100-Year Anniversary Woman's Suffrage

Women’s suffrage: then and now

Photo from AP images.

An intro to the movement

The women’s suffrage movement began in the mid nineteenth century with a significant turning point occurring on Aug. 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment for women’s suffrage was ratified. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution granted women the right to vote and was the conclusion of decades of struggle by women suffragists in the United States. Through research into the past, Ana Vaso, Zac Carlson, Jon Wilcox and Nicole Barrios have worked to compile samples of “back in the day” coverage of this movement in history to examine how newspapers in the 1900s reported on it. We researched original coverage from The New York Times and The Washington Post to gather a comprehensive view of the coverage of the news event as it happened.

Woman's Suffrage Timeline

1848
The first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention lated 2 days and the results were 68 women and 32 men signed a Declaration of Sentiments and 12 other resolutions were adopted for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.

1850
The first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Mass., with more than 1,000 
participants. National conventions were held yearly through 1860, except for 1857.

1869
The National Woman Suffrage Association is formed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The goal of the organization is to get voting rights for women through Congressional amendment to the Constitution.

1890
The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merge to to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA fight for voting rights for women.

1893
Colorado becomes the first state to grant women the right to vote. Followed by Utah and Idaho in 1896, with 13 other states following them year after year throughout 1918.

1903
The National Women's Trade Union League is formed and main purpose is to improve wages and working conditions for women.

1913
The Congressional Union is formed to implement a federal amendment to give women the vote. Later, the group was renamed the National Women's Party. 

1916
The first U.S. birth-control clinic opens in Brooklyn, N.Y. The clinic got shut down soon after the opening, but more clinics opened in NY a few years later.

1919
The federal woman suffrage amendment was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate and sent to the states for ratification.

1920

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote is signed into law.

Women’s suffrage: then and now

By Nicole Barrios 

The New York Times, March 21, 1920, page 10
The Washington Post, Feb. 28, 1922, page 10

For this “back in the day” assignment, I have chosen to research how the women’s suffrage movement was covered in the press at the time of the movement and how the 100th anniversary of this movement should be reflected upon today. In this assignment, in which I have looked into history and historical editions of newspapers, I have come to learn more about the industry in which I currently work and hope to work in the future. 

Newspapers during the 1920s are, in fact, different from newspapers produced today; however, some of my research did surprise me in that the editors of The New York Times (who were presumably all men in 1920) allowed and printed letters to the editor written by women about the suffrage movement. I was surprised by the lack of bias I thought I would encounter. Perhaps I thought I would see a stifling of women’s voices during the coverage of this news, yet I was happy to see a fair representation of the movement and the time period in my research on The New York Times and The Washington Post coverage.

Real women’s opinion during the time period:

I would suggest to the editors of The New York Times (our class’ hypothetical supervisors) that they include in their 100th editor written by women suffragists at the time that give voice to their plight, opinions and the movement. For example, in the article, “Bonus Interviews: Equality Under Suffrage,” Helen P. Kempton writes a letter to the editor addressing what suffrage really means and why it is important to society. She writes: 

Photo from National Archives

“As modern civilization has progressed, women have found their way in education, in industry, until now they stand shoulder to shoulder with men, sharing common interests, facing common problems. The exigencies of family life will prevent many women from seeking governmental office, as their lesser physical strength will preclude them from police duty and military service. Is this a reason for denying to them their share of responsibility in the making of the laws, the election of public officers and the serving in office when circumstances permit?”

I like that in this letter to the editor, the reader is able to hear the impassioned voice of a woman in 1920s New York who is living through the women’s suffrage movement, living the news. By including this type of coverage, the reader is not simply getting a calculated version of what the male news reporter for The Times wants them to know but can hear the opinion of a women suffragist herself. I think this is important when it comes to showing all sides of the story and the news, and ensuring the anniversary coverage is not simply what the reporters said but also what the women were saying as well.

