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Komako Kimura, a prominent Japanese suffragist, at the women’s right to vote march on Fifth Avenue in New York City. October 23, 1917

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Though Women’s History Month is winding down, we thought we’d post some amusing pages from Alice Duer Miller’s Are Women People? A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times, published in 1915.

One of our favorite quotations:

Why We Oppose Votes for Men…

5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them peculiarly unfit for the task of government.

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(via “A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote”. American Visions of Liberty and Freedom. Missouri History Museum.)

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Vintage anti-suffrage cartoons reveal the fears of men terrified of losing privilege. Their worst fear is that women will do to them exactly what they’ve done to women. I guess some things never change.

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Front page of the March 8, 1913 “Woman’s journal and suffrage news” with the headline: “Parade struggles to victory despite disgraceful scenes” showing images of the women’s suffrage parade in Washington, March 3, 1913.

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Official Program

Washington DC suffrage parade

March 3, 1913

The program (available in its entirety via the Library of Congress) includes biographies of the women who were involved in planning the parade or led sections of the parade.  Many of these women are identified solely by their husband’s name.  Mrs. John Breckenridge Newman is described as “the second American woman to be appointed to a position outside the United States,” yet her first name is never given.  

Some were listed by their husband’s name with a note giving their first name and maiden name.  For example, Mrs. A. H. Van Buren  who organized the actress’s section “is sometimes called by her own name of Dorothy Bernard.”  In fact, Dorothy appeared in 93 films between 1908 and 1956 and would have been better known by her own name.  In 1913 alone, she had six films debut.  

Other married women were listed by their own first names, including both famous activists such as Carrie Chapman Catt and women who were likely well known only in their community such as society matron Emma S. Tenney.  

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Crowd converging on marchers and blocking parade route during March 3, 1913, inaugural suffrage procession, Washington, D.C.

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Earlier this month, The Washington Post published two articles (1,2) on the role of black women in the March 3, 1913 suffrage parade.

[Alice] Paul, a white woman, was convinced that other white women would not march with black women. In response to several inquiries, she had quietly discouraged blacks from participating. She confided her fears to a sympathetic editor: “As far as I can see, we must have a white procession, or a Negro procession, or no procession at all.”

… But just days before the parade, she became more receptive to the possibility. What brought matters to a head was a letter from Nellie M. Quander, a schoolteacher and Howard graduate, who said that Howard women wanted to take part. Usually prompt to reply, Paul took a week to respond. She suggested Quander “call” at the headquarters of Paul’s parent organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Records do not reflect a meeting.

Complaints of discrimination reached the association, which wired orders to permit black marchers.

The sisters of Delta Sigma Theta from Howard University were given a place in the procession next to the New York delegation.  The Illinois delegation told Ida B. Wells (above) to march with an all black delegation.  Ida is believed to have ignored the attempt to racially segregate the Illinois group by joining the Illinois delegation mid-march.

While the parade did break into a near riot, the presence of black marchers is not considered a factor in the violence.

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Washington DC suffrage parade

March 3, 1913

In 1893, New Zealand became the first modern country to grant women full voting rights.

Maori women were granted voting rights along with white women.  Maori men had been granted universal suffrage in 1876 with four seats in parliament reserved for Maori representatives.   

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“Countries Where Women Have Partial Suffrage” - Sweden

Washington, DC suffrage parade, March 3 1913

All images via the Library of Congress

Sweden first established women’s suffrage in the 18th century when taxpaying guild members were granted voting rights but those rights were repealed by the 1771 constitution.  In 1862, the right to vote in local elections was reestablished for taxpaying women.  Swedish women did not achieve full suffrage until the 1921 election.

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Inez Milholland Boissevain at the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on March 3, 1913 in Washington, D.C.

Inez was a suffragette, attorney, journalist, and social justice advocate. During the summer between her sophomore and junior years at Vassar College, Inez joined Britain’s militant suffrage movement, participating in several English demonstrations.  When she returned to Vassar, she organized the college’s first suffrage meetings in direct disobedience to the anti-suffrage college president.  

After graduating from Vassar, Inez attended New York University’s School of Law.  As an attorney, she practiced divorce, criminal, and labor law.  She was a member of a number of prominent social justice organizations including the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Child Labor Committee, and the NAACP.

