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Women's History Month: Valiant Women of the Vote
"Illustration shows a torch-bearing female labeled "Votes for Women", symbolizing the awakening of the nation's women to the desire for suffrage, striding across the western states, where women already had the right to vote, toward the east where women are reaching out to her."
Source: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98502844/
Selectors: Chelewa Gant and Jan Bissett
"I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand."
We wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the centennial of the constitutional right to vote for women in the United States. In this presidential election year, it’s vital that you exercise that right.
Living on campus? There’s a new precinct in town! Precinct 149 is located in the Damon J Keith Center at Wayne Law.
Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Source: U.S. Constitutional Amendments, https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment19.html
Women's Suffrage in Michigan
ARTICLE III
ELECTIVE FRANCHISE
Qualifications; absentees; sex.
Sec. 1. ...And provided further, That there shall be no denial of the elective franchise at any election on account of sex: ...
Source: Michigan Constitution, Article III, Sec. 1, (1908, amended)
"Communicating the Message" - Postcards from The University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries - From the private collection of Dovie Horvitz
Article Databases
Source: http://www.genderidentityandsocialchange.amdigital.co.uk/
- Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowEssential primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. This expansive collection offers sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowAccess historical laws, primary sources and legal journals. The Women and the Law (Peggy) database provides a sub-collection on Legal Rights and Suffrage.
- Gale Primary Sources Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowNineteenth Century Collections Online is a digitized collection of primary sources related to the nineteenth century. Materials within the collection consist of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Four archives are available: "British Politics and Society;" "European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection;" "Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange;" and "British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture."
- ProQuest Congressional This link opens in a new window(Previously LexisNexis Congressional Universe)
U.S. legislative information including hearings, reports, prints and documents and the CIS Legislative Histories from Congressional Information Service. Provides the option to limit searches to the Congressional Record or the U.S. Serial Set.
Explore eJournals
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Suffragist#/media/File:The_Suffragist_11-22-1913_(6939611544).jpg
- History of women in the AmericasPapers that investigate women’s lives from single or multiple vantage points whether topically or geographically are equally welcome.
- Journal of the American National Women's Trade Union LeagueBegun in January 1911, Life and Labor was the official monthly journal of the American National Women's Trade Union League, an organization founded in 1903 for the purposes of ameliorating labor conditions of women workers, stimulating unionization and protective legislation, and educating women as well as the public in these issues.
- The SuggragistLaunched with the aim of securing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution enfranchising women, this “Official Organ of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage” did not confine itself to informing readers “as to the happenings in Congress, not only suffrage happenings, although they come first, but all proceedings of special interest to women.”
- Votes for WomenVotes for Women was the first of several periodicals associated with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in 1903 in Manchester by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, with Christabel Pankhurst (1880–1958) emerging as its most prominent leader
- Woodhull & Claflin's WeeklyAs one of the earliest U.S. newspapers to be run by women, Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly was launched for the purpose of supporting the candidacy of Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) for president of the United States, alongside advocating for women's rights in general.
Wayne State University Press
The Wayne State University Press is a distinctive urban publisher committed to supporting the core research, teaching, and service mission of WSU by generating high-quality scholarly and general-interest books of global importance.
Through its publishing program, the Press disseminates research, advances education, and serves the local community while expanding the international reputation of the Press and the University.
Picture of the Display
Explore eBooks
African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965 by ISBN: 0585083525Publication Date: 1997-01-01The book explores how slavery, racial discrimination, and gender shaped the goals that African American women set for themselves, their families, and their race and looks at the political tools at their disposal. By identifying key turning points for black women, the essays create a new chronology and a new paradigm for historical analysis.
Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America by ISBN: 9780199772636Publication Date: 2011-07-13The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this?
The Myth of Seneca Falls by ISBN: 9781469614281Publication Date: 2014-06-15The story of how the women's rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth. The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women's suffrage.
Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America by ISBN: 0807866830Publication Date: 2000-11-09Illuminates the origins of American feminism by showing how antebellum feminists moved beyond suffrage to influence thinking about the nature of citizenship and rights more generally.
Splintered Sisterhood by ISBN: 0585081107Publication Date: 1997-01-01When Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, giving women the right to vote, one group of women expressed bitter disappointment and vowed to fight against "this feminist disease."
Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era by ISBN: 9780801450860Publication Date: 2015-11-06The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as "male." In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed considers how and why the amendment's authors made this decision.
Votes for Women by ISBN: 0195130162Publication Date: 2002-03-14In Votes For Women, Jean H. Baker has assembled an impressive collection of new scholarship on the struggle of American women for the suffrage. Each of the eleven essays illuminates some aspect of the long battle that lasted from the 1850s to the passage of the suffrage amendment in 1920
Why Movements Succeed or Fail by ISBN: 0691026408Publication Date: 1996-08-25Wyoming became the first American state to adopt female suffrage in 1869--a time when no country permitted women to vote. When the last Swiss canton enfranchised women in 1990, few countries barred women from the polls. Why did pro-suffrage activists in the United States and Switzerland have such varying success?
Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights by ISBN: 9780814719015Publication Date: 1998-08-01The book, which includes a highly original reconceptualization of women's rights from Mary Wollstonecraft to contemporary abortion and gay rights activists and a historiographical overview of suffrage scholarship, provides an excellent overview of the movement, including international as well as U.S. suffragism, in the context of women's broader concerns for social and political justice.
Read More About Women's Suffrage
- African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 byPublication Date: 1998
- Century of Struggle: the Women's Rights Movement in the United States byPublication Date: 1996
- Connecting Links: The British and American Woman Suffrage Movements, 1900-1914 byPublication Date: 2000
- From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk About Their Lives byPublication Date: 1985
- One Half the People: The Fight for Woman Suffrage byPublication Date: 1982
- One Woman, One Vote byPublication Date: 1995
- Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly byPublication Date: 1997
- A Reform Against Nature: Woman Suffrage and the Rethinking of American Citizenship byPublication Date: 2004
- Women's Suffrage in America byPublication Date: 2005
- Women Against Women: American Anti-Suffragism, 1880-1920 byPublication Date: 1994
Watch the events of Women's Suffrage
- How We Got The Vote
This documentary includes great original films, and personal interviews. Allice Paul, Mabel Vernon, and surviving suffragettes descibe the sometimes harrowing campaign. Many of these leaders were arrested and even tortured. - Not for Ourselves Alone
"The dramatic, little-known story of one of the most compelling friendships in American history. Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony were born into a world ruled entirely by men. By the time their lives were over, they had changed for the better the lives of a majority of American citizens. - One Woman, One Vote
Companion book to the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name, this anthology is the most comprehensive collection of writings — contemporary and historical — on the woman suffrage movement in America. - The Woman's Vote
The first women's rights convention was held in Stanton's home in Seneca Falls, NY before the Civil War. She joined forces with Luriette Mott and Susan B. Anthony to form the National Women's Suffrage Association.
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