Ongoing topic of coverage and different headline styles:

I would also include coverage from The Washington Post in the commemorative coverage of the women’s suffrage movement. The article, “Women Suffrage Upheld by Court: Supreme Justices Unanimous in Declaring 19th Amendment Constitutional,” from a Feb. 28, 
1922 edition of The Post, shows that even two years later, the country was still discussing and challenging the women’s suffrage movement. The article states that the Supreme Court upheld the amendment after it was challenged by the state of Maryland. In that challenge some men “sought to prevent the registration of two women as qualified voters in Baltimore.” 

Headline example from the Washington Post

Although the content of this article is interesting to include in the commemorative coverage because it shows the topic of women’s suffrage was still prevalent in the dialog of America at the time, this article is also a good example of how differently articles appear in papers today. The headline has four different sections to it and all are almost complete sentences, which is not the case today. Today, newspapers wish to make their headlines as short as possible with key words that can be quickly picked up in a Google search. However, in this article, the first headline is all capital letters and bolded, while the other preceding descriptive headlines are almost full sentences that would take the reader more than a glace to grasp. I find this contrast something interesting to note in the 100th anniversary coverage.

Modern Women’s Conference Speech:

For commemorative coverage, I would also include more current views on the women’s movement, and how it is viewed in the modern era. I would include a speech given by Hilary Clinton at the U.N. 4th  World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995. This speech is an example of the continuing mission of women around the world to focus on reaching and maintaining the equality that women fought for throughout the 1900s.

Honoring the 100th anniversary of the women's suffrage movement

By Ana Vaso

"Senate Filibuster Holds Up Suffrage"

New York Times

May 27, 1919

"Delaware Vote Defeats Suffrage"

New York Times

June 3, 1920

"Anthony Centenary Recalls Prediction; Famous Advocate of Woman Suffrage Said It would Come in 1920"

New York Times

Feb. 15, 1920

"Suffrage Battle Will Start Today"

New York Times

Aug. 9, 1920

"Federal Woman Suffrage"

New York TImes

June 6, 1919

The coverage of the women's suffrage movement was really interesting because like most political issues, there was always two very different side to it. There was defiantly an increase in the suffrage movement inclusion in newspapers once the amendment was passed by congress in 1919.The stories leading up to the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920 varied between informational stories about the issue, stories promoting women's rights and articles opposing women's right to vote. The New York Times had many women's suffrage archives, one of them that I though was interesting was the article "Delaware Vote Defeats Suffrage" that was published a couple of months before the 19th amendment was ratified. This story was opposing women's right to vote and talking about the fact that Delaware's vote against women's right was going to end the suffrage movement. 

The "Urging Sessions to Vote on Suffrage" is an article pushing for women's rights early on in June 1919. It explains the support from many state governors that women were getting and predicts Michigan would be the first state followed by other western states to "take speedy action on the amendment"

Photo from the National Archives

Even in 1919, filibusters were used in fighting for women's rights, in the article "Senate Filibuster Holds Up Suffrage", I learned that the vote on motion for delay was 27-64, this was published in May 1919 and predicted the amendment would pass. This article also talked about the "brutal tactics" used by the opposing party which I think was defiantly a trend for those who did not want women to have the right to vote. The tactics and reasoning of the anti-suffrage people did were very brutal,  there ware many anti-suffrage women and men organizations in every state. To show some of the "humor" and tactic used by the anti-suffragists you can look at the cartoons used in newspapers and magazines.

The "Federal Woman Suffrage" article was published after the 19th amendment had passed congress and the house. This a letter explaining what women have gone through in their fight for their right to vote. The obstacles they have overcome and the importance to take this amendment all the way and pass it into law. 

The article "Suffrage Battle Will Start Today" was published in the New York times just a couple weeks before the 19th amendment was added to the constitution. If the battle for suffrage had really started just a few weeks before being ratified that would be very impressive, but the article talks about how it is now or never and the mind-set the women fighting for  amendment must have really strengthened right before it passed and I am so glad it did because I think it is important for women to be confident and fight strong for what they believe in. 

