

Among the first wave of undergraduates with bachelor's degrees was Carrie Chapman Catt who was selected as the president of NAWSA, to succeed Susan B. Anthony. Catt was a formidable choice. She dedicated her entire life to suffrage. Her first husband died shortly after their marriage from typhoid fever, and she married her second husband, who she knew from college at Iowa State. In 1887, after a short career as a legal clerk and teacher, she joined the women’s crusade. George Catt supported his wife. He viewed their gendered roles as this: his job was to provide, hers was to improve the world. They never had kids and after he died, she worked alongside her female housemate and partner, Mary Garret Hay, for the cause of women. Many years later, when she died, she chose to be buried under a loving inscription next to Hay.

From 1900 to 1904, Catt led NAWSA, but at the end of her tenure, her husband, Susan B Anthony, and her mother all passed away leaving Catt grief stricken. Without her at the helm, NAWSA struggled. Anna Howard Shaw, who held a degree in ministry and a doctoral degree in medicine, took charge. Shaw was a fierce advocate for working class women, but not a champion for all women. She frequently spoke about nativist views, championed white women’s causes, and created a hostile environment for African-Americans within the movement. But while hostile to some, Shaw is a striking example of the importance of suffrage to queer women. After all, queer women often did not have a man providing for them and all the privileges wives had did not necessarily extend to them. Shaw, like many suffragists, lived with a longtime female partner, Lucy Elmina Anthony, the niece of Susan B. Anthony. There was no man to provide for them, so women in these partnerships lived on the often pitiful and discriminatory salaries granted to women.[18] 

All over the country they led marches and were successful in getting some states to grant women the right to vote. California gave women the right to vote in 1911 and Tye Leung Schulze made history as the first Chinese-American woman, if not the first Asian woman in the world, to vote in a democratic election. Of the event she said, “I thought long over that. I studied; I read about all your men who wished to be president. I learned about the new laws. I wanted to KNOW what was right, not to act blindly...I think it is right we should all try to learn, not vote blindly, since we have been given this right to say which man we think is the greatest...I think too that we women are more careful than the men. We want to do our whole duty more. I do not think it is just the newness that makes use like that. It is conscience.”[19]

Across the country, women battled against long standing traditions and well-established patriarchal norms.  Under Shaw’s leadership women’s suffrage stalled out. They’d been going state by state for decades working to get change and in those decades only nine states had granted women the right to vote: 70 years and only nine states. Something had to give and the women knew it. Perhaps the strategy was wrong? Between women suffragists, great debate broke out. There were the old-school NAWSA women who advocated for the tried and true continued effort in the state-to-state campaigns. State campaigns were growing and more women were joining the movement at the local level. But a young, animated, and educated generation of women were joining the movement.

Lucy Burns^[20]

Lucy Burns and Alice Paul not only had college degrees but had multiple college degrees. Burns studied at Vassar College and Yale University and later at the University of Berlin in Germany and Oxford College abroad. There, Burns witnessed the militancy of the British suffrage movement. In 1909 she joined Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst's Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) where she became an expert orator and was arrested on numerous occasions. She met Alice Paul in a London police station after both were arrested during a suffrage demonstration outside Parliament. 

Paul graduated with a degree in biology from Swarthmore College (1905) and earned graduate degrees in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania (MA 1907; PhD1912). Years after suffrage she would also earn two law degrees.

When they came home from England in 1910, Paul and Burns were disheartened at the state of women’s suffrage in the United States. They pressed NAWSA to take harder positions on suffrage and advocate for a federal amendment. The leaders in NAWSA gave Paul control over the Congressional Committee whose job was to press for a Federal Amendment to the constitution, not just a state-by-state approach. Between 1912 and 1913, Paul and Burns worked to organize the congressional committee and build it into a robust political force. ​

Suffrage Parade

On March 3, 1913, they held a women’s suffrage parade in Washington DC the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Paul has begun planning this since well before she was even granted a title in the women’s movement. Her planning was meticulous, she tapped every resource and connection she had in DC and in the Taft administration that was exiting, and her expert use of public relations kept suffrage and the parade in the media so frequently that people associated the parade with Wilson’s inauguration. Women were led down Pennsylvania Avenue by Inez Milholland atop a horse representing Columbia, a symbol of the United States. Following her women were grouped by alma mater demonstrating their expertise and education levels, women were then grouped by state showing that women in every state wanted the right to vote, women were also grouped by profession with various industries given somatic outfits to wear, showing the depth of the suffrage movement and how intersected so many women’s lives.

