The Gotham Center for New York City History Celebrates the New York Suffrage Centennial

In November 2017, the Gotham Center for New York City History ran a series of articles on women’s suffrage on its blog. Some of them were chapters of recently published books, while others were original articles for the website.

Here is a list of the articles:

1. “Suffragists and Suffragettes,” by Mike Wallace. For more on the fight for suffrage in New York, see this site’s interview with Joanna Neuman, Bertha Knobe’s account of a suffrage march in New York, the New York Historical Society’s exhibit on Greenwich Village’s support for suffrage, and this essay on a New York suffrage parade by Harriot Stanton Blatch.

2. “Suffrage and the War,” by Johanna Neuman. For more on World War I and suffrage, see Matilda Hall Gardner’s letter to the New York Evening Post, and Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons, three suffrage-themed graphic novels set in World War I-era Britain.

3. “A Fundamental Component: Black Women and Right to Vote,” by Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello. For more on race and the suffrage movement, see W.E.B. DuBois’ writings in Crisis magazine and the abolitionist Lucy Stone’s letters.

4. “The Men Who Helped Women Get the Vote,” by Brooke Kroeger. For more on men’s support for suffrage, see this site’s interview with Kroeger, the writings of Max Eastman, George Creel’s pamphlet supporting suffrage, this recording of Rabbi Stephen Wise supporting women’s voting rights, and the mission statement of the National Men’s League for Woman Suffrage.

 5. “Tammany Hall, Women’s Suffrage and Big Tim Sullivan,” by Alice Sparberg Alexiou.

6. “New Yorker Mrs. Frank Leslie’s Million Dollar Gift to Women’s Suffrage,” by Joan Marie Johnson. For more on women’s philanthropy for suffrage, see this site’s interview with Joan Marie Johnson.

7. “When the Media Elite Threw Their Fedoras into the Ring for Women’s Rights,” by Brooke Kroeger. For more on media coverage of suffrage, see Teri Finneman’s book Press Portrayals of Women Politicians: From ‘Lunatic’ Woodhull to ‘Polarizing’ Palin, this book chapter on how suffrage media outlets reacted to the Titanic disaster, this analysis on the impact of an anti-suffrage women’s publication, a silent film on how British activists used movies to support suffrage, this academic article on a pro-suffrage publication, Linda Steiner’s work on suffrage publications, and more.

8. “When the Suffrage Movement Got Its Makeover On,” by Brooke Kroeger. For more on fashion and suffrage, see this panel discussion, “Pant(aloons) to Pussy Hats: Style and Appearance as Change, Power, and Political Statement in the Women’s Movement.” 

9. “Two Jewish Society Sisters Go At It Over the Vote,” by Alice Sparberg Alexiou. For more on women who were anti-suffrage, see this dissertation on women’s activism against suffrage, this analysis on the impact of an anti-suffrage women’s publication, and a pamphlet from the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.

10. “The Fight For Suffrage in New York State,” by Marcela Micucci. For more on the fight for suffrage in New York, see this site’s interview with Joanna Neuman, Bertha Knobe’s account of a suffrage march in New York, the New York Historical Society’s exhibit on Greenwich Village’s support for suffrage, and this essay on a New York suffrage parade by Harriot Stanton Blatch.

Gotham Center for New York City History: The Men Who Helped Get Women the Vote by Brooke Kroeger

Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York History published an excerpt from Brooke Kroeger’s book, titled The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote.

Kroeger introduces readers to the subject of her book, the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, an elite group of men who lobbied New York’s legislature and governor on women’s suffrage.

Kroeger explains the significance of this league, which included luminaries like Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Max Eastman, the well-known intellectual and writer, in this excerpt:

From a contemporary standpoint, it is remarkable to consider that one hundred years ago, these prominent men — highly respected and influential, their exploits chronicled regularly in the national media — not only gave their names to the cause of women’s rights or called in the odd favor, but rather invested in the fight. They created and ran an organization expressly committed to an effort that, up until the point at which they joined, had been seen as women’s work for a marginal nonstarter of a cause. From the beginning of their involvement, these men willingly acted on orders from and in tandem with the women who ran the greater state and national suffrage campaigns. How many times in American history has such collaboration happened, especially with this balance of power?

You can read the entire excerpt here. You can buy Kroeger’s book here.

Gotham Center for New York City History: The Tammany Hall Politician Who Backed Suffrage by Alice Sparberg Alexiou

In this article on the Gotham Center for New York City History’s blog, historian and author Alice Sparberg Alexiou delves into the suffrage advocacy of Timothy Daniel Sullivan.

Sullivan was a leader in Tammany Hall, the organization that became an immensely powerful Democratic political machine in New York City. He served as an elected official in the New York State Assembly and Senate. He also briefly served as a Congressman.

The Tammany machine was opposed to women’s suffrage. But Sullivan was an advocate for granting women the right to vote, a remarkable stance “considering how tenaciously the Tammany machine controlled New York politics,” writes Alexiou.

