VIDEO: JINX BROUSSARD ON AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN SEEKING THE VOTE
Prof. Jinx Broussard is the Bart R. Swanson Endowed Memorial Professor at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communications. With Robin Sundarmoorthyith in Chapter 4 of Front Pages Front Lines, she addresses black women journalists and coverage of black women’s positions on suffrage, looking at both the suffrage activities of black women journalists and the black press coverage of black women’s participation in the movement, which was controversial in black communities across the country.
VIDEO: JANE RHODES on THE NEW NEGRO IN THE BLACK PUBLIC SPHERE
In Chapter 5 of Front Pages Front Lines, Prof. Jane Rhodes, the head of African-American Studies at the University of Illinois-Chicago, examines the positions on suffrage and black women’s suffrage activism of black periodicals attached to socialism, the Communist Party, and black nationalist papers. She focuses on the post–World War I era, when black periodicals conveyed the anxiety and grievances about a widespread backlash against black American soldiers, urban antiblack violence, and lynching.
Video Interviews with the Authors of Front Pages, Front Lines
Links to all video shorts for the chapters of Front Pages Front Lines are below. Read more about the book here.
“Lumsden offers a comprehensive historiography of suffrage and the media that highlights the near one-dimensionality of much of the early scholarship. She analyzes what historians, journalism studies researchers, and sociologists have found—and what they have ignored—beginning in the 1970s, when feminist scholars began to look back at both suffrage editors and mainstream news media coverage of the campaign.”
“Steiner argues that the suffrage and women’s rights papers of the nineteenth century created and experimented with very different versions of the new woman, and then dramatized and celebrated these identities.”
“Bennion shows how the prosuffrage arguments of the Women’s Exponent, published for Mormon women, were reformulated in response to regional political shifts, using various rationales to counter attempts to disenfranchise polygamous women.”
“Broussard addresses black women journalists and coverage of black women’s positions on suffrage, looking at both the suffrage activities of black women journalists and the black press coverage of black women’s participation in the movement, which was controversial in black communities across the country.”
“Rhodes examines the positions of black periodicals attached to socialism or the Communist Party, as well as black nationalist papers, regarding suffrage and black women’s suffrage activism. She focuses on the post–World War I era, when black periodicals conveyed the anxiety and grievances about a widespread backlash against black American soldiers, urban antiblack violence, and lynching.”
“Grasso compares the approaches to women’s suffrage adopted by the NAACP’s The Crisis, under W.E.B. Du Bois, and The Masses, edited by Max Eastman and primarily serving white readers. Both magazines vigorously supported women’s suffrage, but Grasso analyzes their ‘differently radical’ approaches.”
“Finneman draws on US news coverage to examine the rhetorical strategies of the anti-suffragists in representing themselves and their adversaries in 1917, when they began to lose significant ground with journalists as the progressive arguments of the suffragists gained more traction with journalists.”
“Marcellus offers a close reading of the Nashville press as the country watched to see if Tennessee would become the final state to ratify the 19th amendment. She contends that for both the Nashville Tennessean and the Nashville Bannert, competing views of Southern white masculinity were at stake.”
“Kroeger shows the importance and influence, especially during the suffrage movement’s final decade, of high society women and men who enjoyed elite status as socialites, businessmen and professionals, especially as editors and publishers of important newspapers and magazines, and how suffrage leaders cultivated these recruits and the useful resources they brought.”
“Beasley examines how suffrage organizations and their new outlets shifted their policies, positions, and philosophies in the 1920s, analyzing the after-enfranchisement efforts of suffrage activists to decide whether to enter the existing male power structure or concentrate on women’s advancement outside of it.”
“Kitch analyzes how cover stories in Time, Life, and Newsweek, in the context of reporting on the so-called second wave of the women’s movement, both remembered and forgot the women’s suffrage movement and alternated between or combined celebration and dismissal of feminism, using suffrage memory at both ends.”
“Forde’s Afterword returns to white southern suffragists’ ‘unholy alliance’ with white supremacy, including through the support of the leading suffragist periodical in the South. Indeed, she points out that in the early twentieth century, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) capitulated to southern prejudice, for example, by acknowledging the right of southern chapters to exclude black women from membership.”
