Features suffrage wagon at the Long Island Museum
It isn’t often that governors cite the suffrage movement and votes for women in their State of the State addresses. Yet NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo did exactly this in 2012. For example, a quote from his address in Albany, NY: “We declared independence from Britain before they (colonists) signed the Declaration of Independence. We birthed the…
Continue ReadingDuring one week in May of 1913, New York State suffragists planned a whirlwind schedule of activities to support the suffrage movement. My question is this: Will the centennial celebrants of 2017 in New York State match the women of my grandmother Edna’s generation? The above newspaper clip is from one of Edna’s newspaper columns.
Continue Reading[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdhHr8Fq2VY] What I love about this segment from UK television is the fact that the program focuses on family members of one of Britain’s most famous suffragettes. More about this.
Continue ReadingI don’t know what it’s like where you are, but the snow’s lingering on the ground and one freezing day follows another. This is the time to listen to another installment of Doris Stevens and her first-person account of the suffrage movement. This isn’t a version written by a scholar years after the event. Doris…
Continue ReadingI grew up under the wing of my grandfather Wilmer R. Kearns (shown above) who told me all about Grandmother Edna who died years before I was born. One of Grandmother Edna Kearns’ forays into the world of citizen journalism was to cover a speech by Theodore Roosevelt and write it up in one of her…
Continue ReadingInez Milholland gave her life for our voting rights today after collapsing while on the campaign trail. She died shortly thereafter. Chances are, most people never heard of Inez Milholland. However, they may have seen photos of the magnificent woman on a horse leading the enormous 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC at the time…
Continue ReadingI’m hearing a lot about downsizing consumption this holiday season. This suggests a suffrage-themed gift could be in order. Yvonne Crumlish, whose grandmother Addie’s Votes for Women pennant was featured on “History Detectives” in September, tells me that she saw the HBO special “Iron Jawed Angels” for the first time this year. This could mean…
Continue ReadingMrs. Raymond Brown took over after Harriett May Mills as president of New York’s state suffrage organization. A rare recording of Mrs. Brown speaking is a valuable look at the period, as well as a reference in one of Grandmother Edna Kearns’ newspaper columns that she wasn’t all that pleased with Mrs. Brown being selected…
Continue ReadingMany suffragists not only worked for civil rights, but they also took stands for peace –not an insignificant position during World War I. Votes for Women wasn’t a single issue for many women in the suffrage movement. They may have worked for their own civil rights, but they viewed the struggle in a broader context….
Continue ReadingConcerned in 1913 that they might be criticized for being unproper, the suffragists laid down strict rules for marchers. See the article explaining how Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw didn’t like the looks of legs in a parade. “It looked very bad last year,” she explained, to see children’s long legs “bobbing” along. “This year we…
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