"It's a Man's World... Unless Women Vote!"
I recently had the opportunity to attend an exciting historical "Votes for Women" presentation at my local public library. As you may know, California was the sixth state of the United States to recognize women's right to vote, and California voted in this change precisely one hundred years ago this month, long before the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified in 1920. The library event was loads of fun, featuring actors in vintage costumes simulating a rally on the eve of that pivotal 1911 election! We sang marching songs and heard speeches for and against. Then we watched a PBS documentary on the big screen, and wound up with tea and cookies and a voter registration drive.
I ♥ my local public library.
On our way in, audience members all received an agenda, a pamphlet songbook, and a paper recreation of a vintage suffragette pin (the slogan on mine is the title of this post).
First, the librarian in charge of adult programming - herself in vintage costume - oriented everyone with the historical context and the presentation agenda. The stage was decorated with two recreated suffrage flags: the purple, gold and white flags that suffragettes carried in parades and rallies, where each star represented a state that had recognized women's right to vote - a flag with five stars on one end of the stage (before California) and one with six on the other (with California). There were also other recreations of vintage banners and posters.
Next came the sing-along of suffrage marching songs, led by one singer and one piano player. The singer's voice was lovely, of course, but I personally was more enchanted by her patter between songs. She had memorized remarks not only on the "current" (1911) California politics and national situation, but on the popularity of certain songs, and how well their sheet music was selling, and what we might have read in the newspaper "that week," and she rallied us to the final push of this "upcoming" election. The songs all set cause-specific words to then-well-known tunes. We sang:
Rolling 'round and 'round the land.
And its meaning is so mighty,
And its mission is so grand,
That none but knaves and cowards
Dare deny its just demand,
As we go marching on.
Chorus:
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
As we go marching on?
Ye men who wrong your mothers,
And your wives and sisters too,
How dare you rob companions
Who are always brave and true?
How dare you make them servants,
Who are all the world to you,
As they go marching on?
Chorus.
Whence came your foolish notion,
Now so greatly overgrown,
That a woman's sober judgment
Is not equal to your own?
Has God ordained that suffrage
Is a gift to you alone,
While life goes marching on?
Chorus.
I enjoyed singing very much, but of course it works best when you know the original tune; I'm afraid that many audience members didn't, and they must have felt left out. The songs introduced bits and pieces of the suffragettes' arguments, and attacked or mocked the attitudes of their opponents.
After the sing-along came "living history portrayals," in the manner of a series of speeches, by costumed players from the local community theater. Naturally Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth were included, giving the rousing speeches we all know from history and literature, but new to me were portrayals of local California personages, including the woman who had led the very most local chapter of the movement, a woman who had written a letter to a local newspaper disagreeing with the movement on the basis that it undercut women's "natural" power base in the home, and a state senator who felt that any woman who wanted to vote should "simply" leave California for one of the states that already permitted that sort of thing.
We are all, at this end of history, familiar with the reasons that women should vote, I trust. So I was struck by what I did not know as well, the arguments of the time on the other side. For different reasons, two in particular grabbed my attention. One was that women's suffrage was for the states to decide, a natural and proper matter of state sovereignty and local custom, and that any woman who wanted to vote should move to a state that would allow her to, instead of forcing acknowledgment by a community that found it inappropriate. Inescapably, that sounds like where we are today on same-sex marriage. The other was that being at the polls on election day was so unladylike as to endanger a woman's reputation. Now, at first hearing, we moderns laugh at that; we think of polling stations in dull school gyms and church halls, staffed by tired volunteers paid a pittance, electioneering not permitted within howsoever many feet. What could be more "ladylike"? But think of a nineteenth-century polling day! Drenched in alcohol! Bullied by bosses! It was a significantly different environment. It did not occur to some, then, that this environment could be changed, as of course it has been.
Another thing that I think we all know is that the alcohol interests opposed women's suffrage because they suspected - as it turned out, correctly - that women voters would favor "dry" laws. However, some new-to-me consequences of that were that when California recognized women's right to vote, it was the overwhelming support of the rural areas that passed it. The cities were opposed! We think today, perhaps, of San Francisco and Oakland as liberal bastions, but in 1911 San Francisco had more bars than any other city west of the Mississippi, and was in the pocket of the alcohol interests. San Francisco and Alameda counties voted overwhelmingly against allowing women to vote. It is to the farm towns - and their "dry" tendencies - that we owe California's sixth place in the slow line of states accepting women's suffrage.
The pro-suffrage speakers were cheered. The anti-suffrage speakers were booed! It was fun.
After the speakers, we watched the PBS documentary One Woman, One Vote, narrated by Susan Sarandon. It contained much information I did not know about the assorted organizations and how they did and didn't work together, but I was more struck to learn that the famously harsh measures taken against suffragettes in British jails were not unknown in the US, just later and less common. Protesters who stood around the White House during WWI, silently holding banners demanding suffrage, were attacked, beaten, jailed and force fed. Wilson - Mr. League of Nations - objected to woman voting until it became a political necessity that he court women's votes.
The overall program was to end back here in 2011 in tea, cookies and a voter registration drive courtesy of the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women. Unfortunately, the performances had run long, and I had to go immediately when the lights came up after the film. I regret missing the opportunity to thank and congratulate the performers, and the librarian who made it all possible!
I ♥ my local public library.
