Looking back at San Jose’s July 4 jubilee

Sara KnoxGoodrich managed to turn San Jose’s parade on July 4, 1876, into a pivotal moment for the women’s suffrage movement in California.

Sarah Knox- Goodrich was an early crusader for women’s suffrage and one of the first in a long line of women to figure prominently in San Jose’s political history. We salute her this week because equal voting rights again are threatened in this nation— and she managed to turn July 4, 1876, into a pivotal moment for the suffrage movement in California.

San Jose has had some spectacular Fourth of July celebrations and will again when times improve. But for significance, they may never trump that Centennial Jubilee of 1876. Especially the parade.

The city went all- out. The San Jose Weekly Mercury wrote of planning a “glorious pyrotechnic display, magnificent ball and an inspiring observance and celebration beyond all local precedent.”

Knox- Goodrich, a wealthy woman with great political instincts, saw her opportunity.

She had helped organize San Jose’s first Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869, and by 1876 it had 200 members. When the Fourth dawned, her home and her supporters’ homes were draped with banners for the cause. She jumped in her carriage and set out to crash the parade with as many other prominent women as she could muster. According to Barbara Allen Babcock’s history, they carried placards reading, “No Taxation Without Representation” and “The Class Entitled to Respectful Consideration.”

Knox- Goodrich wanted to join forces with black and Chinese residents who were also discriminated against, but event organizers had other ideas. They put her at the front of the parade. This generated a buzz throughout California. The Mercury featured her role, hailing the celebration as “the grandest event in the city’s history.”

This early feminist learned political strategy when her first husband, William Knox, served in the Assembly and state Senate. By the time he died of tuberculosis in 1867, she had worked with him to pass a bill allowing a widow to control her own estate. She helped win women the right to run for school boards, and in 1877 she nominated herself for an Assembly seat. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton visited her San Jose home.

She was regarded fondly. Babcock notes that Oregon’s “Mother of Equal Suffrage,” Abigail Scott Duniway, who was seldom long on praise, said this of Knox- Goodrich: “Gentlemen admire her, as they always do bright women who have courage to want to be free, and ladies like her despite themselves because of her goodness of heart.”

She died in 1903, 17 years before women won the right to vote. A marker in front of the historic Knox- Goodrich Building at 34 S. First St. acknowledges her contributions.

U. S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D- San Jose, said: “Obviously, all of the women in San Jose and the elected women owe her a debt of gratitude for what she did. I still remember when former San Jose Mayor Janet Gray Hayes declared San Jose the feminist capital of the world.”

Women don’t dominate local politics as they did in Hayes’ political day, but Knox- Goodrich would be heartened to see Lofgren in Congress, San Jose’s Nora Campos in the Assembly— and two strong women as California’s U. S. senators.

Threats to voting rights are reviving today, and the Supreme Court has made them harder to prevent. While drafters of the Constitution did not appreciate equality in the right to vote, it is the essence of the America we celebrate today. At least, it should be. And Knox- Goodrich, who saw common cause with disenfranchised ethnic minorities, should be an inspiration. The next time San Jose has a Fourth of July parade, let’s pick a grand marshal accordingly.