Suffrage Centennials

Planning for 2020 has manifested into an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. celebrating the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Titled “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” it opens on March 29, 2019, and will be on view through January 5, 2020.

This history of women’s suffrage in the United States will be spread over seven rooms at the museum and display more than 120 portraits and objects spanning from 1832 to 1965. The range of topics includes “Radical Women: 1832–1869,” “Women Activists: 1870–1892,” “The New Woman: 1893–1912,” “Compelling Tactics: 1913–1916,” “Militancy in the American Suffragist Movement: 1917–1919” and “The Nineteenth Amendment and Its Legacy.”

The exhibition also includes early photographic portraits, paintings, engravings, works on paper, lithographs, video, newspapers, postcards, books, ballots, banners, fliers, a china set, embroidery, and pennants.

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is located at 8th St NW & F St NW, Washington, D.C. 20001. Follow SuffrageCentennials.com

When preparing for the 2020 women’s vote centennial, don’t forget the work of graphic artist Meneese Wall who has created signed art prints and notecards to celebrate the upcoming 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. We’ve alerted you to this in the past, and this is a reminder that this collection is perfect for gifts and sales at your suffrage events and celebrations. For more information: meneese@meneesewall.com.

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Happy Women’s History Month. Let’s take a look at the “suffragents,” an overlooked group from history that raises questions for women today.

Opposition to equal rights was an important consideration during the first wave of the women’s rights movement in the United States. The liquor movement was one such source. And there were many others, including women and men themselves. The unequal social and economic system is a fact of life impacting many more individuals and organizations than women at the present time.

There’s a book out by Brooke Kroeger (published in 2017) that studies the involvement of men allies in the first wave of the women’s rights movement. When reading to the very end of The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote, the author suggests that the involvement of men in the first wave turned out to be important.

Kroeger suggests that there isn’t anything comparable today in terms of men building support for the Equal Rights Amendment and other issues on a large scale. One factor mentioned by votes for women activists of a different era boiled down to opposition based on “deeply entrenched attitudes about the nature and role of women.”

The book about the men allies raises important questions, especially the author’s mention that a men’s support network like 100 years ago doesn’t exist today. She brings up other important questions, such as—

“Was their participation as ‘suffragents’ lost in recall because of the fullness of the subsequent twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years in most of their lives? Or was the downplaying deliberate, a postchivalrous response to obscure their role in the great women’s epic, as good allies should; that certainly has been the effect. It would be consistent that the men preferred to be in the historical shadows…”

Anyone studying the men’s movement today finds both support and opposition by men. These and other questions persist during Women’s History Month, a time to reflect on why today the men’s movement today is divided. And this goes for the women’s equal rights movement as well.

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ERA means the Equal Rights Amendment.

There is no deadline for equal human rights. That’s what increasing numbers of people are saying. The ERA, affirming the equal application of the Constitution to all persons regardless of their sex, was written in 1923 by Alice Paul, suffragist activist and founder of the National Woman’s Party. After women’s right to vote was guaranteed by the 19th Amendment in 1920, she proposed the ERA as the next step in confirming “equal justice under law” for all citizens.

The ERA was introduced into every Congress between 1923 and 1972, when it was passed and sent to the states for ratification. The Equal Rights Amendment extends the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause to effectively end sex discrimination under law. If you’ve ever been confused about the ERA or felt overwhelmed abut the ratification process, here’s a crash course.

TEXT OF ERA

• Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
• Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
• Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

ERA HISTORY:

The Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in Congress in 1923. Fifty years later in 1972, the U.S. Congress chose to impose a seven-year deadline for state ratifications; this deadline ended in 1982. A total of 38 states were needed and 35 states ratified.  Only three states fell short of the 1982 deadline. And so the ERA has been languishing.  Legal analysis sponsored by the ERA Summit at the University of Richmond argued that the ERA’s deadline is not permanent and could be extended again or removed altogether. In 2001, the ERA Campaign Network commissioned a survey from the Opinion Research Corporation and found that 96 percent of Americans believed “male and female citizens should have equal rights,” with 88 percent of those polled believing that equal rights should be written into the Constitution.

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