Inez helped to organize the March 3, 1913 parade in Washington, DC.  In the photo above she is preparing to lead the parade dressed in white robes and astride a white horse.  She carried a banner that read, “Forward Out of Darkness, Leave Behind the Night, Forward Out of Error, Forward Into Light.”

Four months later, Inez married Dutch importer Eugen Jan Boissevain.  She proposed to him and considered this a mark of the new freedom of women.

During World War I, Inez served as a war correspondent and peace advocate.  She returned to the US in 1916 and embarked on a pro-suffrage speaking tour of twelve western states.  On October 22, 1916, Inez collapsed while giving a speech in Los Angeles. She died of pernicious anemia at the age of thirty on November 25, 1916.

Inez was immediately declared a martyr of the suffrage movement.  A memorial service was held for her in the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall on Christmas Day 1916. Three weeks later, 300 women attempted to met with President Wilson and give him the suffrage resolutions drafted during Inez’s memorial service.  He refused to meet with them, setting off the Silent Sentinel protests that lasted from 1917 to 1919.

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Grand Marshal May Jane Walker Burleson (center, on horseback) leading suffrage march on March 3, 1913.

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The plan for the March 13, 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC.  

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Postcard from Woman Suffrage Parade, 1913

On March 3, 1913, 5,000 women marched up Pennsylvania Avenue demanding the right to vote. Their “national procession,” staged the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration, was the first civil rights parade to use the nation’s capital as a backdrop, underscoring the national importance of their cause and women’s identity as American citizens.

The event brought women from around the country to Washington in a show of strength and determination to obtain the ballot. The extravagant parade—and the near riot that almost destroyed it—kept woman suffrage in the newspapers for weeks.

“The National Woman Suffrage Parade, 1913” display recreates the mood of the parade and illustrates its impact using costumes worn by participants along with banners, sashes, letters, photographs and postcards like the one shown here. 

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Suffrage and suffering at the “Women’s Suffrage Parade” in Washington DC, March 3, 1913: 

One hundred years ago on March 3, supporters of woman suffrage marched through Washington, DC. Held the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration, the parade was preceded by a series of “suffrage hikes” in New York and elsewhere intended to bring attention to the lack of voting rights for women.  However, the marchers were met by crowds of unruly men. The police did nothing, and the treatment of the women by the crowds caused an outcry.

The women testified about their experiences—some noted the lack of police or their indifference and applauded the Boy Scouts for being more effective than the police. Others described drunken men along the parade route hooting and jeering at them, blocking their path, and making insulting remarks (one young girl was called a “Georgia Peach”—an indignity at the time).

A resolution from the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage in King’s County noted that the women in the parade, “many of whom were among the finest intellectual leaders of their sex, were … subject to insult, ribaldry, and personal abuse.”

The day after the parade, the Senate passed a resolution authorizing the Committee on the District of Columbia to investigate the handling of the incident by the police.

This photograph of the parade comes from that investigation:

“Exhibit 36, View of the Woman Suffrage Parade from the Willard Hotel, Washington DC, from the Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee of the District of Columbia of the United States Senate, pursuant to S. Res 499, March 4, 1913, 63rd Congress (Y4.D63/2:W84); RG 287, National Archives”

Read the full story of the parade and the hearing at Prologue: Pieces of History » Suffrage and suffering at the 1913 March

As 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of this watershed event, be sure to watch for more #Suffrage13 features from the National Archives, including:

“A National Policy of Nagging” board on Pinterest

19th Amendment on Exhibit

WomensHistoryMonth.Gov

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March is Women’s History Month!

Photograph, Suffrage Parade, 1913

From the Series: Photographs Used in Publications, Records of the Office of War Information, Record Group 208

As March 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the watershed Women’s Suffrage Parade in Washington DC, be sure to watch for more #Suffrage13 features from the National Archives, including:

“A National Policy of Nagging” board on Pinterest

19th Amendment on exhibit March 1 - 8

WomensHistoryMonth.Gov

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The 19th Amendment for Women’s Suffrage on Display March 1 - 8:

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the 1913 Woman’s Suffrage Parade in Washington, DC, the 19th Amendment will be on display from March 1 to March 8 at the National Archives Building.

The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change…  

Keep reading at: Prologue: Pieces of History » The 19th Amendment on display at the National Archives