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin^[21]

Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, a Chippewa, was the first Indigenous woman to graduate from the Washington College of Law in Washington D.C. She was an outspoken advocate of Indigenous communities and also a suffragist. In fact, on the day of her graduation from law school, Baldwin was asked by a reporter if she considered herself a suffragist; in response, she laughed and stated: “Did you ever know that the Indian women were among the first suffragists and that they exercised the right of recall?” In chiding the reporter, Baldwin highlights the fact that Indigenous women—especially those from matrilineal communities—often held and exercised political power amongst their peoples. Still, as demonstrated by her track record as a suffragist, Baldwin clearly believed that women more broadly deserved the right to vote.

Baldwin also marched in the National Woman Suffrage Procession, though on her own terms. At first, the parade’s organizers had apparently asked her to create a float that paid tribute to Indigenous women quite broadly. Baldwin, however, refused to homogenize Indigenous women into a monolithic, stereotypical figure. Instead, she chose to march as a “modern Indigenous woman” and joined the ranks of other attorneys likely from the North Carolina delegation.^[22]

Planning for the parade was not, however, perfect. Paul had many factions within the suffrage movement to appease and made concessions to Southern suffragists at the expense of Black suffragists. Black leaders like Ida B Wells Barnett as well as Delta Sigma Theta, a black sorority from nearby Howard University, were left off of the program, and told that they could march in the back. Constrained by all the demands thrown at her, Paul said, “As far as I can see, we must have a white procession, or a Negro procession, or no procession at all.”[23]

Ida B. Wells Barnett at the Woman Suffrage Parade, 1913[24]

After being told that they would have to march in the back, Wells addressed the marchers the night before. Full of tears and trembling, she stated, “if they did not take a stand now in this great democratic parade then the colored women are lost.”[25] Grace Trout, the leader of the Illinois contingent to which Wells belonged, sided with Paul and the segregationists. Wells left the room vowing not to march at all.

Of course, she would march. Wells stood on the sideline as the march began the next morning. And when the Illinois delegation walked past her, she calmly and collectively stepped into the street and joined them. This was a women's march, not a white women’s march. And women were going to get the right to vote together, not parceled off by race and class.

Mary Church Terrell, founder of the National Association of Colored Women marched with the all-Black delegation at the back. She later stated that she believed Paul and other white suffrage leaders would sacrifice Black women in order to get white women the vote. Paul of course denied that but didn’t stop catering to racists within the movement.

Mary Church Terrell^[26]

As the marchers made their way down Pennsylvania Avenue things seemed to be going well. Paul had planned ahead because the DC police had threatened not to protect her and asked for a regiment to be standing by. Thankfully she had.

What started as jeers from the crowd turned into a riot. Over 100 people ended up in the hospital as the DC police abandoned their positions along the parade route and let misogynists attack the women on the street. Newspapers blamed the DC police. Women’s suffrage was on the front page! Woodrow Wilson, the new president, was not the top story. If he wanted to have a successful presidency, women’s suffrage would have to pass.^[27]

Women march in the National Woman Suffrage Parade in Washington DC, 1913[28]

Inez Milholland Boissevain leads Parade[29]

Image Capturing the Crowds at the Suffrage Parade[30]

DC Police Liable for Violence at Parade[31]

1916 Election

But Woodrow Wilson was not easy to break. While he said he supported women’s suffrage, he didn’t think that it was politically possible to pass it. We should also mention that he was formerly the president of Princeton, one of the Ivy League schools that didn’t support women getting degrees. Wilson came to suffrage events and gave speeches where he supported their work but refused to take a policy position on it. So, when he was up for reelection, Paul and Burns refused to endorse him.

The suffrage parade was not all good for women’s suffrage. Paul and Burns’ true colors were beginning to show and their radical tactics for achieving women’s suffrage were not supported by other women in the movement. By February 1914 Paul and Burns were ousted from NAWSA and all of the funds they had raised for the congressional committee stripped from them. They rebranded as the National Women’s Party, a rival organization with more aggressive and radical positions than Shaw’s NAWSA.