As Americans commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which granted voting rights to some – but not all – women, it is important to acknowledge the lesbian leaders of the suffrage movement.
James Anderson in Leslie’s Weekly in July 1918: “The Forty-Five Year Fight for Suffrage” “. . .The most drawn out and curious of all political fights”
Leslie’s Weekly, a popular illustrated national magazine (which, during the early 1900s, regularly featured women reporters and photographers, such as Eleanor Franklin, Harriet Quimby, Sadie Kneller Miller [aka Mrs. C.R.] Miller], and Helen Johns Kirtland, carried this essay by James Anderson on July 20, 1918. It ran in the midst of World War I, shortly before the US Senate ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, which had passed the House of Representatives the preceding January 10th. “Thus, curiously enough in the midst of wartimes,” Anderson writes, “when there are so many other vital matters of legislation to be considered, the most drawn-out and curious of all political fights in the history of the country will have been at last brought to a successful conclusion. Whatever our personal feelings may be, whether we are for or against woman suffrage or whether we have no decided opinion on the subject, there can be no question of the great historical interest attached to this really big national event.”
Anderson writes of how the amendment “slumbered and hung fire” until the 40th anniversary of its introduction in the House in 1878, coming to an unsuccessful vote only twice in the Senate and once in the House during all those years. He traces Susan B. Anthony’s most memorable public acts—from the ridicule to the calling of the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, to her attempt to vote in Rochester to test the application of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments long before it was legal for a woman to vote, to announcing herself as a candidate for Congress, which ended in defeat, but opened the way for Jeanette Rankin to achieve that status. He notes the resurgence of suffrage fervor in England with its reverberations on this side of the Atlantic, especially its more controversial “militant outbursts.”
He cites Senator William Calder, a New York Republican (1869-1945), to describe the suffragists’ force of will. “The suffragists come to my house before I am out of the bath in the morning. They escort me to breakfast and see me safe to the Capitol. They wait outside the hall to buttonhole me in the lobby and they haunt my office. They take me to dinner, they accompany me to my home, and they leave me at bedtime, remarking that they will be on hand again in the morning and they keep their word.”
Anderson cites the great work of suffragists the country over and singles out the New York state activists for their success in convincing so many men opponents to change their views and vote passage of the New York State amendment in November of 1917 “when they realized the part women were playing in this great struggle [World War I.] In brief, many have concluded that women have demonstrated, perhaps in the best way possible, their fitness for the ballot. What is true of New York is true in every state.”
The article mentions Anthony (not Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt but in addition, portraits appear of Anthony, Stanton, Catt, Shaw, Alice Paul, and New York paragons Vira Boardman Whitehouse, Mary Garrett Hay, Harriet Burton Laidlaw, Alva Belmont, and Tennessee’s Anne Dallas Dudley. The husbands of Laidlaw and Whitehouse, James Lees Laidlaw and Norman de Rapelye Whitehouse were active members of the New York Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. Laidlaw, in fact, was the league’s national president, too.
Smithsonian Digital Magazine: New Mexico’s Suffrage Movement: Corrido-de-la-Votacion
One hundred years ago in 1919, women across New Mexico mobilized to fight for the right to vote. Influential Nuevo Mexicanas such as Nina Otero-Warren and Soledad Chávez Chacón cajoled and shamed their cousins in the all-male legislature to approve the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
We can only guess how hundreds of nameless women convinced skeptical male relatives to support its passage. Their spirit endures every time we mark our ballots. We honor them in this centennial of the suffrage movement and of suffrage itself, granted in 1920, a crossroads for women’s rights in New Mexico.
Their voices can be heard through an alternate form of narrative: the corrido. A derivative of the Spanish verb correr—“to run”—corridos are rhetorically powerful and poetic ballads used to disperse the compelling stories and questions of the day. From the cries of fighting police brutality against Las Gorras Negras during the civil rights movement of New Mexico in “El Corrido de Córdova y Canales”to the battle for reclaiming land rights in “El Corrido de Rio Arriba” by the late composer and singer Roberto Martínez, threads of injustice and the fight for equality are not uncommon in corridos of New Mexico.
