08-26 TABLE of CONTENTS:
August 26, 1920
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Carrie Chapman Catt.
August 26, 1920
Victory!
I cannot keep back tears
whenever I write about this day in 1920.
We who possess the right
to vote and direct the actions of our country from birth hold our rights
so casually. Can you imagine what it must have been like eighty years ago
when women, for the first time in this nation s history, became true citizens
of the United States?
On the day the 19th Amendment
was approved in 1920, a reporter went to Mrs. Charlotte Woodward, then
past 90, the only living person to remember that day in 1948 in Seneca
Falls when it all started with the first Women s Rights Convention in history:
"I do clearly remember
the wonderful beauty of the early morning when we dropped all our allotted
tasks and climbed into the family wagon to drive over the rough roads to
Seneca Falls. At first we traveled quite alone under the overhanging tree
branches and wild vines, but before we had gone many miles we came on other
wagonloads of women, bound in the same direction. As we reached different
crossroads, we saw wagons coming from every part of the country, and long
before we reached Seneca Falls we were a procession . . ."
All the original leaders
for woman s suffrage had fallen before the battle was won. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and so many more had
died without realizing their dreams... Hundreds, thousands of women who
gave most of their lives for us also passed on with only their faith in
the eventual triumph of justice for women.
Carrie Chapman Catt, who
with such brilliant organizational and political skills, led U.S. women
and her 3.5 MILLION member NAWSA (National American Woman s Suffrage Association)
to victory in the largest civil rights movement of our nation's history
summed up the battle:
"To get the word `male' out of the constitution
cost the women of this country 52 years of pauseless campaigning
"... During that time they were forced to conduct
56 campaigns of referenda to male votes,
"480 campaigns to get legislature to submit suffrage
amendments to votes,
"47 campaigns to get state constitutional conventions
to write woman suffrance into state constitutions,
"277 campaigns to get state party conventions to include
woman suffrage planks,
"30 campaigns to get Presidential party conventions
to adopt woman suffrage planks to party platforms and "19 successive
campaigns with 19 successive Congresses."
Seventy-five years ago today,
CCC, who was being saluted as the greatest woman of her generation - some
writers in 1920 calling her the greatest women in the history of this nation,
added:
"I have lived to realize
the great dream of my life - the enfranchisement of women.
"We are no longer petitioners,
"We are not the wards of the nation, but "Free
and equal citizens."
Today, in the mysterious
ways of HIStory, few know who Carrie Chapman Catt was - and fewer still
recognize the brilliant POLITICAL strategy that won women the vote... not
parades, not sit-ins, not hunger strikes...
To get the rest of our
human rights women today must realize that they must enter the political
arena, not just the voting booth.
Following the ratification
of the 19th Amendment, which had been finally backed by both political
parties through the amazing arm-twisting by Carrie Chapman Catt and her
3.5 member army of the NAWSA.
Trained as lobbyists,
publicists, and political experts, the NAWSA women actually bearded the
politicians in their offices, in the hall of Congress, appeared at all
their social gatherings to discuss and influence the men towards woman's
suffrage.
The lobbyists were knowledgeable,
professionally prominent women who could reason with the politicians on
equal terms. Their strategies and actions - the complex inner machinations
and cooperation - have been the most suppressed because it was successful.
It is a bold blueprint for political change.
Instead, HIStorians focus
on the protests that often stiffened the resolve of the opposition rather
than the strategies that won.
The NAWSA president was
generous with her thanks after victory, saying to the Republicans:
"Ratification at this
date would not have been achieved without your conscientious and understanding
help. I wish also to express our gratitude to the Republican party for
its share in the final enfranchisement of the women..."
To the Democrats she wrote,
"There is one important Democratic factor
which should be included in the record and that is the fearless and able
sponsorship of the amendment by the leader of your party, the President
of the United States (Woodrow Wilson)..."
But CCC couldn't help lecturing and warning them
both:
"Women owe much to both
political parties but to neither do they owe so much that they need feel
themselves obligated to support that party if conscience and judgment dictate
otherwise.
"[Women's] political freedom at this time is
due to the tremendous sentiment and pressure produced by their own unceasing
activities over a period of three generations.
"Had either party lived up to the high ideals
of our nation and courageously taken the stand for right and justice as
against time-serving, vote-winning policies of delay, women would have
been enfranchised long ago... If, however, neither of the dominant parties
has made as clean and progressive a record as its admirers could have wished,
there is no question but that individual men of both parties have given
heroic service to the cause of woman suffrage and this has been true in
every state, those which ratified and those which rejected."
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08-26 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
B. 08-26-1827, Annie Turner Wittenmeyer who spent at least $130,000
of her own money and personally carried food and supplies to the front
as well as to wounded soldiers in hospitals during the Civil War. She developed
special diet kitchens for army hospitals because the food was so bad.
B. 08-26-1873, May Lamberton Becker, author and director of the
Reader's Guide and New York Tribune books, was an amazing
researcher with a prodigious memory. Her mother taught to support the family
and used some of the most advanced progressive methods when privately instructing
her daughter (and her granddaughter).
B. 08-26-1874, Zona Gale was the first woman to have a play on Broadway
and the first woman to win the Pulitzer (1921) for drama. An ardent feminist
and activist. Her writing style evolved throughout her life and her later
works appear to be the works of a different writer.
B. 08-26-1908, Cynthia Clark Wedel, Episcopal churchwoman, first
woman president of the National Council of Churches in Christ in USA (1969-
72).
Event 08-26-1920: U.S. Secretary of State receives official notification
that the two-thirds of the states have ratified the 19th Amendment and
declares it the law of the land. U.S. women for the FIRST time in history
are made part of the U.S. constitution and are guaranteed by federal law
the right to vote.
Although never forbidden by the constitution, women
were not allowed to vote by state and congressional laws and tradition.
The 19th Amendment overrides all laws restricting women s right to vote.
"Women are no longer petitioners,
"We are no longer the wards of the nation, but
free and equal citizens." (Carrie Chapman Catt)
Mostly ignored by the politicians and media, this
day is officially known as Women's Equality Day.
B. 08-26-1935, Geraldine Ferraro who in 1984 became the first
woman ever nominated for the vice presidency of the United States by a
major political party.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
CATT, CARRIE CHAPMAN:
"Women have suffered
an agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters
might inherit political freedom.
"That vote has been
costly.
"Prize it."
-- Carrie Chapman Catt,
November, 1920.
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