The Campaign For Women Suffrage In Virginia

In 1920, Virginia's General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant women the vote. Virginia's suffragists lost. Or did they? When the thirty-sixth state ratified the amendment, women gained voting rights across the nation. Virginia suffragists were a part of that victory, although their role has been nearly forgotten. They marched in parades, rallied at the state capitol, spoke to crowds on street corners, staffed booths at fairs, lobbied legislators, picketed the White House and even went to jail. The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia reveals how women created two statewide organizations to win the right to vote. At the centenary of the movement, these remarkable women can at last be recognized for their important contributions.

In 1920, Virginia's General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant women the vote. Virginia's suffragists lost. Or did they? When the thirty-sixth state ratified the amendment, women gained voting ri

A collection of scholarly essays and primary documents which consider both sides of the woman suffrage question, particularly as it was debated in the South and in Tennessee, which in 1920 became the pivotal thirty-sixth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

In 1920, Virginia's General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant women the vote. Virginia's suffragists lost. Or did they? When the thirty-sixth state ratified the amendment, women gained voting rights across the nation. Virginia suffragists were a part of that victory, although their role has been nearly forgotten. They marched in parades, rallied at the state capitol, spoke to crowds on street corners, staffed booths at fairs, lobbied legislators, picketed the White House and even went to jail. The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia reveals how women created two statewide organizations to win the right to vote. At the centenary of the movement, these remarkable women can at last be recognized for their important contributions.

"This book is not written for women; it is written for men. It is in opposition to woman's suffrage, which the writer regards as one of the greatest afflictions which could happen to any state"--P.9. The author uses the laws of Virginia to demonstrate how the women's rights movement, and woman suffrage in particular, seeks to strip men of their rights and transfer them to women and children.

During the British women's suffrage campaign of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women wrote plays to convert others to their cause; they wrote essays to justify their militant actions; and they wrote fiction and poetry about their prison experiences. This volume is a diverse collection of these writings, focused on the women's suffrage campaign in England and written primarily during the brief period between the New Woman writers of the 1890s and the modernists of the twentieth century. Many of these works have not been reprinted since they were first published. This important collection includes essays reflecting a variety of opinions and political positions; excerpts from autobiographies by women involved in the movement; suffrage poetry; the song that became the official song of the British suffrage movement; several one-act plays that were written and performed specifically to advance the suffrage cause; and short stories and excerpts from novels about suffrage.

"Both a page-turning drama and an inspiration for every reader"--Hillary Rodham Clinton Soon to Be a Major Television Event The nail-biting climax of one of the greatest political battles in American history: the ratification of the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote. "With a skill reminiscent of Robert Caro, [Weiss] turns the potentially dry stuff of legislative give-and-take into a drama of courage and cowardice."--The Wall Street Journal "Weiss is a clear and genial guide with an ear for telling language ... She also shows a superb sense of detail, and it's the deliciousness of her details that suggests certain individuals warrant entire novels of their own... Weiss's thoroughness is one of the book's great strengths. So vividly had she depicted events that by the climactic vote (spoiler alert: The amendment was ratified!), I got goose bumps."--Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times Book Review Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. The opposing forces include politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and a lot of racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis"--women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation. They all converge in a boiling hot summer for a vicious face-off replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel's, and the Bible. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, along with appearances by Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman's Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.

Slavery is as basic a part of Virginia history as George Washington, who was accompanied at Valley Forge and Yorktown by his slave William Lee, and Thomas Jefferson, who directed his slaves to cut 30 feet off a mountaintop for the site of Monticello. Slavery in the Old Dominion began in 1619, when a Spanish frigate was captured and its cargo of Negroes brought to Jamestown. Virginia Negroes experienced slavery as field laborers, as skilled craftsmen, as house servants. In 1935, the Virginia Writers' Project began collecting data for a history of Negroes in the Old Dominion through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Depression. Published in 1940 as "The Negro in Virginia", it was regarded as a "classic of its kind." Modern readers will be surprised at how relevant it remains today. -- From publisher's description.