Welcome to the Lost Friends Literary Club newsletter!
Disclaimer: This is a long dispatch with a lot of links to a freaking trove of resources. Feel free to read as few or as many as you like, I just truly didn’t want to leave out anything.
Hi all! Last week had no theme, but this week we’re going to drill deep into a theme with some reading recommendations on an event that is very dear to my heart (so dear, in fact, that just watching this video from Mary Poppins made me cry)… This week marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which said that no citizen could be denied the right to vote based on their gender. So many rights that women have in this country stem from the passing of this amendment and the suffragettes that fought for an equal say in who represented and governed them. I’m deeply proud to be able to exercise that right and I hope you are too.
A quick history lesson:
The women's suffrage movement began before the civil war, as many women were beginning to push back on the idea that the true woman was a woman only concerned with her home and her children. In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott hosted the Seneca Falls Convention, where a group of like-minded abolitionist activists gathered to discuss women’s rights; most delegates agreed that it was high time women were treated as their own persons, individual from their husbands with their own political identities.
Then the civil war began and momentum slowed. Almost immediately after the war, the 14th and 15th amendments were passed: the 14th amendment in 1868 (which gave only male citizens over the age of 21 the right to vote) and the 15th amendment in 1870 (which said that the right to vote should not be denied on account of race). The 14th amend. was the first time that gender was explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, which really ruffled some suffragette feathers. Suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton famously said, "If that word 'male' be inserted, it will take us a century at least to get it out." (While it would thankfully only take half that long to win voting rights for white women, it would indeed take nearly a century for Black women to be able to safely vote in America, and that is an important distinction that I don’t want to leave out.)
In 1910 some western states began extending voting rights to women, while southern and eastern states resisted. This began the blitz campaign that most people think of when they think of the American women’s suffrage movement (if they think of it at all). State and local suffrage organizations began focusing on their own specific communities while other suffragists adopted more militant methods, like hunger strikes and picketing outside of the White House. With the start of World War I, suffragist campaigns slowed but their point was proven anyways; as women stepped in to work on behalf of the war effort, they used this opportunity to prove that women were equally as patriotic (and therefore equally as deserving of citizenship) as men.
Finally, on August 18, 1920 the 19th amendment to the constitution was ratified and at the 1920 presidential election, more than 8 million women showed up to vote for the very first time (and now I cry literally every time I vote because I am just so freaking proud).
Inez Milholland Boissevain, riding in the Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913. She wore a banner with the slogan: "Forward out of Darkness, Leave Behind the Night, Forward Out of Error, Forward Into Light." This was later adopted as the slogan of the National Women's Party.
Some Fun Facts:
Because only 3/4 of states are required to approve a constitutional amendment for it to become fully ratified, not all states had agreed to allow women to vote by 1920. The state of Georgia didn’t officially ratify the 19th amendment until 1970, and Mississippi was the last state to ratify the 19th in 1984 (although both of those were merely symbolic because they weren’t allowed to keep women from voting by then anyways).
Women’s suffrage wasn’t just about the right to vote- suffragettes were asking for equal employment and education opportunities, equality in marriage, the right to their own wages and property, as well as custody over children and control over women’s bodies. Obviously they didn’t quite get all of that.
In 1923, the National Woman’s Party proposed an amendment to the Constitution called the Equal Rights Amendment, which proposed that no civil rights could be denied on the basis of one’s sex. It was never ratified.
Tennessee was the last state needed to approve the ratification of the 19th, and it’s deciding vote was a Republican representative named Harry T. Burn. Burn initially opposed the amendment but his mother reportedly wrote to him and said “ Hurrah, and vote for suffrage, and don’t keep them in doubt.” When Burn received blow back for his vote he said, “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
The word “suffragette,” which describes a woman who organized for the right to vote, was originally coined as a term of belittlement by a British newspaper in 1906.
Reading Material:
What Louisa May Alcott and Other Authors Wrote About Suffrage.
The full history of the women's suffrage movement in the US, and the source I pulled most of my above facts from. This is a far more in depth read than the summary I gave above- I really encourage you to read it. If you’re an American, there’s a good chance that you didn’t really learn about this in school (I definitely didn’t) and it is important history that I think everyone should know.
A deep dive specifically on the 19th amendment.
Votes for Women means Votes for Black Women, a really important account of the way that Black women were excluded from the suffrage movement, and chose to participate anyways.
The Black Suffragists that history forgot: five Black suffragettes that you should know.
A guide to finding your suffragist ancestors, which is my project for this coming week.
I really loved this piece on the portraits of generations of women who fought for the vote.
and here’s another one on photographs of generations of Black suffragists.
This one is an excellent article on The Women’s Suffrage Cookbook.
A look into the women behind the Anti-Suffrage Movement, which is still deeply puzzling to me. Anti-suffrage arguments laid a lot of the groundwork for the unending debate about what equality for women really means.
The full story on Tennessee being the "Perfect 36" and Burn's vote to ratify the 19th.
A Non-Whitewashed History of the 19th Amendment and Women’s Right to Vote. This piece outlines why, realistically, Black women still couldn’t vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act was put into place.
Lastly, Suffrage at 100: A Visual History is absolutely breathtaking, made up of photos of memorabilia and flyers, alongside facts and history.
Here are some books on the subject, in case you’d rather read long form:
This week I’m reading Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener.
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All comes out on September 8th, and I’m very excited to read it.
The Women's Suffrage Movement is an “intersectinal anthology” made up of historical texts from a variety of races and classes, and makes a GREAT choice if you’re looking for a reference book or something that is somewhat all-encompassing. It includes writings from suffragettes like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ida B. Wells.
Around America to Win the Votes is a really fun children’s book about women’s suffrage.
Now that we’ve learned about the importance of the vote, get involved:
You can check your voter registration here.
Another state by state guide, this one on how to vote in person, early, or by mail this year.
There’s a shortage of poll workers in this country, and (if you’re healthy and able) there’s no better way to celebrate the centennial of women’s suffrage than by applying to be a poll worker. It’s a paid gig! And you get to help facilitate the democratic process! You can get more info from The Poll Worker's Project.
Both The National Women's History Museum and Women's Vote Centennial have events happening next Wednesday and throughout the remainder of August! If you participate, I’d love to know. I’ll be attending this panel on “How to Vote Early, Volunteer, and Advocate in WNC.”
As always, thank you for reading this far. I’ve got book recs on suffrage and feminism on this Goodreads shelf. If you enjoyed this dispatch, please share it with a friend or follow us on social media at the buttons below. If you want to chat, ask for book recommendations, or correct my punctuation, you can reply directly to this dispatch or leave a comment on substack, where you can also find an archive of every dispatch I release. Thank you for reading!