Sullivan repeatedly voted for suffrage when pro-suffrage bills came to the floor of the legislature. So why did Sullivan support women’s suffrage? Alexiou writes:

It seems it came at least in part from growing up hungry in the Five Points with ten siblings and an alcoholic stepfather who beat his mother. Catherine Connelly Sullivan somehow managed to feed her kids, although she often went hungry. Sullivan adored her — at the end of his life he had Kenmare Street named for her birthplace in Ireland — and admired the grit and sacrifices of the women — not just the mothers, but their daughters too–struggling to keep families together in New York’s mean streets. Once he told a reporter: “I’ve been watchin’ the folks goin’ to their work of a morning, comin’ over the Brooklyn Bridge and fillin’ the ferryboats and the crowdin’ down in the subway. And the tings that hits me right in the eye is the fact that there’s nearly as many women as men in these mornin’ crowds of workers. If the women have to work like that alongside of men, then they ought to be able to vote alongside them, too.”

Read the entire article on Sullivan’s support for suffrage here.

Gotham Center for New York City History: Suffragists and Suffragettes: Mike Wallace on the New York Movement for Voting Rights

In this excerpt from his book Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mike Wallace takes a close look at the suffrage movement’s at-times squabbling factions and how activists bounced back from defeat after defeat to march on for voting rights.

Wallace’s chapter on New York suffragists begins with the failure to win women’s voting rights at the 1894 state constitutional convention, and then moves on to how a younger crop of suffrage activists, led by Harriot Stanton Blatch, grew the movement.

Wallace also examines the efforts of the New York City Woman Suffrage Party, and how their focus on the formal political process ultimately paved the way for the victory of 1917, when New Yorkers voted to give women the right to vote.

Read Wallace’s whole excerpt here. Buy his book here.

Gotham Center for New York City History: How World War I Impacted the Suffrage Debate by Johanna Neuman

This chapter of Johanna Neuman’s book Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote,  excerpted here at Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York History, analyzes the impact of World War I on the fight for suffrage.

Neuman notes that suffrage activists changed their rhetoric in light of the Great War, turning to hyper-patriotism as they pursued their quest for voting rights.

She writes:

[S]uffragists won the vote not because of their war service itself but because fighting for their cause during wartime forced them to make wrenching choices between pacifism and patriotism that hardened them as political actors. Suffrage in the end was not a gift from male lawmakers for female war service. It came not because they served in war but because they excelled in displaying that service in the public square. War had given them a platform, not a guarantee. How they performed was riveting.

Meanwhile, the more militant tactics of those like Alice Paul alienated the media and authorities. Paul lead a group of protesters who picketed the White House, a “symbol of national identity,” Neuman writes, at a time of war. Suffragists who disagreed with Paul’s actions distanced themselves from her.

Read the whole excerpt here. Buy Neuman’s book here.

Additional resource: Marcela Micucci’s review of the book in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City.

Gotham Center for New York City History: Black Women and the Right to Vote in New York by Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello

This excerpt, run on the Gotham Center’s blog, of Susan Goodier’s and Karen Pastorello’s book Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State focuses on black women’s suffrage activism.

The scholars note that black women saw winning the right to vote as a fundamental component of their fight against segregation and lynching. In their eyes, suffrage meant a chance to utilize political power at the ballot box to effect change that could strike against racism.

Goodier and Pastorello write:

True to their commitment to “uplift” the race, black women wove agitation for the vote into their activism for civil rights, moral reform, and community improvement. Because black women typically had more power within their own communities than did white women in theirs, black women saw the need for suffrage differently than white women did. Issues that occupied the energies of white women, such as the need for “equality within their families, political rights, and access to paid work,” did not mean as much to black women. Some black women did not feel the necessity to press for the vote as much as they felt the need to agitate to “emancipate their race from the oppressive conditions under which they lived.” However, core groups of black women certainly agitated for the vote throughout the movement, with or without a connection to white women’s suffrage organizations. They saw the vote as a way to solve the problems the black race — and especially women — faced, including segregation, lynching, and other forms of systematic racism.

Read the whole excerpt here. You can buy their book here.

Additional resource: Marcela Micucci’s review of the book in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City.

Gotham Center for New York City History: When the Media Elite Threw Their Fedoras into the Ring for Women’s Rights by Brooke Kroeger

Brooke Kroeger, author of the book The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote, penned this excerpt on the Gotham Center’s blog on the media elite who backed suffrage.

Kroeger explains that New York media bigwigs’ advocacy for suffrage was a key reason why the suffrage campaign was ultimately victorious. Some of these media bigwigs included members of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, the New York-group that is the subject of Kroeger’s book.

