Features suffrage wagon at the Long Island Museum
by Kenneth Florey The Women’s Political Union was organized in 1910 by Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It evolved out of her earlier Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, created in 1907 to provide working women with a voice in their own lives. The Union eventually became incorporated within Alice Paul’s Congressional Union…
Continue ReadingQuestion #1: What suffrage stories did you hear when you were young? My mother told me that my grandmother Edna and her generation did important work so that women could vote. I was a shy kid and couldn’t wait until the lesson on the suffrage or Votes for Women movement was taught in school. I…
Continue Readingby Marguerite Kearns I rarely thought of myself as a suffrage descendant when I was young. There were too many other ways of viewing myself, especially my social position and various roles in life. Late in life I’ve embraced the descendant label of a “suffragist’s granddaughter.” And I realize the extent to which I’ve been…
Continue ReadingYou’d think the article wasn’t important: the news that greenhouse gas has reached a high never before encountered by humans! It appeared yesterday on page 5 in my local paper. Two million years ago was the last time greenhouse gas levels were this high. COMING SOON: Suffrage Wagon columnist Tara Bloyd launches a letter writing…
Continue Readingby Kenneth Florey Suffragists in America also promoted automobile tours as a way of advertising “Votes for Women.” The most famous trip was that of Alice Snitzer Burke and Nell Richardson in 1916. The pair left New York on April 6, accompanied by their new kitten called “Mascot,” to make a circuit of the United…
Continue ReadingPart I of Kenneth Florey’s article on suffrage automobiles is available NOW: “Suffrage Autos: A new form of freedom.” Automobiles became hot items during the suffrage movement because grassroots organizing became more efficient. Ken Florey is the author of an upcoming book on suffrage memorabilia, and he’s also the Suffrage Wagon columnist who has documented…
Continue Readingby Kenneth Florey Women, Cars, and the Suffrage Movement: Part I Early on in the history of the modern suffrage movement, there was a strong connection between the development of the automobile and its adaptation by suffragist activists. In part, cars were functional and could be used by various movement organizations to ferry workers from…
Continue ReadingWe The People: Great Women of the Suffrage Movement. By Dana Meachen Rau, Compass Point Books, 2006. This 48-page book includes biographies of several women involved in the fight for suffrage, each with a tagline. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Mother of the Movement; Lucy Stone: Speaking State to State; Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Proud to March; etc) …
Continue ReadingJuly 2013 is the suffrage wagon’s centennial. It’s interesting how we pay attention to something when it has a 100th anniversary. Something that a few days before had been virtually invisible pops up on the radar screen and commends attention just because a centennial has been announced. When I bring up my favorite subject of…
Continue Reading“Woman and her Sphere” is a blog and web site created and maintained by Elizabeth Crawford (UK researcher, writer, and dealer in women’s books and ephemera). She is not only on the search for great material, but she’s immersed in it. Her blog contains many features, including a diary entry of an English suffrage volunteer…
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