As suffrage was fracturing and dividing over tactics, Carrie Chapman Catt returned to steer NAWSA through its final push for suffrage. In 1915, she returned as president of NAWSA. Catt proposed her “Winning Plan” which compromised between the factions to simultaneously fight for suffrage at the state and federal levels. She also received a 1-million-dollar bequest from New York City magazine editor and publisher Miriam Folline Leslie “for the cause of woman suffrage.”

During the election year, the NWP traveled state to state to urge people to vote against Wilson and instead endorse a candidate who would support women’s suffrage… though none emerged. Wilson and his Republican opponent Charles Evan Hughes endorsed the state-by-state approach to women’s suffrage. Paul met with Hughes on behalf of her members and women who could vote in various, mostly western states. After the meeting she was disappointed, she said:

“Voting women will not accept a mere endorsement of the principle of suffrage. They are solely interested in the best method of protecting their own political rights and of emancipating the rest of their sex. The Republican Party wants the women’s votes. They are essential to the success of the party next fall. But it will not receive them by default.”^[32]

The fact that a presidential candidate met with her, just shows how powerful politicking had become.

The NWP was narrowly focused, willing to endorse whichever candidate would support national suffrage. NAWSA on the other hand, backed Woodrow Wilson because of his continued effort to keep America out of World War I. Wilson won the election and within a month took the United States to war. For women on both issues, the reelection of Woodrow Wilson was a disappointment. Like in the Civil War decades before, many women became engrossed in the war movement. They served as nurses, within the new branch of the Marines for women, rolling bandages, volunteering, building victory gardens, and whatever needed to be done to support the country in war.

Silent Sentinels

But unlike most women, the National Women’s Party did not relent. Starting on January 10, 1917, the women’s party began sending “silent sentinels” as they were referred to, to picket outside of the White House and keep relentless pressure on Woodrow Wilson to pass the amendment. They held "watchfires," where they burned copies of Wilson's speeches, and called him a hypocrite. They picketed six days a week, rain or shine. When the United States joined the war effort, what little support they had from onlookers in DC diminished. The suffragists were seen as unpatriotic, belittling a president while he was at war. For many, the president’s focus should have been solely on bringing American boys home, but Paul and Burns did not back down, they doubled down. They pointed out the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy abroad while American women could not fight at home. Insultingly, they used Wilson’s words against him:

“WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST TO OUR HEARTS.”

When the United States’ ally, Russia sent a delegation to meet with Wilson and discuss their mutual role in preserving democracy, Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis held a banner that read:

“We, the Women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million American Women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement.”

Silent Sentinels of Maryland picket the White House for suffrage in early 1917^[33]

For mothers the connection between war and suffrage was obvious: the president was drafting their sons to go to war and they had no say in it. For many women suffrage became a symbol of anti-war sentiments.

But things eventually became tense. As women picketed outside the White House, onlookers became increasingly hostile and agitated. Soldiers harassed the women. In June of 1917, police tried to confiscate the women’s banner, which obviously violated free-speech. Women resisted. They were arrested. Eventually the government came up with a scheme to charge them with blocking traffic because they were attracting so much attention. The women argued their case in court claiming that they were “political prisoners.“ And that they were arrested because they disagreed with the ruling political party. Arrested day after day, at least 150 different women were imprisoned during this period. They refused to pay their fines and were taken to the Occoquan Workhouse prison in Virginia to work off their debts. Once released, they would be back out on the picket line the next day.

Night of Terror and Hunger Strike

Resistance to suffragists became violent and hostile. Paul and Burns were also arrested. Paul was sentenced to 7 months in Occoquan in October 1917. She began a hunger strike. The prison guards responded by force feeding her: forcing a tube down her throat and dropping raw eggs into her mouth twice a day. Then they tried to say she was insane and took her to a psychiatric hospital. The superintendent, William Alanson White, refused to admit her, stating that she was "perfectly calm, yet determined.”[34]  Outside the prison, suffragists rallied behind her. Many went to picket the White House for suffrage and also picket on behalf of Paul.

