WOMEN’S WORK: Getting the Vote and Getting Out the Vote

Casting a vote is the most potent way that an individual can influence government decision-making. In democratic countries such as ours, voting is described as a fundamental human right. In fact, despite that there are many varieties and definitions of democracy, the two conditions that are common to all of them are: 1. All members of the society have equal access to power, and 2. All members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.

The irony of this year’s Democratic candidate’s fight was its inclusion of the very segments of our society that have a long shared history in the struggle for the right to vote; black’s quest for civil rights (once slavery had ended) and women’s campaign for equal rights.

These two factions have often operated in a strange kind of tandem, with advocates of both causes working on behalf of and in rivalry with each other, in the struggle to be perceived as both fully American and fully human.

Universal suffrage has been a cause fraught with setbacks. The U.S. Constitution makes no specific provisions for the right to vote. Instead, the drafters of the Constitution left the issue up to the individual states to decide, and thus, opened the door for centuries of debate.

In the very earliest days of the nation, voting rights were restricted to wealthy, white, Christian, property-owning men. By the time of the Civil War, universal white male suffrage was established.

In theory, black men achieved the right to vote with the adoption of the 15th Amendment (abolishing slavery) in 1860; however, voting was rare among blacks due to a series of unfair tests, clauses and rules — especially throughout the Southern states, which made it highly difficult, if not impossible, for them to do so.

In addition to the subtle discouragement offered by bogus regulations, the Ku Klux Klan’s “message” was far more overt. “Stay away from the voting booths, or you will be sorry…”

Founded in 1866 by veterans of the Confederate Army, the KKK’s purpose was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. In Tennessee alone, more than 2,000 blacks were killed or injured within a few weeks of the 1868 Presidential election. Their homes set on fire; blacks were chased through the woods and hanged or beaten to death in an effort to spread fear among members of their community.

As a result, not a single black vote was cast that year. Similar scenarios played out all across the South, especially in Florida and Georgia, where active membership in the KKK swelled to more than 6,000,000.

Meanwhile, women were raising their voices against the female standards of the day to gain the right to vote. It was Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, the acknowledged founder and general philosopher of the Women’s Rights Movement who remarked that, “The women of this nation in 1876 have greater cause for revolution, rebellion and discontent, than the men of 1776.”

The daughter of New York judge Daniel Cady, she was given far more education than was typically afforded to a girl; however, when she truly became interested in law, her father ended her formal instruction and insisted that she seek out more “feminine activities.”

Though Cady had an excellent mind, and excelled in her studies to a far greater extent than her brothers, her father often remarked how much more pleased he would have been, if she had been born a boy. This, coupled with the fact that her less-accomplished brothers were able to continue on to college, while she, a woman, was prohibited from doing Both Cady-Stanton and her husband were passionate abolitionists and routinely mingled with free thinkers of the day, including author Henry David Thoreau, abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas, and others. In fact, Cady-Stanton got much of her early experience at anti-slavery rallies, where she met many free-thinking men and women who were also interested in the cause of women’s rights.

In 1848, Cady-Stanton and a group of these friends organized the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. However, despite the fact that it was to be a conference of and for women, the notion of having a woman serve as chairman was unthinkable, and a man was chosen. Among those in attendance was Douglas, who became a steadfast friend and supporter of the group.

Cady-Stanton developed a list of 14 specific grievances, which she called the Declaration of Sentiments.

DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS
Married women are legally regarded as dead in the eyes of the law.

Women are not allowed to vote.

Married women have no property rights.

Husbands have legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they can imprison or beat them with impunity.

Divorce and child custody laws give no rights to women.

Women have to pay property taxes, but have no representation in levying them.

Most occupations are closed to women, and when women do work, they receive only a fraction of the salary that men earn for the same work.

Women are not allowed to enter professions such as law and medicine.

Women have no means of gaining higher education, since no college or university will accept female students.

With rare exceptions, women are not allowed to participate in the affairs of the church. Women are robbed of their self confidence and self respect and made totally dependent on men.

The organizers of the convention readily agreed with all of Cady-Stanton’s grievances, save women’s right to vote. Most felt that this was far too radical an idea and that the mere mention of it would make the group look ridiculous.