“El corrido de la votación” (“The Ballad of the Vote”) combines a strangely serious melody with humorous, satirical lyrics. Listeners travel to a time when traditional roles of women had not yet been openly challenged. Yet through methodical and vigorous action, women came together to facilitate change in their communities and in their state. This ballad is their soundtrack.
Corridos bristle with male energy and are mostly sung by men. Here, a woman singer takes a stand and spreads the news. Women’s clubs gather to discuss politics and maybe even sing. We continue to come together by learning, sharing, and celebrating our rich cultural heritage. The social power of music provides a window into the life and times of our foremothers. Like much local history in the Southwest, New Mexico’s suffrage movement is often disregarded in schools and public learning spaces. Corridos like “La votación” help to recover this forgotten chapter of communities of women gathering to create social change.
Passed down through oral tradition and family, “La votación” has no known composer. Activist Jenny Vincent made the first known recording in the early 1960s, featuring singer Isabel Córdova. Four decades later, longtime Smithsonian Folklife associate and folklorist Enrique Lamadrid recorded a version by Córdova’s granddaughter, Quirina Córdova de Medina of San Cristóbal, New Mexico. This recording is included in the collection Nuevo México, ¿Hasta Cuándo? An Anthology of New Mexico Ballads, produced by the Smithsonian as a component of the 2004 traveling exhibit, Corridos sin Fronteras: A New World Ballad Tradition.
AUDIO AVAILABLE AT LINK ABOVE
“El corrido de la votación”
By Quirina Córdova de Medina
In what follows, you will find contextual analysis of the lyrics, comparison to other musical traditions in New Mexico, and an examination of the contemporary relevance of “La votación”to this centennial movement of suffrage in New Mexico.
The Corrido in Context
At the beginning of the ballad, “La votación” references 1844 as the year women were granted the right to vote, even though the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in 1920. Jump to complete lyrics at the bottom of the page.
Año de mil ochocientos
cuarenta y cuatro al entrar,
se concede a las mujeres
el derecho de votar.
In the year of eighteen hundred
forty-four, just beginning,
the right to vote
is conceded to women.
The 1844 lyric remains a mystery. Was it a simple mistake by the composer? Or was it a memory of better times for women before the U.S. takeover of the Southwest? When New Mexico was a state in the Republic of Mexico from 1821 to 1846, Nuevo Mexicanas had many more rights than American women did. Historian Janet Lecompte notes that in the Spanish and Mexican legal tradition, women enjoyed the status of “persons” under the law. They had rights to inherit and own land and property, to work and earn money, and to fight in court. They also kept their maiden names after they were married. Once New Mexico became a U.S. territory, the tables were turned.
One influential Nuevo Mexicana during the 1840s was known as La Tules, or Doña Gertrudis Barceló (1800-1850). As French diplomat Alexis Tocqueville described in Democracy in America:
In Mexico a woman lost nothing through marriage; in fact, it freed her from the watchful eye of her dueña or mother and enabled her to enjoy a legal and social independence unknown in other countries. After her marriage, La Tules kept her maiden name, her property, and her right to make contracts and to institute legal proceedings. This most independent of women also claimed the rather unusual privileges of entertaining whatever friends she pleased, male or female, in whatever degree of intimacy she chose, and of conducting her business any time and any place that suited her.
So, although the date of 1844 does not match up, it provides ironic insight into a time when women had an abundance of rights. As U.S. citizens, women had to work to regain their rights, including the new right to vote.
Another verse mentions the new women’s clubs that appeared all over the state. (Note that lyrics have been transcribed reflecting the northern New Mexico varietal form of the singer.)
Ya se juntan las mujeres
hacen un club de señoras,
cambean sus candidatas
también pa’ gobernadora.
The women already gather
to make a women’s club.
They change their candidates
even for a woman governor.
Nuevo Mexicanas formed chapters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Congressional Union. Adelina (Nina) Otero-Warren chaired the Women’s Division of Republican State Committee of New Mexico. She emerged as the refined yet prominent mover and shaker of the suffrage movement.
