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 An attractive and historic artifact from the fight for women’s suffrage.
“Votes For Women 1915” American Suffrage Poster, rendered in blue and gold, the traditional colors associated with the American suffrage movement. 18” x 24” Inventory # 21060 $ 2,600 Historical Background:
In the early nineteenth century, women were considered second-class citizens whose existence was limited to the interior life of the home and care of the children. Women were considered sub-sets of their husbands, and after marriage they did not have the right to own property, maintain their wages, or sign a contract, much less vote. The Women’s suffrage movement, formally set into motion in 1848 with the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, sought to change this dynamic. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, prominent early members in the fight to obtain voting rights for women, helped establish the American Equal Rights Association in 1866. The women’s movement soon splintered, however, because of disagreements over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and Fifteenth Amendment in 1870; the Fourteenth Amendment defined “citizenship” and “voters” as “male,” and raised the question as to whether women were considered citizens of the United States at all, while the Fifteenth Amendment reinforced the exclusion of women by solely enfranchising black men. In New York, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony established the radical National Woman Suffrage Association, while Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Henry Blackwell organized the more conservative American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston. By 1915, however, these two groups had merged once again, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association under Stanton’s leadership. This group spearheaded efforts to obtain a women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution. Finally, on January 12, 1915, a bill to this effect was brought before the House of Representatives, but was lost by a vote of 174 against 204. Only in 1919, after years of petitioning, picketing, and protest parades, did both houses of Congress pass the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1920, Woodrow Wilson ratified it and its words became law: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
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