On November 14, 1917, 33 suffragists from the NWP were brutally beaten and tortured by 40 male prison guards, to “teach them a lesson.” This night went down in history as the “Night of Terror.” Testimony shared in a later investigation proved that the suffragists were dragged, beaten, choked, slammed, pinched, and kicked. Dora Lewis' arm was twisted behind her back. They twice slammed her into an iron bed where she fell unconscious and bleeding. Alice Cosu thought Lewis was dead and the panic caused her to suffer a heart attack. She was denied medical treatment until the next morning. Burns tried to check in with everyone and make sure they were ok. She started a roll call, which led her to be identified as the leader. The guards handcuffed her arms to the cell bars above her head, leaving her bleeding on tiptoe until they took her down. Burns and the other suffragists went on hunger strike for three days following the Night of Terror. Burns was removed and taken to a different prison where she too was force-fed by putting a tube through her nostril, a process that caused horrible nose bleeds. Burns spent more time in prison than other American suffragists. While all of this was going on, it was not public knowledge. The press had yet to find out this information, and American support of the NWP remained low.

Dudley Field Malone, worked as an attorney and campaign adviser to Wilson. He resigned to represent the Silent Sentinels in court. He also took letters that the suffragist had written in prison and secretly released them to the NWP newspaper, The Suffragist. The night of terror, Paul and Burns’s treatment, and the unjust arrests of the picketers was major news across the country and helped bring support for the suffrage cause. Not only did he help get all of the women released from prison, but he also had their wrongful arrests overturned by the unanimous vote. Malone would go on to marry Doris Stevens, an important and active silent sentinel imprisoned at Occoquan.

Paul wrote:

"Seems almost unthinkable now, doesn't it? It was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote.”[35]

Mary Burnett Talbert^[36]

African American Women

Meanwhile, NAWSA was busy fighting for Catt’s Winning Plan. Catt’s leadership secured several key states: New York, Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota in 1917 and 1918. Catt was winning in one respect and losing in another. She consistently catered to racists within the movement.

Mary B. Talbert was a member of the NACW and NAACP. In 1915 she wrote in The Crisis, “with us as colored women, this struggle becomes two-fold, first, because we are women and second, because we are colored women.”[37]

Black women were often belittled in how they might use the vote. Nannie Helen Burroughs aptly retorted, “What can she do without it?” Burroughs and other Black women made clear that Black women “needs the ballot, to reckon with men who place no value upon her virtue, and to mould [sic] healthy sentiment in favor of her own protection.”[38]

Adella Hunt Logan concurred, adding:

“If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot, that right protective of all other rights; if Anglo Saxons have been helped by it... how much more do black Americans, male and female need the strong defense of a vote to help secure them their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”[39]

Racism, discrimination, and racial violence forced Black women toward civil rights activism, in addition to suffrage. Perhaps overly optimistic, Angelina Weld Grimké, the great niece of abolitionist and suffragist Angelina Grimké Weld, stated, “injustices will end [between the sexes when woman] gains the ballot.”^[40]

Ratification

Then finally, in 1918, Wilson put the weight of his presidency behind the cause of suffrage and supported a national constitutional amendment. But why the sudden change of heart? Was it the public pressure from the torture of Paul and Burns? Or was it pragmatic given how many states Catt was able to secure? We may never know. Wilson claimed he was not swayed by the “radicals” in the NWP, and stated that the amendment's purpose was to help win World War I. The amendment passed Congress the next year on August 26, 1920. It thus began a long ratification process.^[41]

To ratify an amendment to the Constitution, it needs to be approved by three quarters of the states— a very high bar. Suffragists at the state level fought to have the amendment ratified. It took a year, but finally the 36th state came to ratify the amendment: Tennessee.

Tennessee was the last possible hope that the Amendment would get ratified. Like elsewhere in the country, the all male legislature met to discuss the Amendment and, yet again, debate women’s status as citizens. Harry T. Burn was one of these state representatives. He supported suffrage, but the men in his district did not. Debate in Tennessee raged on in what became known as the War of the Roses. Pro-suffrage legislators wore yellow roses, while anti-suffragists wore red. There were accounts of bribery, negotiations, and lots of drinking. Legislators would be seen wearing a yellow flower one day and a red one the next.

