A History of the United States Women's Bureau 1917-1930

This chapter provides historical analysis of the United States Women's Bureau focusing on its role in women's rights, immigration, and economic advancement in the United States from 1917-1930. The decade of the 1920s dawned on August 18, 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote in every state. But there was another, less known victory that had already occurred on June 5, 1920, one that was pivotal in the trajectory of the next phase of the women's rights movement throughout the 1920s: House Resolution 13229.

Ignis Fatuus

Returning to the opening scene of the book, this chapter explains the factors that led Laura Clay to resign from KERA and to oppose ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. By 1916, the National American Woman Suffrage Association had endorsed Carrie Chapman Catt's “Winning Plan,” pledging to pursue a federal amendment as its key goal and demanding that states shelve their own plans in favor of national goals. Clay lined up with many southern “states' rights suffragists” such as Kate Gordon and continued to advocate for a state route to the ballot.

Twenty-Four

On January 6, 1920, despite Laura Clay and her Citizens Committee for a State Suffrage Amendment's efforts, Kentucky ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, becoming the twenty-fourth state to do so. This chapter finishes the story by describing the final push by suffragists, especially Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and members of the Louisville Woman Suffrage Association, to place Kentucky in the ratification column.

Introduction

The story begins in Nashville in 1920. Laura Clay, Kentucky's most well-known is there, not to urge the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, but rather to support anti-suffragists' efforts to defeat it. The introduction lays out why Kentucky's struggle to give women the vote matters and particularly emphasizes the ways race will influence the movement's development.

An Instrument to Help Humanity

This chapter follows Kentucky suffragists as they waited to see if the Nineteenth Amendment would win ratification. They were optimistic, hosting “citizenship schools” throughout the summer of 1920 to prepare women to use their new rights. Both political parties were courting the new voters and white suffragists and African American women played key roles at both party conventions that summer. Tennessee's ratification of the amendment meant that women across the country would go to the polls that fall and vote on issues important to women, including the League of Nations.