Similarities between women’s vote, MeToo, BLM
One hundred years ago this month Tennessee was the last state — with Wisconsin the first — to ratify the 19th Amendment allowing all American women to vote.
The fight by women for the right to choose their government representatives took decades. Women marched, protested, stood silently outside the White House holding signs and pleaded with those in power for referendums to change the way things were to the way things should be. Equality.
The struggle started by women suffragists in Wisconsin and other states is a struggle that continues — to vote, to end systemic racism, to end sexism.
The energy of thousands of women fighting for the right to vote is not unlike the energy associated with the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements.
“I think with all change it’s the voice of the people when it hits that crescendo that really creates change,” said Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters in Wisconsin.
“The voice of justice is very loud now. I do think we will see change like when we saw change in granting universal suffrage and the change in the 1960s with civil rights,” Cronmiller said.
The League of Women Voters grew out of the women's suffrage movement and was founded by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, who was born in Ripon.
The fact Wisconsin was the first of the required 36 states to ratify the 19th Amendment belies the state's prior record in the effort to grant women universal suffrage.
For a state known as a bastion of progressivism, whose motto is “Forward,” Wisconsin had been neither progressive nor forward-thinking in its treatment of women. Numerous attempts to grant Wisconsin women full voting powers over decades went down in flames. Until the morning of June 10, 1919. Only a handful of state legislatures were still in session, Wisconsin among them, when Congress approved the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919, granting all American women full voting rights.
Most states had to wait until their legislatures gathered to vote, a process that ended up taking more than a year, until Tennessee was the last to ratify in August 1920.
But Wisconsin lawmakers, not unlike current legislators, did not finish all their business by the end of the legislative calendar and were still meeting that June. The Illinois Legislature was in session, too.
At 10:48 a.m. on June 10, 1919, Illinois lawmakers ratified the 19th Amendment, while Wisconsin's Legislature passed it at 11:52 a.m., according to a front-page account in The Milwaukee Journal.
In a border rivalry that preceded (by two years) the first Green Bay PackersChicago Bears football game, each state sent a courier racing by car and train to Washington, D.C., to quickly deliver documents to the State Department.
However, there was an error in Illinois' document. A new one had to be drafted, approved and sent to Washington. It arrived eight days after Wisconsin's paperwork.
Even though Wisconsin was the first state, suffragists here faced enormous difficulties including repeated stonewalling by an all-male Legislature.
Because politicians don't listen to people who don't vote, it was an uphill battle for Wisconsin women. Part of the
“There are similarities between all movements to create change to ensure that all people have the freedoms ... That our voice would count, our vote would count.”
problem was voters had to approve referendums giving women the vote and male voters had no incentive to do that.
Another roadblock in Wisconsin was the fact that suffrage and the temperance movement were intertwined. Many suffragists also campaigned for moderation or abstinence of liquor because women and children were affected by husbands and fathers who visited taverns on payday, leaving little or no money for food and housing.
However, that meant suffragists often clashed with Wisconsin's powerful beer lobby as well as the state's mostly conservative, ale-drinking German immigrant populations.
The Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association formed in 1869 during a standing-room-only convention at Milwaukee City Hall. Starting that year, women could run for school boards and other elective school offices in Wisconsin, but couldn't vote for themselves.
Not until 1886 did the Legislature pass a law allowing women to vote in school elections, and that was only after Wisconsin men approved the measure in a statewide referendum. Apparently, women voting on school issues was acceptable to Wisconsin's male legislators, but not so on other offices.
Some suffragists worried that if ballots
Debra Cronmiller executive director of the League of Women Voters in Wisconsin
contained candidates for several positions, not just school board members, women wouldn't be allowed to vote. That's exactly what happened in spring 1887, the first election in which Wisconsin women were allowed to vote. Some women's votes were discarded, and some women were simply barred from voting because the wording of the provision was vague.
A suffrage leader sued to get her ballot accepted, and a circuit court judge agreed. The state Supreme Court reversed the decision in 1888, ruling that there was no way to guarantee women were voting only for school offices. The Supreme Court said the law needed to be rewritten.
Not until 1901 did the Legislature finally allow separate school ballots for women. This was 50 years after Kansas women had received the same voting rights.
Wisconsin suffragists managed to persuade the Legislature in 1911 to call for a statewide referendum allowing women full voting powers. The next year it was soundly defeated with almost two-thirds of male voters giving it a thumbs down.
In 1913, Wisconsin's Legislature authorized another referendum granting women full voting rights, but the governor vetoed it. Two years later lawmakers rejected yet another full suffrage referendum.
Women continued lobbying and fighting for the right to vote in all elections, though national leaders had determined that Wisconsin was a lost cause by 1916 and efforts shifted to a campaign to amend the Constitution, rather than trying to change voting laws in individual states.
Then, just three months before Congress approved the 19th Amendment, Wisconsin's Legislature passed another limited voting bill, allowing women in the state to vote only in presidential elections.
State suffragists were decidedly underwhelmed, declaring it was too little, too late. A few months later, tables turned in Wisconsin in a hurry.
Apparently male legislators in the Badger State saw the writing on the wall and it said suffrage was going to happen soon. They jumped on the bandwagon and Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the 19th Amendment.
The next year, millions of women in the United States voted for the first time in the 1920 presidential election.
While more men voted than women for many years following ratification of the 19th Amendment, starting a few decades ago women began voting in greater numbers than men. Since 1980, the composition of American voters in presidential elections has been roughly 53% female and 47% male, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
For the League of Women Voters in Wisconsin, the struggle that started so many years ago continues. The group filed a lawsuit against the requirement that all Wisconsin voters must show a photo ID. And Cronmiller said the gerrymandering of state voting districts, which were changed by the Wisconsin Legislature following the 2010 census, infringes on voter rights.
The fight over absentee ballots in the April presidential primary and the upcoming November election is being watched keenly by the League of Women Voters, which supports voting by mail. The group is also asking for all polling places to open for the presidential election to avoid hours-long waits at some sites in Wisconsin in April.
“There are similarities between all movements to create change to ensure that all people have the freedoms our founding mothers and fathers tried to ensure all citizens would have. That our voice would count, our vote would count,” said Cronmiller.
“Those principles are still fighting for.”