0.3 Great war (part ii)  (Page 10/16)

Wars and national emergencies tend to change this country –sometimes for the better and sometimes not. The adoption of Prohibition is a good example of the former, while the passage of universal suffrage is a good example of the former. If all you knew about the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was from watching the 1976 ABC Schoolhouse Rock episode entitled “Sufferin’ Till Suffrage,” you would think that a bunch of happy, upbeat, women sporting red bell-bottom jeans, white boots, and blue t-shirts with a lone white star (note the obvious flag theme) pranced into election booths simply by singing: “Oh we were sufferin', Until suffrage, Not a woman here could vote, No matter what age. Then the 19th Amendment struck down that restrictive rule.”

American women (and some men) had been trying to, and over time achieved varying degrees of voting rights for women. Generally speaking, women gained the right to vote in school board elections first, then municipal elections, and sometimes even in state or territory-wide campaigns. Of course, sometimes the Supreme Court removed women’s right to vote, such as in 1887 when the Court struck down an 1883 vote in the territory of Washington that granted full suffrage to women. By the Great War, women in Utah, Colorado, Washington, California, Alaska, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and Montana have the same political rights as men while women in Illinois are allowed to vote only in presidential elections and white women could vote in primary elections in Arkansas. Five Midwestern states grant full suffrage to women in 1917 while Rhode Island endorsed partial voting rights. New York became the first eastern state to provide its female citizens with the same electoral rights as their male citizens. Yet, President Wilson was unable or unwilling to ride the wave of woman suffrage (not the singular, monolithic use of the noun) as they called it.

Counter to the popular belief that American suffrage suffragists called off their suffrage work in order to fully support the war efforts not unlike their British counterparts, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) affirmed their mission in 1917. Carrie Chapman Catt called a meeting of the Executive Council days after Secretary of State Robert Lansing announced that US was breaking diplomatic relations with Germany. The reason for the meeting was to decide is the NAWSA would follow in the footsteps of British suffragettes or if American suffrage supporters will continue to work in support of universal suffrage. The seventy-six members in attendance votes overwhelmingly (63 to 13) to continue to work for universal suffrage while also supporting the federal government if indeed the US went to war against Germany.

Many women did not support Catt’s twin goals, such as pacifists who believed that Catt was selling out the peaceful message inherent to women in order to further the goals of the NAWSA. Others believed that Catt and the NAWSA had not gone far enough, such as Alice Paul.