Honoring Women’s Suffrage Movement as It Celebrates 100 Years

Organizations throughout the Philadelphia area will hold events highlighting the fight for the 19th amendment.

Pennsylvania Rep. Carolyn Comitta is proud to be a direct descendant of Abigail Adams. But when she speaks to audiences about women’s rights, she often shares her dismay that Abigail’s husband, John, didn’t always heed his forward-thinking spouse’s advice. When the United States’ second president was serving as a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776, his wife had a request:

“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Alas, the Founding Fathers didn’t heed her advice. And just as Abigail predicted, the women of America fomented their own revolution. Without the benefit of social media, they came together to fight for the most fundamental right of a democracy—to cast their vote.

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Plans are underway across the country to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which made women’s right to vote in all elections part of the U.S. Constitution. In our region, Drexel University’s Vision 2020 has spearheaded Women 100, a yearlong series of programs and events that includes an interactive exhibition at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, film screenings, and more.

On Aug. 25, 2020, the Justice Bell—a Liberty Bell replica commissioned in 1915 by Philadelphia suffragist Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger—will leave its home in Washington Memorial Chapel on the grounds of Valley Forge National Historical Park and travel to Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia for a “Toast to Tenacity” celebration in conjunction with Vision 2020.

And the Brandywine River Museum of Art is mounting Votes for Women: A Visual History on Feb. 1, 2020. Running through June 7, the exhibition explores how the social justice movement got its message across through illustrations, political cartoons, flags, banners and film. “Women’s suffrage is at once a national and a local story in towns across the country,” says Amanda Burdan, the museum’s curator.

The spark that ignited the women’s rights movement in America actually began on foreign soil. In 1840, George and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and James and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Sitting apart from their husbands behind curtains in the gallery, Elizabeth and Lucretia mused, “Here we are, fighting for the freedoms of the Negro, which include the right to vote, when we ourselves do not enjoy this privilege.”

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A statue of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer in Seneca Falls.//Adobe Stock Photo

Eight years later, the two women held a convention at the Methodist Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to discuss the social, civil and religious rights of women. In the steamy days of July 19 and 20, Stanton revised America’s founding documents. Titled the Declaration of Sentiments, the amended Declaration of Independence stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.”

The convention’s 300 delegates considered each of the Declaration of Sentiments’ 16 articles. It may surprise some today that the only article that didn’t receive unanimous approval was the one that provided women’s suffrage.

Two years later, the first national women’s rights convention was organized by Lucy Stone in Worcester, Mass. In 1878, Susan B. Anthony presented a petition with 10,000 signatures to the U.S. Senate asking for an amendment to the Constitution that would allow women to vote in any election. The same petition would be introduced and defeated repeatedly for the next 40 years.

The movement came back to life on March 3, 1913, when Alice Paul orchestrated a massive parade in Washington, D.C. A breathtaking sea of 5,000 women dressed in white made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, followed by marching bands and lavishly decorated floats. Showing their support for the movement despite being generally relegated to the sidelines, black women marched, too. Organizers wanted to take advantage of the attention already focused on Woodrow Wilson’s second inauguration, which was scheduled for the next day. And though some men threw garbage as they passed, the event showed the world what women were capable of.

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Related article: 2019 Women on the Move


In 1917, Paul grew frustrated with the plodding pace of the suffrage movement and began organized picketing of the White House. Police began arresting the picketers for “obstructing traffic,” fining them $25 plus costs. When the women refused to pay the fine, the police sent them to the horrid Occoquan Workhouse, where they were beaten and fed maggot-infested food. Authorities made an example of Paul, sentencing her to seven months in jail. She staged a hunger strike, and the gruesome pictures of jailers force-feeding her and others went viral (in today’s vernacular).

An outraged American public finally began to show sympathy for the movement. Bowing to that pressure, police released the women. Soon enough, there was a surge of support on the federal level. On June 4, 1919, Congress passed the Suffrage Amendment, with the requirement that three-quarters of the 48 states had to ratify it. Ten months later, 35 had complied, and the suffragists needed the support of just one more state. Delaware demurred, and suffragists descended on Tennessee, which complied on Aug. 18, 1920. Eight days later, 72 years after the Seneca Falls convention, the 19th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution.

Today, 131 women are serving in Congress, one holds the gavel as Speaker of the House, and several are running for our nation’s highest office. “Last year, there were no women in the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation at all,” says U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania’s 6th District, which includes Chester County. “I now stand with my colleagues as one of four women in Congress from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

Abigail—and, most likely, John—would be impressed.

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