5 myths about the 19th amendment and the women’s suffrage, Debunked

Even a century after Tennessee the last state must ratify the 19th amendment August 18, 1920 there are still many misconceptions about what the 39-word addition of the Constitution and do not. they have so much of the history that was made at this time for this and so much history was made after written only in recent years and have yet to be written, especially as a science the variety of electoral activists revealed that they are not been mentioned history of voting rights to women. TIME facing historians of women’s rights movement and experts about the suffragettes and activists of the voting rights some of the best myths and misunderstandings about the meaning of the 19th Amendment, the birthplace often cited movement suffrage to the stories of history to expose famous suffragette. Myth: The 19th amendment guarantees all American women to vote, in fact, the right: After the amendment ratified, states passed other laws that women no rights Many people are surprised to learn that the right to vote for the ‘ American is not part of the 18th century and the text of the US Constitution. Subsequently determined to change this right in the opposite direction, the ways in which the clarification, it is forbidden to limit the vote. “The right of US citizens to vote shall not be denied or the United States or any State in the shortened Sex reason” 19th amendment clarified. “The original text of the Constitution does not speak [rights] vote,” says Lauren Thompson MacIvor, a historian of the 20th Century, right at Georgia State University. “Yes, it is the 15th Amendment and the 19th Amendment, but discuss what states can do to limit non-voting based on race / gender [or].” As a result, Member States tried Constitutional addition and 15 to go around. change the restriction of the votes “for reasons of race” -through the adoption of laws prohibited voter requires a head tax to pay or take a literacy test, or naked, the women’s vote who married a migration. Tests and taxes not to mention “race” or “sex”, but have been used for some target voters, especially African Americans. Violence and intimidation, especially lynching, also kept people from the polls away. Some registrars also flat-out refused to process documents, or black women handed a blank sheet of paper. The same methods of deprivation of civil rights also maintained Latinas in the south of the vote. At the same time, laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1917 and in 1924 they captured the Asian immigrants from citizenship, and therefore the vote. And although American activist voting rights for native Gertrude Simmons Bonnin- known as Zitkala-Sat lobbying for the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which more Indians choose some western states have allowed not grant Indians the right to vote in 1948 ( Arizona and New Mexico) and 1957 (Utah). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would eliminate many of the barriers women face color one vote, but the Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated part of the federal oversight of state legal barriers to the right to vote. Activists for the rights to vote and politicians continue to call to strengthen the presence of updates. “[The 19th Amendment] does not start or end of a story,” says Lisa Tetrault, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the forthcoming book a misunderstood But the famous change, “but at the center of a ongoing story. it did not start women’s choice and not completed Frauenwahl “the myth of women could not vote before the 19th amendment actually :. If you could choose a woman before 1920 depended on where they lived, their race and their citizenship in about half of the United States declares-18, such as New York and California-some American women, including black women were able to vote in local, state and federal elections in 1920 before the ratification of the 19th amendment to the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Twenty-two states like Illinois, partly due right to vote, you mean, women in some elections, and only eight states had the right to vote could vote. At least 3,586 women ran for office in the 50 years before 1920, a fact that has helped to show the political strategists that women were a block, they could not ignore. These victories were to win, especially in the new territories in the West, used the elections as an attraction for new residents; more than 750 women were elected to the various offices in Kansas before 1912. Women also did not exist before the United States was right. Women have voted in the colonies before losing the right to vote during the American Revolution, and indigenous women in North America have been voting before European settlers arrived. “Indigenous women a political voice in their nations had for more than 1000 years in this country,” Sally Roesch Wagner, historian and director of the Suffrage Movement 2019 anthology of women, points out. “Women’s rights are not a new concept in this country; it is a very, very old. And the clan mothers of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee women, have a political voice for 1,000 years.” Several important suffragette including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucretia Mott, his contacts with Haudenosaunee women and saw them as an example. “I think [see the power of indigenous women] allows them to be another way to imagine, and it was so far beyond the vote,” says Wagner. Myth: All women wanted the right to vote in reality: Some women To set the 19th Amendment as women today against not a single unified voting bloc and do not always vote for the candidates-some women women in the late 1800s and the ‘early 1900s extends opposite suffrage. Some women believed vote would distract from their most important role as a mother and women and “happiness ruin at home,” says Sally G. McMillen, author and historian of Seneca Falls and the origins of the movement for women’s rights. In addition, the average time of a great wave of immigration at the time, says McMillen, feared some of the political implications vote extends to immigrant women. Many anti-suffragists were top class female philanthropists who feared the women would threaten their vote of influence. “Many of them thought that the right of conquest vote would be a loss to their family in their power, and its role as arbiter of moral and social purity,” says Lauren Thompson MacIvor. Associations that side of the argument in sprouted nationwide. In a publication in 1909 entitled “The Remonstrance” Boston women, claims that the woman of the day was “already overloaded with tasks that do not and from which escape proposes no one to relieve them.” The New Jersey Association supports women’s suffrage unlike that suffrage logically organizing a public office is, Others simply thought that “contrary to the duties of most women.” that the option was not the most urgent problem, says Tetrault. Lawyers for moderation and birth control the women thought these things “physical freedom” were important protection. Myth: Most important suffragettes were white Reality: black women played a key role in the elections, the movement, but one of revisiting obtained on the left of the clearest examples of the impact of non-white women in the American suffrage movement Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren, the New Mexico legislature sat down to pass the amendment 19. by Cathleen D. Cahill, associate professor of history at Penn State University and author of the forthcoming revision of the vote: As women of color of Suffrage Movement transforms “At the last minute, New Mexico has ratified a bit ‘as it seems could not go. without it, New Mexico has not ratified [amendment 19] and without New Mexico, the change could not be ratified because each of these countries was essential. “another example can be Mabel Lee, a 16-year-old incoming Barnard College to see a student and future economists in a 1912 parade of suffragette facing New York City and the center was. In this case, suffragettes sought to shame American politicians with the argument that China would give women the right to vote plunged the United States after the 1911 revolution that the kingdom and established a republic. (Actually, it was not as far forward as the suffragettes thought China.) Have been digitized in recent years, such as documents and voting activists items for the rights, work is a new wave of attention undersung suffragettes before. As said historian Martha S. Jones TIME suffragette recently blacks and other women of color were not always well-events can be found on-white or even suffragettes have invited their stories, requires suspects events, have instead placed; many of them were not yet categorized as reported to the suffrage movement. Many suffragettes were the color observed along the definitive history of the 19th century, left off, the series in six volumes called the history of women’s suffrage. Posted 1881-1922 and more than 5,700 pages, it includes profiles of women who are paid to be there for his portraits in the book. “Susan B. Anthony herself acknowledged that this might be an [and] problem that people asking for their pictures in the book were actually paid would be for these pictures in a book, to restrict the viewing, and yet he did it at all case, “says Allison K. Lange, associate professor of history at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. “Women whose portraits were a part of this book are really the women who remember most frequently today are women whose portraits are in most archives.” (Lange co-edited a matter of fact, a new documents and artifacts web site are aggregated on suffragette color) The myth:. American Feminism in Seneca Falls reality begins: Seneca Falls later began to be seen as a turning point in decades until July 19 -20, 1848 Women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY, is sometimes called called “l ‘ beginning of feminism “. Today, scientists in the wake of Lisa Tetrault of Seneca Falls myth, saying that it is important to remember when Seneca Falls started describes how the origin of the movement, and it began in this way are described. ECS has organized women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in a few days, the investment was mostly local, although 200-300 people took part. Black women, however, were not present at the event, although a group to fight approved blacks women preachers before spring had many of the same requirements that would show in Seneca Falls Declaration of feelings. In Seneca Falls, every need was unanimously; the right to vote was the only one to fail in danger for Frederick Douglass is fixed in a passionate persuasive speech. Ironically, two decades later, in 1869, Stanton Douglass turned on by the passage of the 15th Amendment is opposed. Some suffragettes supported them and some, like Susan B. Anthony and Stanton, men thought that blacks should not get the vote before white women. requires Douglass replied that men blacks who vote the most “urgent” because the daily violence faced vigilante. A few months later Congress passed the 15th Amendment, Anthony and Stanton have distanced themselves from the change fan Advocate National Woman Suffrage Association to change women’s suffrage enshrined start. Your wing of the movement also determined to ensure that their views prevailed in memory of the elections women’s movement, at the same time, “a period of intense memory built in the United States after the Civil War,” as he said Tetrault professor buzzkill story podcast earlier this year. when Victoria Woodhull was imprisoned for obscenity under his short-lived 1872 presidential campaign, which began two the history of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 says that the movement mitigate suffrage “public relations disaster” for. In 1873 he organized a meeting to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the conventions, while both the “official” history of American feminism and reputation of Seneca Falls transformation that by this time he had not started as the major turning point seen. Anthony did not take even the 1848 Convention, even if they have talked so much that often mistakenly reported that there. Stressing Seneca Falls as the birthplace of the suffrage movement also allows them the story exclude a rival who did not attend the convention, Champion Lucy Stone the right is the woman to choose and keep her maiden name, which supported the 15th amendment and for a statewide approach advocated for the right to vote. If the history of women’s suffrage was written, they continued to receive their place in the center of the story. “A large number of departments within the Stanton and Anthony movement has put in a defensive position,” said Tetrault. “We think of them as celebrated, beloved leader for the duration of the campaign, but this is to read again at the end of history and the beginning.” -With reporting by Suyin Haynes
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