Votes for Women

The work for women's suffrage started more than seventy years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and one hundred supporters signed the Declaration of Sentiments asserting that "all men and women are created equal." This convention served as a catalyst for debates and action on both the national and state levels, and on November 6, 1917, New York State passed the referendum for women's suffrage. Its passing in New York signaled that the national passage of suffrage would soon follow. On August 18, 1920, "Votes for Women" was constitutionally granted.

Votes for Women, an exhibition catalog, celebrates the pivotal role the state played in the struggle for equal rights in the nineteenth century, the campaign for New York State suffrage, and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It highlights the nationally significant role of state leaders in regards to women's rights and the feminist movement through the early twenty-first century and includes focused essays from historians on the various aspects of the suffrage and equal rights movements around New York, providing greater detail about local stories with statewide significance.

The exhibition of the same name, on display at the New York State Museum beginning November 2017, features artifacts from the New York State Museum, Library, and Archives, as well as historical institutions and private collections across the state.

Autorentext

Jennifer A. Lemak is Chief Curator of History at the New York State Museum. She is the author of Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany's Rapp Road Community and (with Robert Weible and Aaron Noble) An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War, both also published by SUNY Press. Ashley Hopkins-Benton is a Senior Historian and Curator at the New York State Museum and the author of Breathing Life into Stone: The Sculpture of Henry DiSpirito.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
List of Contributors

A Special Message from Governor Andrew M.Cuomo
Message from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Message from Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul
Message from Board of Regents Chancellor Betty A. Rosa and Commissioner of Education Mary Ellen Elia

• • Introduction

  Section 1. Agitate! Agitate!, 1776-1890

  In Writing and In Speech

  Petitioning the New York State Government

  Ernestine L. Rose

  Reform Breeds Reform

  What Was It Like for a Woman in the Early Nineteenth Century?

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Seneca Falls, 1848

  Rochester, 1848

  Essay-"All Men and Women Are Created Equal": The Legacy of Seneca Falls
  Judith Wellman

  Defining citizenship

  Lucretia Mott and Martha Coffin Wright

  Ladies as Merchants?

  1850: First National Women's Rights Convention, Worcester, Massachusetts

  Amelia Bloomer and The Lily

  Dress Reform

  Susan B. Anthony

  Lifelong Partners: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

  Addressing the New York State Legislature, 1854

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Sojourner Truth

  1860 Convention, New York City

  After the Civil War

  The American Equal Rights Association

  The Fourteenth Amendment

  The 1867 New York State Constitutional Convention

  The Fifteenth Amendment

  Essay-Breaking the Law for Freedom: The Campaign of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience for the Vote
  Sally Roesch Wagner

  The Suffrage Movement Splits: NWSA and AWSA

  The 1872 Election and Sixteen Rochester Women

  Essay-"Bound Together by the Ties of Humanity": Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet
  Susan Goodier

  Pre-Suffrage Women Who Ran for President

  History of Woman Suffrage

• The Woman's Bible*

  Essay-A "Monstrous Absurdity": The 1886 Suffrage Protest of the Statue of Liberty
  Lauren C. Santangelo
  
  Section 2. Winning the Vote, 1890-1920

  Creation of the National American Women Suffrage Association

  The New York State Woman Suffrage Association

  Clubwomen Lead the Charge, 1890-1910

  Lifting as We Climb

  Essay-"Give Her of the Fruit of Her Hands": Women's Suffrage Activity on the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier
  Shannon M. Risk

  Elizabeth and Anne Miller: A Mother-Daughter Suffrage Team

  Harriet May Mills

  Women, Suffrage, and Capital Punishment: The Roxy Druse Case

  Woman's Christian Temperance Union: Ally or Enemy to Suffrage?

  The New York Suffrage Campaign of 1894

  Essay-"Just Cause to Feel Proud": Chautauqua County's Leading Role in Grassroots Suffrage Activism
  Traci Langworthy

  The New Woman: Changing Women, Changing Leaders, and Changing Strategies

  Madam C. J. Walker

  Harriot Stanton Blatch

  Women's Political Union

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Courting Working Women and Immigrants: Lillian Wald, Henry Street Settlement

  Shirtwaist Workers: the Uprising of 20,000 and the Death of 146

  Frances Perkins

  Suffrage Goes Public

  Albany's Artist and Suffragist

  Alice Paul and the Federal Amendment

  Women Opposed to Suffrage

  Gearing Up for the New York State Referendum: the Politics of Suffrage
  
  Essay-"These Model Families": Romance, Marriage, and Family in the New York Woman Suffrage Movement
  Jessica Derleth

  1915 Vote: The Empi