Women's Suffrage

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The article discusses anniversary of the woman suffrage movement in South Dakota that led to the 1918 and 1919 state and federal amendments was wide and varied. Topics include amendment to the South Dakota constitution that opened voting to women; efforts of Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the South Dakota League of Women Voters and others in the movement which spread general awareness and educate people about; and the need to analyze further on women's role in politics and others.

A long-standing puzzle in American political development is why western states extended voting rights to women before states in the East. Building on theories of democratization and women's suffrage, I argue that politicians have incentives to seek out new voters in competitive political environments. A strong suffrage movement reinforces these incentives by providing information and infrastructure that parties can capitalize on in future elections. If politicians believe they can mobilize the latent female vote, then large movements and competitive political environments should produce franchise expansion. Using data on legislative decisions pertaining to suffrage in 45 states from 1893 to 1920, I show that political competition and movement strength are robust predictors of support for women's suffrage in state legislatures. In the West, fluid partisan politics and relatively strong mobilization produced early reform. Since states determine who voted for national, state, and local offices, these decisions mattered for advancing political equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the first territory and state where women voted in the U.S., and in fact the first place in the world where women exercised full enfranchisement, Wyoming’s past should raise pressing questions about the history of women’s suffrage. However, scholars typically explain the unusual event as a political hoax, a joke, or an effort to increase the population of the fledgling territory. At the heart of the scholarly treatment of Wyoming suffrage lies the controversial figure of Esther Hobart Morris. Upheld as the ‘mother of woman suffrage’ in local lore, and viewed as a false heroine by most historians, Morris embodies the contradictions of western suffrage. In this essay, I reinsert Morris into the history of suffrage in Wyoming and analyze how Wyomingites remember and commemorate the story of Morris from the 1890s to the 1970s. By taking the symbolic role of Esther Morris seriously, I argue that suffrage in Wyoming mattered, not only to the women who exercised the vote but also to the collective identity of Wyomingites. I suggest that the conflation of Esther Morris with the Wyoming pioneer ultimately created a radical space of possibility for western women throughout the twentieth century. I show how Esther Morris provided a critical example of independent, western femininity that Wyoming women have since mobilized to demand their rights and fashion their own forms of transgressive womanhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. from the late 1840s through 1920, including its teachings in American history textbooks, women's opposition to their own suffrage and the suffrage movement's general perspective on man-woman relationships. An overview of women's associations, societies and clubs opposing women's suffrage is provided.

This article traces the development of the suffrage movement in Louisiana from its inception to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment that granted women suffrage. Section I explores the origin of the woman's movement in Louisiana. Specifically, this section examines the beginning of the woman's suffrage movement in Louisiana in Part A, the rights and obligations under Louisiana law in 1879 in Part B, and the formative years of the woman's suffrage movement in Part C. Section II examines woman's suffrage in Louisiana: the next generation. This section specifically addresses suffrage activities in Louisiana after the turn of the century in Part A, the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference and the splintering of the suffrage movement in Part B, and the defeat of woman's suffrage in Louisiana in Part C.

The article examines the effects of the prohibition movement on the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. Topics include the challenges confronted in amending the U.S. Constitution, the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment on prohibition in 1919 and the Nineteenth Amendment on women's suffrage in 1920, and the support by conservative Americans that led to the enactment of the amendments.

The article focuses on Women's Suffrage Movement in Alabama from 1890 to 1920. It mentions city of Selma, Alabama, is often associated with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, it is perhaps a less known fact that citizens of the city were instrumental in fighting for the rights of women to vote fifty years earlier. It also mentions Benjamin Craig of Selma had already put forth several amendments to the convention on the subject of women's suffrage.