“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.”
Women’s Right to Vote
Brown Countians Estella Taggart-Hopper and Marietta Moser. photos courtesy the Brown County Historical Society.
~by Julia Pearson
T
he 19th Amendment was passed by Congress in June 1919, legalizing voting for female Americans. Ratification into law required passage by 36 states. Indiana voted to ratify on January 16, 1920 and was the 26th state to do so. By August of 1920, 36 states ratified the amendment. More than eight million women across the US voted in elections for the first time that year on November 2. The remaining states ratified the Amendment over the next 60 years, with Mississippi last in 1984. Although legally entitled to vote, black women were effectively denied this right in numerous southern states till around 1965. To commemorate this anniversary, the Brown County League of Women Voters provided a display at the Brown County Public Library for the month of February. They will have a Centennial Tea Party on Sunday, March 8 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Brown County History Center in Nashville. Louise Hillery, author of Bold Women in Indiana History is the featured speaker. Hillery was inspired to research Hoosier women after
38 Our Brown County • March/April 2020
100 YEARS
being asked by students why women are missing from history books. There will be exhibits by the League and the Brown County Historical Society the month of March. Visit <lwvbrowncounty.org> for more info. Social reforms in the 1800s rallied women and men as they worked for temperance and abolition of slavery. Women soon advocated for full participation in citizenship, including speaking in public, serving on committees, keeping their wages, and guardianship of their children, as well as voting rights. Women first collectively launched the suffrage movement in 1848 during a two-day convention at Seneca Falls, New York, which had 300 in attendance. Activist and leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Declaration of Sentiments calling for women’s equality. Other organizers were Quakers Lucretia Mott, Mary M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt. Though she was not at the Seneca Falls Convention, Susan B. Anthony devoted her life to the cause. Anthony and Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association and started up a women’s rights newspaper called The Revolution. Anthony gave