Although Otero-Warren never ran for governor, she did run for Congress and the U.S. House of Representatives, the first woman in New Mexico to do so. As noted in The Contested Homelands, Otero-Warren was “in a key position within the dominant party to lobby for the impending struggle for ratification of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in the New Mexico legislature.”
Soledad Chávez de Chacón, another influential leader, was the first woman to hold an elected position in the state, serving as secretary of state from 1922 to 1927. In 1924, she also served briefly as the first Hispanic woman governor in the country. These Nuevo Mexicana women merit mention, as evidenced in “La votación.”
Reciban sus oficinas secretarias, juez de paz,
cambeen sus candidatas
y suspiran para demás.
Take up your office,
secretaries, and justices of the peace,
change your women candidates
and sigh for everyone else.
Solace in Satire and Sisterhood
Soon the realities of equal status sink in, and the verses swerve toward the satirical.
Ya quieren manejar los trenes
y también las ofecinas,
y que se quede el marido
gobernando la cocina.
El gobierno del estado
trabajó una nueva ley,
de quedarse gobernado
cada hombre por su mujer.
Y acaso van a la guerra
formadas en batallón,
pa qué quieren maderita
que gancho de pantalón.
They already want to drive trains
and manage offices,
so their husbands can stay behind
in charge of the kitchen.
The government of the state
worked for a new law,
so each man may be governed
by his woman.
And if they go to war
lined up in battalions,
why would they want this gossip
instead of real trousers ?
If you read the text and focus solely on the lyrics, you’ll find boisterous themes of empowered women. But underneath the satire, they confront social change as the drive for equal rights moves forward.
If you don’t understand Spanish and hear only the melody of the corrido, you may notice a more melancholic and lamenting tone emerge, due in large part to the minor key. As NPR producer Alix Spiegel explains, “if you use a minor key… you can make even something with a positive message and fast tempo sound emotionally complicated.”
Melodic irony combined with satire alerts listeners to the ongoing struggles of women and that la lucha sigue—the battle continues.
As we begin to understand the origins of “La votación,” the question arises: was the corrido written by a woman? Let’s look at some clues:
Comadrita de mi vida
Amigas que me reflejan
todos los que están casados
Sister of my life
Friends who share their thoughts
about all those married men.
Here, the first-person voice demonstrates a relationship between the composer and the person to whom she refers, suggesting the likelihood of a female composer. The term of endearment comadrita, usually defined as a godparent, more likely refers to a special female friend. The narrator captures the comment from a women’s meeting she attends. Amigas indicate a female narrative voice as she describes her relationship with a group of female friends.
While corridos are predominantly written and sung by men, there is a long history in New Mexico of women voicing their perspectives in what are known as indita ballads. Known to have been sung by and about women cautivas (captive and enslaved women) of Indo-Hispano New Mexico, inditas are sung in a syncopated rhythm while also incorporating Native chants. While “La votación” doesn’t include a chant, this history of strong female perspectives and compositions suggests that the ballad was very possibly written by a female corridista.
Empowering Women Today
We honor the Nuevo Mexicanas who made their names known during the suffrage movement as well as those who joined them who remain unnamed. It is these women who, in their own empowering ways, enabled us to ensure their efforts and their memories remain.
These women’s voices must be recovered to tell their stories. “El corrido de la votación” reminds us of the social power of women’s music and reinforces the message that not all history is lost. It is for us to discover, share, honor, and celebrate.
Carmella Scorcia Pacheco is a doctoral student in border studies at the University of Arizona and a 2019 Latino Museum Studies Fellow at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Her work focuses on the art of storytelling, community engagement and ethnography, and cultural expressions in Southwest Hispanic communities when faced with injustices.
The ballad lyrics and translations were printed in Nuevo México, ¿Hasta Cuándo? An Anthology of New Mexico Ballads (National Hispanic Cultural Center, 2004).
References
Lecompte, J (1986). The Independent Women of Hispanic New Mexico 1821-1846*. In J.M. Jensen & D.A. Miller (Eds.), New Mexico Women: Intercultural Perspectives (pp.71-93). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, c1986.
Maciel, et al. The Contested Homeland: a Chicano History of New Mexico. 1st ed., University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Tocqueville, A., & Heffner, R. D. (1956). Democracy in America, specially edited and abridged for the modern reader by Richard D. Heffner. [New York] New American Library [1956].