In this context Febb Burn, Harry’s mom wrote him a letter. She said, “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage, and don’t keep them in doubt… Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. ‘Thomas Catt’ with her ‘rats.’ Is she the one that put rat in ratification? Ha! No more from Mama this time. With lots of love.”^[42] Her son, wearing the red anti-suffrage flower, and with his mother’s letter in his pocket, dramatically changed his vote in favor of suffrage. Pandemonium followed.

When things calmed, the roll call resumed. Anti-suffragists appeared to be winning. Then, after sitting silently through his turn, Banks Turner broke his silence as the antis were clearly winning and cast a vote: “Mr. Speaker, I wish to be recorded as voting Aye.”[43] Women’s suffrage passed by ONE vote at the very last second. The chamber was in uproar, but the vote was won.

Conclusion

The vote ended women’s exclusion from the voting arena, legitimized their political views, and opened the door for increasing women’s political leadership—these are structural barriers for women in government. Still, it left open the question of whether women’s electoral successes could influence policy that would improve conditions in the home, for families, and for women in the public sphere. It wasn’t until 1920 that women could fully pressure government to function for them. The test of the 20^th century was whether a government reformed could function for women so long excluded. Men had 144 years to shape the American government to their design and in many ways that shaping reinforced the patriarchy, undoing it would take time and organization of women leaders around new philosophies of government.

^[1] ​​Sidney R. Bland and Cappy Yarbrough, “Women's Suffrage,” (South Carolina Encyclopedia) University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies. Last modified July 30, 2020.

^[2] Mari Jo and Paul Buhle, The Concise History of Woman Suffrage, (Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2005).

^[3] Evette Dionne, “Lifting As We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box,” (New York: Viking Penguin Random House, 2020).

^[4]Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Women of distinction - remarkable in works and invincible in character, 1893, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Women_of_distinction_-_remarkable_in_works_and_invincible_in_character_(1893)_(14598047448).jpg.

^[5]Evette Dionne, “Lifting As We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box,” (New York: Viking Penguin Random House, 2020).

^[6] Henry Mayer, The Awakening, 1915, Public Domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Mayer,_The_Awakening,_1915_Cornell_CUL_PJM_1176_01_-_Restoration.jpg.

^[7] “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy on Responsibility to Future Generations,” (Yale University) https://lifeworthliving.yale.edu/resources/the-haudenosaunee-confederacy-on-responsibility-to-future-generations.

^[8] International Council of Women, “Report of the International Council of Women ; Assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association,” Washington, D.C., U.S. of America, March 25 to April 1, 1888. (District of Columbia: National Woman Suffrage Association, 1888). https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/women-working-1800-1930/catalog/45-990022073280203941.

^[9]Molly Elios Seawell, “An Anti-Suffragist from Virginia,” in The Ladies Bible (1911)

 https://studylib.net/doc/7778698/document-a--molly-elliot-seawell--original-

^[10]Ida M Tarbell, “Is Women’s Suffrage a Failure?” (New York: Library of America) https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1954-ida-m-tarbell-8220is-womans-suffrage-a-failure8221/

^[11] Laura Clay Kentucky, Photograph, Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laura_Clay_Kentucky.jpg.

^[12]International Council of Women, “Report of the International Council of Women ; Assembled by the National Woman Suffrage Association,” Washington, D.C., U.S. of America, March 25 to April 1, 1888. (District of Columbia: National Woman Suffrage Association, 1888.)

^[13] National Women’s History Museum Editors, “African American Reformers: The Club Movement,” (National Women’s History Museum. N.D.)

^[14] Ida B. Wells-Barnett, late 19th century, Photograph, Public Domainhttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ida-b-wells-barnett1.jpg.

^[15] Elizabeth Blackwell, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Blackwell.jpg.

^[16]Best Colleges, “History of Women in Higher Education,” Best Colleges. March 21, 2021. https://www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/2021/03/21/history-women-higher-education/.

^[17] Anna Howard Shaw, 1922, Photograph, Public Domain,https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anna_Howard_Shaw_7.jpg.