Kroeger writes:

Gotham Center for New York City History: When the Suffrage Movement Got Its Makeover On by Brooke Kroeger

Writing in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City, author Brooke Kroeger explores the journalist Nellie Bly’s exhortations to suffragists that they get their fashion in order. Kroeger goes on in the article to look at how press coverage of the movement changed as suffrage activists paid more attention to their fashion choices and the spectacle of their parades.

As Kroeger notes, Bly argued that the style of suffrage activists, and how they looked, was important to the success of the movement.

Kroeger explains:

Bly’s point was this: intellectual or not, for a woman, neglect of appearance is a weakness, not a strength. “And in working for a cause,” she went on, “I think it is wise to show the men that its influence does not make woman any the less attractive.” Even more to the point, she said, “Dress is a great weapon in the hands of a woman if rightly applied. It is a weapon men lack, so women should make the most of it. Why not use the powerful means of pretty clothes?”

However questionable Bly’s critique might seem from any number of contemporary vantage points, it did prove prescient. As the 1900s turned to the 1910s, the suffrage movement’s public image underwent a dramatic change, largely thanks to two late-breaking developments in the campaign’s final decade: one, the eye-popping parades and pageants the leadership produced, and two, the strong new support of elegant, influential, socially prominent New Yorkers, including celebrities, powerful men in professional, academic, and religious life, and fashionable society and smart set dames and gents.  Both brought the cause fresh energy and oomph. Press coverage improved and dubious or indifferent members of the public did a sharp double-take.

You can read the full article here.

Gotham Center for New York City History: Two Jewish Society Sisters Go At It Over the Vote by Alice Sparberg Alexiou

Not all women supported suffrage. In fact, as historian Alice Sparberg Alexiou writes in this piece for Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York History, there was an organized movement of women who were dead-set against getting the right to vote, thinking it would corrupt women and ruin their chances of staying in the home and teaching their sons good morals.

In this article, Alexiou looks at how the suffrage movement divided two American Jewish women—sisters, in fact. One sister, Maud Nathan, was an ardent suffragist who became a major organizer for the movement. But Annie Nathan Meyer was ardently against suffrage.

Alexiou writes:

So what are we to make of these two sisters? They had so much in common — both so accomplished, so powerful. So why did the sisters have diametrically opposing views on one of the most pressing social issues of their day? Some suggest that Annie turned “Anti” just to spite Maud. Why? We don’t know. Families are complicated; remember that famous quote by Tolstoy. But in Annie’s autobiography, published five years after Maud’s death, Annie describes the resentment she felt towards her older sister when they were children. Her anger is palpable. In her book Annie also dished up and other unhappy stories about her famous family. We learn that despite their luxurious beginnings, the Nathan sisters had a tragic childhood. Their father was a habitual philanderer; once, Annie, age three, out in Central Park with her nurse, saw him with another woman on his arm. When she ran up to him, Robert Nathan pretended not to see his little daughter. After losing the family fortune during the great 1873 financial panic, he moved the family to Green Bay, Wisconsin, then returned to New York, leaving his four children with their mentally ill mother, also named Annie. When she was institutionalized in Chicago, the children returned to New York to live with their father. Soon after, their mother died. It is not clear how; some suggest she committed suicide, as was likely in the case of her granddaughter, Margaret Meyer Cohen, Annie Nathan’s daughter and only child. In 1923, Cohen, twenty-nine, and three months married, “accidentally shot and killed herself while searching for burglars in her home,” the New York Times reported. How ironic that two warring sisters eventually shared the unspeakable tragedy of losing not just a child, but, for each of them, their only child.

Read the whole article here.

Gotham Center for New York City History: Mrs. Frank Leslie’s Million Dollar Gift to Women’s Suffrage by Joan Marie Johnson

In this Gotham Center-published excerpt, Joan Marie Johnson prints a portion of her book on the monied women who funded suffrage activism. 

The excerpt looks at Mrs. Frank Leslie, who was born Miriam Folline but took on the alternate name after her husband, Frank Leslie, died.

Leslie gave over her entire fortune to Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), who used the money to fund a campaign to pass a federal amendment granting women the right to vote. The gift also allowed NAWSA to spend cash on publicity that included weekly newspapers and books documenting suffrage activism.

Johnson writes:

Although she was not an activist, Leslie consistently supported the suffrage movement with small donations for well over two decades before leaving her estate to Catt. Moreover, she demonstrated through her life choices and business acumen that women were capable of economic independence. Together, Leslie’s love life and business achievements reveal that she took control of her own life and her finances, despite the steady stream of men in her life — men on whom she could not rely. This independent spirit was probably the source of her dedication to woman suffrage. It should not be surprising that Leslie wrote that the woman of the future “must free herself from her swaddling clothes and go into the world with courage and self-reliance,” traits she had already proven to have herself.Leslie decided to leave her considerable fortune to Catt to use for the suffrage movement in order to provide other women a means to the independence and power she had been able to develop through the publishing business she inherited.

Read the entire excerpt here. You can buy Johnson’s book here.