“El corrido de la votación” Lyrics
Año de mil ochocientos
cuarenta y cuatro al entrar,
se concede a las mujeres
el derecho de votar.
El gobierno americano
por tener sabiduría,
les concede a las mujeres
derecho a cuidananía.
Ya se juntan las mujeres
se ponen a platicar,
-Comadrita de mi vida,
la elección se va a aprobar.
Ya se juntan las mujeres
hacen un club de señoras,
cambean sus candidatas
también pa’ gobernadora.
Ya se juntan las mujeres
se ponen a platicar,
ya abandonan sus quehaceres
y ellas se van a votar.
Amigas que me reflejan
todos los que están casados,
y ahora ya ni se quejan
al gobierno de los Estados.
El día de las elecciones
todos los hombres se unieron,
de ver votar las mujeres
que llamaban la atención.
Ya quieren manejar los trenes
y también las ofecinas,
y que se quede el marido
gobernando la cocina.
El gobierno del estado
trabajó una nueva ley,
de quedarse gobernado
cada hombre por su mujer.
Reciban sus ofecinas
secretarias, juez de paz,
cambeen sus candidatas
y suspiran para demás.
Y acaso van a la guerra
formadas en batallón,
para qué quieren maderita
que de gancho de pantalón.
In the year of eighteen hundred
forty-four, just beginning,
the right to vote
is conceded to women.
The American government,
in all its wisdom,
has conceded to women
the right to citizenship.
The women already gather
and start to talk,
“Sister of my life,
the election will be won.”
The women already gather
to make a women’s club.
They change their candidates,
even for a woman governor.
The women already gather
and start to talk.
They abandon their chores
and go to vote.
Friends have shared their thoughts
about all those married men,
who are not complaining anymore
to the government of the States.
The day of elections,
all the men gathered together
to see the women vote,
it was worthy of note.
They already want to drive trains
and manage offices,
so their husbands can stay behind
in charge of the kitchen.
The government of the state
worked for a new law,
so each man may be governed
by his woman.
Take up your office,
secretaries, and justices of the peace,
change your women candidates
and sigh for everyone else.
And if they go to war
lined up in battalions,
why would they want this gossip
instead of real trousers?
National Women’s History Alliance: “Women Win the Vote”
The 2020 issue of “Women Win the Vote” is available on the site of the National Women’s History Alliance. Here is a direct link. Check out the cover page below:
The 2019 issue of “Women Win the Vote,” produced by the National Women’s History Alliance, has articles on African-American and Native American suffragists and a multitude of resources, exhibitions, and listings of national and state-by-state events and organizations. It also has a list of the 10 best online resource sites, which includes this one.
The Atlantic: Votes for Women Portal
“Votes for Women” is the title Atlantic magazine has given to its home page for articles during the suffrage centennial period. All the articles in the package are here. Here’s a table of contents:
The Epic Political Battle Over the Legacy of the Suffragettes
ARTICLE: “Whitman, Melville & Julia Ward Howe: A Tale of Three Bicentennials
May 27, 2019
For the New York Review of Books, author Elaine Showalter writes of the three literary bicentennials of 2019 and the excursions, conferences and exhibitions mounted to celebrate the legacies of two of them, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Showalter offers instead an appraisal of the life and legacy of Julia Ward Howe, a revered leader of the suffrage movement, a third American writer “who will not be so honored.” Howe was born into wealth in New York City on May 27, 1819 and died October 17, 1910, as the sixty-year-old suffrage movement moved with renewed force into its final, victorious lap. She wrote the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and three volumes of poetry, which, Showalter said, got the critical reception of most women writers of the period. She quotes the assessment of literary historian Paula Bernat Bennett that “no group of writers in United States literary history has been subject to more consistent denigration than nineteenth-century women, especially the poets.” Howe was also an activist for civil rights and world peace.
When Political Women Wear White – Time, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN
The decision of Democratic US congresswomen to don white for the State of the Union address February 5, 2019 occasioned stories about the color’s symbolism, notably in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time. CNN took up the topic in 2017 in this opinion piece by Louise Bernikow.
