Parades and protests drew attention to fight for women’s right to vote


By LINDA M. LINONIS

linonis@vindy.com

SALEM

Parades, protests and picketing paved the way for women to earn the right to vote.

Kim Kenney, curator of the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum in Canton, chronicled highlights leading to the 19th Amendment during a recent program “Woman Suffrage: A Celebration of Persistence” at Salem Public Library, 821 E. State St.

Kenney said the Declaration of Sentiments is a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men. They represented 100 of some 300 people who attended the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. It was written primarily by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who worked with feminists Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright and Mary Ann McClintock.

Kenney pointed out it took about 72 years, from the start of the suffrage movement in 1848 to ratification Aug. 18, 1920, of the 19th Amendment that guarantees all American women the right to vote.

Jeanette Rankin of Montana was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1916, Kenney said, and it took until 1984 for Geraldine Ferraro to be the first woman vice presidential candidate in the Democratic Party. More than 30 years passed before Hillary Clinton was nominated as the first woman presidential candidate of a major political party.

“We’re a developed nation, but it took this long for a female presidential candidate,” Kenney said. She pointed out Margaret Thatcher was Great Britain’s prime minister from 1979 to 1990.

Kenney said one would think “the momentum” of the Ferraro nomination would have led to a female presidential candidate sooner. “I think the suffragettes would be happy there finally is a female candidate for president but wonder why it took so long,” Kenney said.

Kenney also mentioned the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in New York. The park is the site of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House, the home of the suffragette and her husband, Henry, and their seven children.

Also on the grounds is the M’Clintock House, home of Thomas and Mary Ann M’Clintock, Quaker community members instrumental in the first women’s rights convention.

Exhibits about their work in antislavery and women’s rights are shown. The Visitors Center includes “The First Wave” life-size bronze statues exhibit in the lobby. It features five women including Stanton and a few men including Frederick Douglass, African-American social reformer, abolitionist and statesman, who supported the women’s cause.

Kenney pointed out that Salem has an interesting connection to the women’s voting-rights movement. Hicksite Friends Meeting House was the site of the first women’s suffragette convention in Ohio on April 9, 1850. She noted the building was located at the southeast corner of Green Street, now Second, and Ellsworth Avenue.

In the early 1850s, Susan B. Anthony and Stanton formed the Women’s State Temperance Society and were joined by Sojourner Truth, an African-American abolitionist and women’s-rights activist.

The women’s suffrage cause was interrupted by the Civil War, 1861-65, but later regained momentum, Kenney said.

Anthony and Stanton formed other groups including the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for women and African Americans, Kenney said. They also published a women’s-rights newspaper, The Revolution, she said.

During the women’s-rights effort, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted black men the right to vote by declaring that 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.” It was ratified Feb. 3, 1870, but blacks were prevented from voting for many reasons, including racism and segregation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally changed that.

Kenney said two women’s suffrage group merged in 1890 as the National American Women’s Suffrage Association with Carrie Chapman Catt as president. She also founded the League of Women Voters.

She cited the Progressive Era, 1900 to 1920, as “breathing new life into the movement” of women’s voting rights. “Women became more vocal and visible in parades and protests that were popular,” Kenney said.

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