[18] Catt Center, “Carrie Chapman Catt,” Catt Center Iowa State University. N.D. https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/home/about-us/carrie-chapman-catt/.

[19] “Tye Leung Schulze,” National Parks Service, Accessed Dec. 18, 2025, https://www.nps.gov/people/tye-leung-schulze.htm.

^[20] Lucy Burns, Vice Chairman Congressional Union, November 1913, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lucy_Burns_1913_(cropped).jpg.

^[21] Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, January 1, 1910, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mrs._Marie_L._Baldwin_(LOC)_2.jpg.

^[22]Cathleen D.  Cahill,  "Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin: Indigenizing the Federal; Indian Service," Studies in American Indian Literatures. February 25, 1977.

[23] 

[24] Chicago Daily Tribune. “Ida B. Wells at 1913 suffrage parade.” May 1913. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1913_Chicago_Daily_Tribune_photograph_of_Ida_B._Wells.jpg.

[25] “Mrs. Welles Assured of Fine Lineup of Illinois Women in Suffrage Parade.” by Marion Walters, Chicago Tribune, Feb 23, 1913.

^[26] Mary Church Terrell, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Church_Terrell_-_cph.3b47842.jpg.

^[27] National Parks Service, “A Noble Endeavor: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Suffrage,” National Parks Service. N.D. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-noble-endeavor-ida-b-wells-barnett-and-suffrage.htm.

[28] U. S. Information Agency. “Women Marching in Suffragette Parade, Washington, DC.” 1913. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Woman_Suffrage_Procession_1913_opening.jpg.

[29] “Inez Milholland Boissevain.” Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C. March 3, 1913. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inez_Milholland_Boissevain_274006v.jpg.

[30] Leet and Ottenheimer companies. “Postcard depicting the march for women's suffrage in Washington D.C.” March 3, 1913. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parade_Lees_Head_copy.jpg.

[31] G.V. Buck. “Suffrage Procession in Washington D.C.” March 3, 1913. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Women%27s_suffrage_procession_in_Washington,_D.C._1913,_March_3,_crowd_around_Red_Cross_ambulance_LCCN91794907.jpg

^[32] David Dismore,“Today in Feminist History, July 8,” Ms. Magazine. July 08, 2020. https://msmagazine.com/2020/07/08/feminist-history-july-8/.

^[33] Harris & Ewing, 1917 Maryland Suffragettes picket White House, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1917_Maryland_Suffragettes_picket_White_House.png.

[34] A Mighty Girl. “Night of Terror.” https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=16987.

[35] Gallagher, Robert S., "I Was Arrested, Of Course...", American Heritage, February 1974, Volume 25, Issue 2. Interview of Alice Paul.

^[36] Mary Burnett Talbert, February 1917, Photograph, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Burnett_Talbert.jpg.

[37] Mary B. Talbert, “Women and Colored Women,” Crisis 10, no. 4 (August 1915): 184.

[38] Nannie Helen Burroughs. “Votes for Women: A Symposium by Leading Thinkers of Colored Women" held in Washington, D.C., as published in the August 1915 issue of The Crisis (Vol 10., No. 4). https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/09/27/black-women-and-reform/.

[39] Adella Hunt Logan. “Just as well as he.” National Parks Service. https://www.nps.gov/people/just-as-well-as-he-adella-hunt-logan.htm.

^[40]National Parks Service, “A Noble Endeavor: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Suffrage,” National Parks Service. N.D. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-noble-endeavor-ida-b-wells-barnett-and-suffrage.htm.

^[41]Margaret Renkl, “The Final Battleground in the Fight for Suffrage: On Aug. 18, 1920, a young state legislator listened to his mama, and Tennessee became the final state to ratify the 19th Amendment,” The New York Times.:August 17, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/opinion/tennessee-19th-amendment.html.

^[42]Katie Mettler, “Battle for the Ballot: A mother’s letter, a son’s choice and the incredible moment women won the vote,” The Washington Post. August 10, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/history/tennessee-19-amendment-letter-harry-burn-mother-febb/.

[43] Katie Mettler, “Battle for the Ballot: A mother’s letter, a son’s choice and the incredible moment women won the vote,” The Washington Post. August 10, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/local/history/tennessee-19-amendment-letter-harry-burn-mother-febb/.