The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote in Retro Chapter Chicks

Feb 18, 2019 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, remarkable-women, nonfiction

Being a history enthusiast and coming from a maternal line of political junkies, the dates 1848 and 1920 were entrenched in my brain from an early age. The years that American women first organized at Seneca Falls, New York and then won the right to vote seventy years later are milestone events in United States history. My grandmother liked to remind me that she never missed a trip to the ballot box in her life from the time she was an eligible voter. Yet, women’s enfranchisement was not an fore Being a history enthusiast and coming from a maternal line of political junkies, the dates 1848 and 1920 were entrenched in my brain from an early age. The years that American women first organized at Seneca Falls, New York and then won the right to vote seventy years later are milestone events in United States history. My grandmother liked to remind me that she never missed a trip to the ballot box in her life from the time she was an eligible voter. Yet, women’s enfranchisement was not an foregone conclusion by any means, as a thirty sixth state was needed to win ratification to the Constitution. The battle that had been brewing since the nation’s inception came down to the Volunteer State of Tennessee. As the United States nears the one hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage, Elaine F. Weiss pays homage to the suffragists and their opponents the antis in The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. Weiss takes readers back to Nashville, Tennessee in 1920 as the battle for women’s suffrage reached an epic conclusion.

In 1872, young Carrie Lane woke up on Election Day and witnessed her father and the family’s farm hands leave to go vote. Her mother, an educated woman, was not journeying with the adults, and Carrie asked why not. The farm hands, mostly illiterate, snickered; only men were allowed to vote even if many college educated women knew more about current events than they did. This was the law of the land, that only men could vote, and the incident triggered a spark in Carrie Lane that would last the rest of her life. Nearly fifty years later, Carrie Chapman Catt had devoted her entire life to enfranchising women to vote. After attending a rally for suffrage as a young adult, Catt had the pleasure of meeting Susan B. Anthony, founder of the movement along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848. Catt joined the ranks of Aunt Susan’s Girls and the fledgling National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) as the women would use any means necessary to achieve full American citizenship through voting.

A movement is considered successful if it swells in ranks and splinters into multiple groups that differ in ideology yet have the end goal of achieving the same dream. This occurred in 1908 with the women’s movement when Alice Paul broke ranks and founded the National Women’s Party (NWP). While the women of NAWSA practiced nonviolence after seeing how abolitionists lead by Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison achieved an end to slavery and gained black men’s voting, the women of the NWP used a model practiced by English suffragists lead by Emmeline Pankhurst. Pankhurst would use any means necessary to achieve suffrage, and Paul followed her lead, holding rallies at the White House and burning the President’s likeness in effigy. Many of her members saw jail time, earned Prison Pins, and traveled the country on the Jail-time Special to canvass for suffrage.

Not all women believed that their sisters should vote, especially in the south. The Anti movement lead by Josephine Pearson in a promise to her mother Amanda at the core believed that giving women suffrage would lead to the breakdown of the American family. With women working outside of the home and gaining key positions in government, they would no longer be homemakers and child rearers; even prominent women Eleanor Roosevelt and Ida Tarbell believed in the cause. In essence, society would be on the verge of collapse. That this took place after fighting to defeat bolshevism in the Great War and the winning of women’s suffrage in many European nations is telling. Additionally southern whites saw the women’s voting as allowing Negro women the right to vote. Already Negro men could vote and their combined numbers were sure to overturn white supremacy in the south. With each group, the Suffragists and Antis having strong arguments as to why or why not women should be allowed to vote, hundreds of women converged on Nashville, Tennessee’s Hermitage Hotel in August 1920 as the battle for women’s suffrage reached its epic conclusion.

Even though women have now been voting for nearly one hundred years, Weiss’ account of the battle for Tennessee to ratify women’s suffrage read like a thriller. As Catt foresaw, the battle for women to vote would be fought by men. Both the Suffragists and the Antis recruited the women of Tennessee to be on their side of the battle, and these women were in charge of canvassing the state to convince law makers of both parties to be on their side. People of both sides and genders stooped to the usual political tactics of blackmail, bribery, carousing, and the promise of future political appointments. One could tell if a law maker sided with the Suffragists or Antis by the yellow or red rose that he placed in his lapel. On a few occasions, meetings with key women on both sides, saw lawmakers switch their allegiance from yes to no and back again. In the steamy pre air conditioned environment of 1920 Nashville, a few courageous men switched their allegiance from no to yes once and for all, and the 19th amendment won its thirty sixth state, the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. The women had their hour.

Today there is a sculpture in Nashville’s Central Park honoring the NAWSA members who won Tennessee for the Suffragists. Women voted for the first time in 1920 and have been ever since, often surpassing men’s participation at the ballot box. The Antis argument is not without merit, and the women’s movement of today includes in its ranks women who have chosen to be homemakers and stay at home moms. I can proudly say that I have stayed home to raise my kids and vote on a regular basis. Despite reading biographies about Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton from the time I was a kid, I was unfamiliar with the micro history that lead to the passage of the 1920 constitutional amendment. Elaine F Weiss has done a magnificent job of bringing these events to life and honoring the women on both sides of the fight who eventually gained votes for women. As women’s history month approaches, The Women’s Hour was a worthy read to get me inspired to celebrate women’s history month, nearly one hundred years after the great fight.

Note: This is a current read in the Nonfiction Book Club here on goodreads, and the ongoing discussion is almost as compelling as the fight to win the vote.

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