Early Women's Activism and the Fight for Suffrage

National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA)

Founded in 1869 and based in New York City, this association was created by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton when the women’s rights movement split into two groups over the issue of suffrage for African American men (they wanted women to also be included in the 15th Amendment). Considered the more radical than the American Woman Suffrage Association, the NWSA prioritized securing women the right to vote at a national level. The group often stirred public debate through its reform proposals on a number of social issues, including divorce and labor conditions for women.

Militant

One who is considered combative in their support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods.

Alice Paul

She brought the attention-getting tactics of British suffragists to the United States. In 1916 Paul and other militant activists left the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to form the National Woman's Party. To put pressure on President Woodrow Wilson to back congressional passage of a constitutional amendment, they picketed outside of the White House and then chained themselves to the White House fence.

Women's Rights Movement

The reform movement in which women worked to gain equal rights for women. In 1848 women did not have equal rights under the law. They couldn't own property, inherit money, go to college, make speeches at public meetings, or vote. The only jobs open to women were teaching, cleaning, and factory work, and they earned less money than men in the same jobs.

Temperance Movement

The reform movement which worked to make alcohol illegal. The majority of the Temperance Crusaders were women. Activist Susan B. Anthony worked in the Temperance Movement during the 1850s.

Anti-Slavery Movement (Abolition)

The reform movement which worked to make slavery illegal. Formerly enslaved Sojourner Truth fought for the abolition of slavery and women's rights. Susan B. Anthony and her family were also strong abolitionists.

Disfranchisement

The revocation of suffrage of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing a person from exercising the right to vote. Also known as voter disqualification.

Suffrage

The right to vote in public elections.

Sojourner Truth

This abolitionist and women's rights activist is best known for her speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851. She was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She devoted her life to the abolitionist cause and helped to recruit Black troops for the Union Army. Although Truth began her career as an abolitionist, the reform causes she sponsored were broad and varied, including prison reform, property rights, and universal suffrage.

19th Amendment

This amendment established women’s suffrage in 1920, extending the right to vote to all qualified women in federal and state elections.

15th Amendment

This amendment granted suffrage for African American men in 1870. This amendment replaced section 2 of the 14th Amendment in guaranteeing Black persons the right to vote, and also granted Congress the power to enforce this amendment.

14th Amendment

This amendment was ratified and added to the Constitution on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," which included former enslaved persons recently freed. It forbids states from denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." By directly mentioning the role of the states, this amendment greatly expanded the protection of civil rights to all Americans and is cited in more litigation than any other amendment.

American Woman's Suffrage Association (AWSA)

This association was formed in November of 1869, as the American Equal Rights Association fell apart over the passage of the 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, T. W. Higginson, Henry Blackwell, Wendell Phillip, and others supported the amendments, fearing they would not pass if women were included. The AWSA was more conservative than the NWSA, following a strategy of state-by-state suffrage amendments.

Seneca Falls Convention

This convention occurred July 19-20, 1848 and is widely considered to be the start of the women’s suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the two-day conference "to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman." Participants at the conferences signed a Declaration of Sentiments urging women to work for the right to vote, among many other reforms.

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

This organization became the most prominent voice of the movement and greatly expanded its influence. More incremental and conservative in its tactics, it included men in its leadership, such as Henry Blackwell, to maintain closer ties to the political world. It thought the 15th Amendment was important enough to be passed independently of women's suffrage. It limited its focus entirely to women's suffrage and did not address other political issues. It also focused on passing legislation at the state level.

Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU)

This union was founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, who was disillusioned with the constitutional methods of campaigning employed by the NUWSS (National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies). The WSPU preferred to raise public and media awareness of the campaign by militant and confrontational action. They got themselves arrested for civil disobedience, interrupted cabinet meetings, and heckled politicians. Some activists even set fires in mailboxes and vacant houses.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

This woman was an abolitionist, human rights activist, and one of the first leaders of the women’s rights movement. She came from a privileged background and decided early in life to fight for equal rights for women. Stanton worked closely with Susan B. Anthony for over 50 years to win the women’s right to vote. Still, her activism was not without controversy, which kept Stanton on the fringe of the women’s suffrage movement later in life.

