Ed: I Have a feeling that most all here could stand a refresher on the American sufferage movement PRIOR to 1920
See:
http://www.suffragist.com/timeline.htmJohnston NY is about 35 miles west of where I am sitting. It takes about 45 Min to drive there. It is the home of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815-October 26, 1902) was a writer, a proponent for women's rights and an anti-slavery crusader. One of Stanton's major causes was suffrage, the right of women to vote.
Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, New York. In 1840, Elizabeth married Henry Brewster Stanton, a lawyer and abolitionist (anti-slavery activist). They eventually had seven children. At the time, women were not allowed to vote, married women were not allowed to own property (all their property belonged solely to their husband), and women were not given the same educational opportunities and legal rights as men. Men were even legally allowed to beat their wives.
Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and others organized the first national women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July, 1848. After meeting Susan B. Anthony in 1851, the two women became close friends and collaborated in working for social and legal equality for women, and other causes, including temperance (the outlawing of alcoholic drinks). In 1868, Stanton started publishing the women's rights newspaper called "Revolution." Stanton, Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage later wrote the "History of Woman Suffrage" (1881-85).
Although Stanton faced opposition from many people throughout her life, especially on her radical proposal that women should be allowed to vote, she worked her entire life trying to obtain rights for women. In 1920, long after Stanton's death, Congress adopted the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote.