Persuading the “Male Preserve”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
New York State ◽  
American Woman ◽  
White Men ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
York State ◽  
Unique Aspect ◽  
Anna Howard Shaw ◽  
Urban Immigrants

This chapter focuses on men, the only empowered contingent of the suffrage movement. While some men had always voiced support for woman suffrage, no sustained men's organization existed in the state until 1908. That year, Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, encouraged the founding of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, which then served as an affiliate of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. These elite white men, often raised or living in suffrage households, risked embarrassment and censure by publicly displaying their support for woman suffrage. As their participation became routine, the novelty of it wore off. These privileged male champions of woman suffrage inspired men of other classes—including urban immigrants and rural, upstate men—to reconsider their suffrage stance. This unique aspect of the suffrage coalition thereby played a lesser but crucial role in winning the vote for women.

Establishing New York State Anti-Suffrage Organizations, 1895–1911

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
National Government ◽  
The State ◽  
York State ◽  
National Organization ◽  
Social Events ◽  
State Organization ◽  
College Educated

This chapter illustrates the nascent attempts of anti-suffragists to prevent their enfranchisement. The most prominent and effective anti-suffrage organizations that developed in New York State between 1895 and 1911 deliberately excluded men. Certainly, anti-suffragists were married to or related to some of the most politically powerful men in state and national government. However, a significant portion of college-educated, professional, and self-supporting women opposed suffrage. Once the antis established their organizations, they became a force powerful enough to help prolong the battle for woman suffrage in the state. The New York State organization provided speakers for lectures at clubs and social events in and outside the state, spreading their influence broadly. By the end of the period, New York antis had established a national organization.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
White House ◽  
York State ◽  
Nineteenth Amendment ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
National Woman's Party

This concluding chapter explores the ways that suffragists used their enfranchisement to push the Nineteenth Amendment forward. The book's study places New York State at the forefront of the woman suffrage movement in the eastern United States. Its success had a profound effect on the national movement. As seems usual for suffragists, there is no one path activists followed. Some women, radicalized by their efforts in New York State, joined the militant National Woman's Party and picketed the White House. Others took their organizing skills, including canvassing and lobbying, to campaigns in non-suffrage states. Ultimately, the activism of the disparate groups that comprised the successful state suffrage movement infused the national campaign for woman suffrage with newfound energy.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
The United States ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Jefferson County ◽  
York State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Right To Vote ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Turmoil

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the woman suffrage movement in New York. Across the seven decades between 1846, when a few Jefferson County women publicly claimed the right to vote, and the passage of the New York State referendum in 1917, thousands of women—and some resolute men—engaged in the irrepressible fight for woman suffrage. The movement crossed class, race, ethnic, gender, and religious boundaries during periods of great upheaval in the United States. At the same time, the movement itself caused social and political turmoil. Three generations of New York State women fought a complicated, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding battle to obtain the right to vote. In the process, women opened for themselves new opportunities in the social and political spheres.

Using Enfranchisement to Fight Woman Suffrage, 1917–1932

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
National Level ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
Publishing Company ◽  
York State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
State Association ◽  
National Headquarters

This chapter tells of the expected end of the anti-suffrage movement, highlighting much of the public and residual animosity toward women's enfranchisement. The women antis restructured the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage as the Women Voters' Anti-Suffrage Party and worked against a federal amendment. The Woman Patriot Publishing Company absorbed the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. Although New York State anti-suffragists had always been influential in national level work, in 1917, with a change in leadership, they moved the national headquarters to Washington, D.C., and continued their efforts to prevent the passage of the federal amendment. Men increasingly dominated the movement, and the anti-suffrage tone became desperate-sounding and even venomous. The national movement operated in a far different mode from the previous women's anti-suffrage movement under its second president, Alice Hay Wadsworth, and her successor, Mary G. Kilbreth.

Tenuous Ties

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier ◽  
Karen Pastorello
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American Men ◽  
New York State ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
York State ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
National Organizations ◽  
The Right ◽  
Woman Suffrage Movement

This chapter details the development of a woman suffrage movement in New York State as it positions the state in the broad historical context of the national woman suffrage movement. Some rural upstate New Yorkers demanded social and political reforms for women well before the Civil War. As a result of controversy sparked by the Fifteenth Amendment, which granted African American men the right to vote, women founded two national organizations and the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. State leaders dominated the movement in terms of strategy and tactics, and several of them rose to national prominence. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, suffragists had come to recognize the importance of fluidity and pliability in addressing their appeals to the broadest possible audiences. The divergent groups advocating for women's enfranchisement disagreed with each other over specific strategies, tactics, and whom to include, but they unfailingly agreed that women needed the vote.

Antis Win the New York State Campaign, 1912–1915

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Goodier
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
Woman Suffrage ◽  
York State ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
State Association

Activities of the anti-suffrage movement ebbed and flowed with those of the suffrage movement, suggesting the responsive nature of both movements. This chapter focuses on this process. The leadership of Alice Hill Chittenden, elected in the fall of 1912 to serve as president of the New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, accounts for the increased politicization of the anti-suffrage movement. Anti-suffragists won this battle, apparent in the results of the November 1915 referendum. However, it is also apparent by 1915 that anti-suffrage leaders faced serious challenges to their campaign to prevent enfranchisement, leading to a far different campaign for the 1917 referendum.

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