However, Frederick Douglas changed their minds. He spoke to the group with great passion about the desperate need for women to have the right to choose their ruler. On the subject, he later wrote, “To me, the sun in heaven at noonday is not more visible than is the right of women, equally with man, to participate in all that concerns human welfare.”

In the end, the members of the convention voted narrowly to include the right to vote as one of their “demands,” but it made for some tough going. The very next day, the convention’s Declaration of Sentiments was met with public outrage!

Most Americans then believed that there was a natural and divinely approved order to society that placed white men at the top of the hierarchy, and black (and other ethnic) men at the bottom. Meanwhile, women of all races were in a different sphere altogether.

They were expected to be submissive, meek, obedient, supportive and loving to the men around them. Once a woman was married, she was literally considered deceased in the eyes of the law, and her husband gained sole and complete responsibility for her person, her property, and the lives of their children.

This, they reasoned, was the way that God himself had ordered things and for women to desire to change their place was the very worst kind of audacity!

Newspaper editors were so scandalized by the convention’s “shameless demands” that they attacked with as much ferocity as they could muster; publishing the Declaration of Grievances over and over again in ridicule and including the names of the convention’s attendees in unflattering cartoons and as the butt of jokes.

In the end, the pressure was too much for some, who bowed out in fear of loosing their place in respectable society. Others, however, stood firm.

Over the next several decades, Cady Stanton and her fellows would speak passionately to crowds across the country while being pelted with eggs, rotten fruit and vegetables, and even rocks. On several occasions, suffragettes were showered with broken glass as the windows of the buildings they spoke in were smashed by angry mobs outside.

However, these things only served to strengthen their resolve, as did the fact that they knew in their hearts that they were on the side of right. The suffrages also received considerable encouragement from the abolitionist brethren who shared their commitment to equality and liberty. However, a powerful schism would arise between the groups, that many argue, still exists today.

Following the Civil War, Cady-Stanton and fellow activist, Susan B. Anthony, along with several other feminists, broke with their abolitionist friends to lobby strongly against the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments, granting black men the right to vote. They feared that granting black men suffrage would simply increase the franchise of male voters prepared to deny the right to women. Rhetoric between the groups became explosive as abolitionists watched their one-time friends adamently working against them.

In the end, the women’s suffrage movement split into two separate organizations. The first was called the American Women’s Suffrage Association, founded by Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe, to work solely for women’s right to vote.

Elizabeth Cady-Stanton and Susan B. Anthony went on to begin the National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869. In addition to strongly opposing the passage of the 15th Amendment (for black men), this group also fought for broader women’s rights including gender-neutral divorce laws, a woman’s right to sexually refuse her husband, increased economic opportunities for women, and the right of women to sit on juries.

The 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. Thirty-five years later, in 1905, then president Grover Cleveland remarked, “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by a man and a woman in working out our civilization were assigned long ago, by a higher intelligence than ours.”

The 19th Amendment, providing women with the right to vote, was finally passed by congress in 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920, with two thirds of the country’s states in agreement. (Florida was the last state to ratify the women’s suffrage in 1969.)

Getting out the Vote
In 1920, Carrie Chapman-Catt remarked, “Winning the vote is only an opening wedge. Learning to use it, is a bigger task.” Chapman-Catt, a former suffragist, firmly believed that the victory in the voting rights battle was only a first step toward a greater challenge and so, in 1920, she founded The League of Women Voters to encourage the informed and active participation of all citizens in government decision making public policy, through education and advocacy.

Today, the league operates as a nonpartisan political organization with offices in all 50 states. Their current agenda includes education and advocacy on issues such as civil liberties and homeland security, global democracy, openness in government, redistricting reform, defending the U.S. Constitution, and more.

Founded in 1975, and run by county president Chris Straton, our local League of Women Voters provides a large number of voter services. Their contributions include their awardwinning voters guide; an enthusiastic get-out-the vote initiative; televised candidate forums; teen citizenship programs, and more. In addition, the League works to impact public policy through organized lobbying and advocacy initiatives. Their platforms of Voter Service & Citizen Education and Study & Action support their goal of empowering citizens to shape better communities worldwide.

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