On our way in, audience members all received an agenda, a pamphlet songbook, and a paper recreation of a vintage suffragette pin (the slogan on mine is the title of this post).
First, the librarian in charge of adult programming - herself in vintage costume - oriented everyone with the historical context and the presentation agenda. The stage was decorated with two recreated suffrage flags: the purple, gold and white flags that suffragettes carried in parades and rallies, where each star represented a state that had recognized women's right to vote - a flag with five stars on one end of the stage (before California) and one with six on the other (with California). There were also other recreations of vintage banners and posters.
Next came the sing-along of suffrage marching songs, led by one singer and one piano player. The singer's voice was lovely, of course, but I personally was more enchanted by her patter between songs. She had memorized remarks not only on the "current" (1911) California politics and national situation, but on the popularity of certain songs, and how well their sheet music was selling, and what we might have read in the newspaper "that week," and she rallied us to the final push of this "upcoming" election. The songs all set cause-specific words to then-well-known tunes. We sang:
- "Dare You Do It?" ("Battle Hymn of the Republic")
- "Campaign Song" ("Star Spangled Banner")
- "He Needeth Me" ("He Leadeth Me")
- "Three Blind Men" ("Three Blind Mice")
- "My Wife and I" ("Little Brown Jug")
- "The New America" ("America")
- "Good News, Ladies" ("Good Night, Ladies")
- "Freedom's Land" ("Beulah Land")
- "Freedom's Anthem" ("Swanee River")
- "Madmen or Fools" ("Auld Lang Syne")
Rolling 'round and 'round the land.
And its meaning is so mighty,
And its mission is so grand,
That none but knaves and cowards
Dare deny its just demand,
As we go marching on.
Chorus:
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
Men and brothers, dare you do it?
As we go marching on?
Ye men who wrong your mothers,
And your wives and sisters too,
How dare you rob companions
Who are always brave and true?
How dare you make them servants,
Who are all the world to you,
As they go marching on?
Chorus.
Whence came your foolish notion,
Now so greatly overgrown,
That a woman's sober judgment
Is not equal to your own?
Has God ordained that suffrage
Is a gift to you alone,
While life goes marching on?
Chorus.
I enjoyed singing very much, but of course it works best when you know the original tune; I'm afraid that many audience members didn't, and they must have felt left out. The songs introduced bits and pieces of the suffragettes' arguments, and attacked or mocked the attitudes of their opponents.
After the sing-along came "living history portrayals," in the manner of a series of speeches, by costumed players from the local community theater. Naturally Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth were included, giving the rousing speeches we all know from history and literature, but new to me were portrayals of local California personages, including the woman who had led the very most local chapter of the movement, a woman who had written a letter to a local newspaper disagreeing with the movement on the basis that it undercut women's "natural" power base in the home, and a state senator who felt that any woman who wanted to vote should "simply" leave California for one of the states that already permitted that sort of thing.
We are all, at this end of history, familiar with the reasons that women should vote, I trust. So I was struck by what I did not know as well, the arguments of the time on the other side. For different reasons, two in particular grabbed my attention. One was that women's suffrage was for the states to decide, a natural and proper matter of state sovereignty and local custom, and that any woman who wanted to vote should move to a state that would allow her to, instead of forcing acknowledgment by a community that found it inappropriate. Inescapably, that sounds like where we are today on same-sex marriage. The other was that being at the polls on election day was so unladylike as to endanger a woman's reputation. Now, at first hearing, we moderns laugh at that; we think of polling stations in dull school gyms and church halls, staffed by tired volunteers paid a pittance, electioneering not permitted within howsoever many feet. What could be more "ladylike"? But think of a nineteenth-century polling day! Drenched in alcohol! Bullied by bosses! It was a significantly different environment. It did not occur to some, then, that this environment could be changed, as of course it has been.
Another thing that I think we all know is that the alcohol interests opposed women's suffrage because they suspected - as it turned out, correctly - that women voters would favor "dry" laws. However, some new-to-me consequences of that were that when California recognized women's right to vote, it was the overwhelming support of the rural areas that passed it. The cities were opposed! We think today, perhaps, of San Francisco and Oakland as liberal bastions, but in 1911 San Francisco had more bars than any other city west of the Mississippi, and was in the pocket of the alcohol interests. San Francisco and Alameda counties voted overwhelmingly against allowing women to vote. It is to the farm towns - and their "dry" tendencies - that we owe California's sixth place in the slow line of states accepting women's suffrage.
The pro-suffrage speakers were cheered. The anti-suffrage speakers were booed! It was fun.
After the speakers, we watched the PBS documentary One Woman, One Vote, narrated by Susan Sarandon. It contained much information I did not know about the assorted organizations and how they did and didn't work together, but I was more struck to learn that the famously harsh measures taken against suffragettes in British jails were not unknown in the US, just later and less common. Protesters who stood around the White House during WWI, silently holding banners demanding suffrage, were attacked, beaten, jailed and force fed. Wilson - Mr. League of Nations - objected to woman voting until it became a political necessity that he court women's votes.
The overall program was to end back here in 2011 in tea, cookies and a voter registration drive courtesy of the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women. Unfortunately, the performances had run long, and I had to go immediately when the lights came up after the film. I regret missing the opportunity to thank and congratulate the performers, and the librarian who made it all possible!