Tidewater suffragists finally get some credit
Before American women could vote in 1920, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia headquarters was in Richmond, giving suffragists easier access to state legislators. However, some very active suffragists were extremely busy establishing local league chapters in Tidewater Virginia in the early 1900s.
The Equal Suffrage Leagues of Norfolk, established in 1910, and Williamsburg, in 1911, were two of the first; Newport News’ came in 1912. More followed, with nearly 20,000 members in 140 Virginia chapters by 1919.
“The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia” by Brent Tarter, Marianne E. Julienne and Barbara C. Batson sheds light on many of the largely unsung area women who marched, picketed and lobbied legislators during these tumultuous times. The authors’ access to the records of the Equal Suffrage League enabled them to flesh out the stories of the decades-long fight of these persistent women: Tarter and Julienne are editors of the Library of Virginia’s Dictionary of Virginia Biography project, and Batson is Library of Virginia exhibitions coordinator.
The names of Hampton suffragist Janie Porter Barrett, Williamsburg’s Anne Baker Tucker Tyler, Newport News’ Faith Morgan and Norfolk’s Pauline Adams, Maud Jamison and Jesse Townsend have been ignored in the mainstream for too long, an injustice that this book helps remedy.
At least 100 Virginia women marched in the famous 1913 “parade,” an early march on Washington. Jamison was arrested at least seven times as she protested quietly with her fellow “Silent Sentinels” in front of the White House. Not only did local women march, picket and lobby, but some were also jailed, force-fed and beaten by guards not far from here in Occoquan, Virginia, on Nov. 14, 1917 — the “Night of Terror” — for having demonstrated in Washington.
The authors also describe how two competing statewide organizations formed — one committed to an amendment to the Virginia Constitution and one devoted to amending the U.S. Constitution.
The national effort’s Carrie Chapman Catt, who went on to found the League of Women Voters in 1920, and New Jersey’s Alice Paul spent time here inspiring their Virginia counterparts.
Meantime, Southern legislators and anti-suffragists opposed a federal woman suffrage amendment, since they believed it threatened states’ rights and white supremacy.
Virginia’s 1901-02 state
Constitution and Jim Crow laws deprived almost all Black men of the right to vote.
White women exclusively comprised the Equal Suffrage Leagues in Virginia. Black women organized their own clubs to, among other things, fight for suffrage. Janie Porter Barrett helped found the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in 1908 in Hampton, serving as president until 1932.
League members brought suffrage to the floor of the General Assembly three times between 1912 and 1916 but were unsuccessful. Even after the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 by Tennessee, the last of 36 states — Virginia not among them — many Black women faced obstacles as they tried to register to vote. In Phoebus and the larger city of Hampton, for example, voter registrars turned away many Black women or asked them to qualify by answering questions such as “How long can the House of Representatives take recess without the consent of the Senate?”
As the white women’s Equal Suffrage League of
Virginia disbanded, the League of Women Voters of Virginia got its start in 1920. Today there are 14 local leagues in Virginia — including, in this region, the Williamsburg Area and South Hampton Roads leagues. The league began accepting men as members in 1974.