Adoption

To accept; adopt a suggestion. In 1920, the government adopted the 19th Amendment.

Ratify/Ratification

To approve and make valid.

Enfranchise

To be granted the vote or the state of having the vote.

Picket

To stand or march in a public place in order to protest something.

Lobby

To try, as a group, to persuade or to influence politicians in government; to seek to influence others on an issue

Partnership

When two or more people work together to reach the same goal. For 51 years Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were partners in their work to gain the vote for women.

Emmeline Pankhurst

A British political activist. She is best remembered for organizing the UK suffragette movement and helping women win the right to vote. She founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903 to take militant action. The group targeted any political party that did not work towards votes for women. Her embrace of protest and direct action in the early 1900s marked a new phase in the battle for women's votes in the UK and inspired the suffrage movement in the United States.

Amendment

A change in the words or meaning of a law or addition to a document (such as a constitution).

United States v. Susan B. Anthony (1873)

A court case in 1873 that was a milestone in women's history. Susan B. Anthony was tried in court for illegally voting. Her attorneys unsuccessfully claimed that the citizenship of women gave women the constitutional right to vote.

Minor v. Happersett (1875)

A court case where Virginia Minor accused the Constitution of not granting the right of voting to women. This court case was brought to the Supreme Court after Minor was denied being a citizen able to vote. This questioned the 14th Amendment.

Ballot

A device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting.

Declaration of Sentiments

A document based on the Declaration of Independence which demanded equal rights for women. It stated that "All men and women are created equal." It was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and read at the first Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York on July 19, 1848.

Suffragist / Suffragette

A person who supports extending the right to vote to others, especially a person who worked to get women the right to vote. Women who worked in the movement were also known as suffragettes.

Activism

A process in which ordinary people take action with the goal of influencing leaders to improve the quality of life of a community or society.

Universal Suffrage

A term generally used to support the right to vote for all adults, regardless of race or gender. After 1870, when African American men secured the Federal right to vote with the 15th Amendment, the term "suffrage" became more commonly associated with the women's suffrage movement (ca. 1848–1920).

Lucretia Mott

A well-known abolitionist and women's rights activist, she founded groups that fought for women's rights and the end of slavery. She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention.

Susan B. Anthony

A women's rights activist who began her career as an abolitionist. She founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and was later the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She was known for paving the way to ratify the 19th Amendment.

Petition

A written document that many people sign to show that they want a person or organization to do or change.

Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage

An American organization founded by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who brought the ideas and suffrage tactics from the UK to the United States. They organized the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession and the "Silent Sentinels" pickets outside the White House. They also borrowed the English strategy of a single-issue focus on winning suffrage. It was a campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage.

Woman's Journal

An American weekly suffragist periodical, first published on January 8, 1870, by Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, to address a broad segment of middle-class female society interested in women’s rights. As an official publication of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), it published the views of the AWSA.

Enforcement Act of 1870

Congress passed this act in May 1870, which prohibited groups of people from banding together "or to go in disguise upon the public highways, or upon the premises of another" with the intention of violating citizens' constitutional rights. This was Congress's first effort to counteract such use of violence and intimidation.

Feminism

The belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. This theory largely arose in response to Western traditions that restricted the rights of women, during the second wave of women's rights in the 1970s. This thought also has global manifestations and variations.

Lucy Stone

The first woman in Massachusetts to earn a college degree and the first woman in the United States to keep her own name after marriage. While she started out on the radical edge of women's rights, she disagreed with Susan B. Anthony over strategy and tactics, splitting the suffrage movement into two major branches after the Civil War. Because of this, she is usually described as a leader of the conservative wing of the suffrage movement in her later years.

Carrie Chapman Catt

The political campaigner who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She organized both a well-coordinated state-by-state and a national effort. By 1910 women had the right to vote in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Washington.