Innovation by Political Outsiders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Communication Goals ◽  
Print Era ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

This chapter explores communication innovations made by American social movements over time. These movements share political communication goals and outsider status, which helps to connect innovation decisions across movements and across time. The chapter primarily explores two long-lasting movements. First is the women’s suffrage movement, which lasted over seventy years of the print era from the mid-nineteenth century until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Next is the long-lasting fight against racial discrimination, which led to the modern civil rights movement starting in the print era, but coming of age along with television during the 1950s and 1960s. Both the women’s suffrage movement and civil rights movement utilized innovative tactics with similarly mild results until mainstream coverage improved. Finally, these historical movements are compared with movements emerging during the internet era, including the early Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and the Resist movement.

A Simple Justice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Beals Goan
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
White Men ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Elizabeth Cady Stanton ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
The People ◽  
Poor White ◽  
The Right ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

When the Declaration of Independence was signed by a group of wealthy white men in 1776, poor white men, African Americans, and women quickly discovered that the unalienable rights it promised were not truly for all. The Nineteenth Amendment eventually gave women the right to vote in 1920, but the change was not welcomed by people of all genders in politically and religiously conservative Kentucky. As a result, the suffrage movement in the Commonwealth involved a tangled web of stakeholders, entrenched interest groups, unyielding constitutional barriers, and activists with competing strategies. In A Simple Justice, Melanie Beals Goan offers a new and deeper understanding of the women's suffrage movement in Kentucky by following the people who labored long and hard to see the battle won. Women's suffrage was not simply a question of whether women could and should vote; it carried more serious implications for white supremacy and for the balance of federal and state powers -- especially in a border state. Shocking racial hostility surfaced even as activists attempted to make America more equitable. Goan looks beyond iconic women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to reveal figures whose names have been lost to history. Laura Clay and Madeline McDowell Breckinridge led the Kentucky movement, but they did not do it alone. This timely study introduces readers to individuals across the Bluegrass State who did their part to move the nation closer to achieving its founding ideals.

The Cold, Dark River

2021 ◽  
pp. 304-332
Author(s):  
Christopher Grasso
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Sexual Problems ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
School Building ◽  
Large School ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

After serving in Congress, Kelso resolved to open his own academy in Springfield. He supported the women’s suffrage movement in town. But he had borrowed heavily to build a large school building, and when few students enrolled, he was financially ruined. He ran for Congress again in 1868, but in a bitter campaign focused on monetary policy and filled with dirty tricks, he floundered and was badly beaten by his old nemesis, Pony Boyd. All of this only added to the strain of his marriage, already plagued by sexual problems and mutual jealousies. Kelso’s great tragedy, however, was not financial, political, or marital. In early September, 1870, his five-year-old son died suddenly from tetanus after stepping on a rusty rake. Only two weeks later, his fourteen-year-old son committed suicide. Kelso was shattered. The following year, his marriage in ruins, he took his eldest daughter Florella and headed west.

Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture 2018The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Balfour Family

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

Abstract Given on the centenary of women's suffrage, this lecture explores the tensions and conflicts the claim for the vote raised among elite women already enmeshed in parliamentary and political circles. Drawing on the unbuttoned and sometimes angry correspondence among A.J. Balfour's suffragist sisters-in-law Lady Frances Balfour and Lady Betty Balfour, Frances' collaborator (and suffragist leader) Millicent Fawcett, Lady Betty's militant suffragette sister Lady Constance Lytton, and their old friend (and wife of the anti-suffragist Prime Minister) Margot Asquith, it explores the appeal but also the costs of this democratic claim for such “incorporated” women - and explains why some nevertheless supported it.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document