The article "Anthony Centenary Recalls Prediction; Famous Advocate of Woman Suffrage Said It would Come in 1920" was published in the New York Times 6 months before the 19th amendment was ratified. This article talks about 1920 being the year women finally get their rights, which ended up being true.

Article from New York Times archives

The March March

By Jon Wilcox

"5,000 WOMEN MARCH, BESET BY CROWDS"

New York Times

March 4, 1913

On March 3, 1913, one day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, 5,000 women gathered in Washington to demonstrate for their right to vote. In the past, political infighting had crippled the feminist movement, keeping the cause from gathering much needed publicity. But the 1913 march down Pennsylvania Avenue would change everything for the feminist movement. National press coverage byThe New York Times and other esteemed journals catapulted the cause into the public spotlight, solidifying the fragmented feminist organizations, and brought for the first time much needed national attention. Only seven years after the march, the Nineteenth Amendment would amend the constitution, granting women the right to vote.

One day after the marches the New York Times published this story

History always changes. While some historical events never find “historic” status and are exiled into the abyss of forgetfulness, others evolve along another route into our collective consciousness. The demonstrations of March 4, 1913 most definitely fall with the latter.

The New York Times’ March 4 issue reported on the demonstrations in “5,000 WOMEN MARCH, BESET BY CROWDS.” Although New York Times provided almost an entire page to cover the event, the story only appears on page four.

The formatting differences a hundred years have provided are enormous. Today, among many other minor and major changes, headlines are larger, articles are shorter, and pictures are everywhere. The New York Times of March 4, 1913 was dense, black and white, and difficult to read.   

Looking back at The New York Times’ report, it is easy to criticize the journalists and publishers involved, but harder and perhaps more enlightening to note what was done right. The task of determining what is and, especially, what will be newsworthy is a daunting task. The public record provided by The New York Times, the fact that the newspaper did record the story with ample words while it was fresh and before history colored the first hand information of the day is a triumph of human accomplishments. One hundred years later, the paper and ink of March 4, has found its ways through the channels of time to me and, finally, to you.

     Feminist Inez Milholland before march. From the Library of Congress

Image from National Archives

Convergence, or the increasing trend toward media interconnectivity, dominates modern journalism. The term, “newspaper of record,” carries new weight in a world of infinite information. While a simple Google search may provide billions of results, the majority are far from trustworthy. These days, The New York Times dedication to legitimacy means more than ever. Notice the difference in search results betweenThe New York Times’ database and Google’s.

Even in a day and age where interactivity and media convergence dominate, words still serve as the primary mode of communication. In a recent Washington Post blog, Lonnae O'Neal Parker examines the same 1913 march reported by the New York Times in “5,000 WOMEN MARCH, BESET BY CROWDS.” The facts remain the same, but the manner in which they are discussed is quite different these days. In the blogosphere, information is condensed from thousands of words to mere hundreds. In an arena of second-long attention spans, pictures carry enormous meaning and vastly increase the probability for a blog to go viral.  

Back in the day of women's suffrage

By Zac Carlson

"New Jersey Woman's Suffragists"

New York Times 

17 Nov 1902

Intro

For my back in the day assignment I chose to coverage women’s suffrage. Obviously I’m a male but I don’t think the feminist cause is dependent on gender or sex. I looked at newspapers from the late 1800’s up to the passage of the 19^th amendment, which gave women the right to vote, in 1920. The paper I centered my research on was the New York Times as I felt it was one of the most established newspapers in its time while still being very relevant and recognizable to today’s readers.

Coverage

Such a small article from the New York Times.

I was surprised by how balanced the coverage of woman’s suffrage was in these older papers. I expected such a patriarchal society to give the movement short shrift but I was happy to see pretty much unbiased reporting of the facts when it came to suffrage. There were even editorials on the subject. The one thing I will say is that most of the coverage was relegated to pages deep in the newspaper, even when women’s suffrage was close to achieving its goal it didn’t receive front page coverage. Also I noticed the stories tended to be fairly short but that seemed to be a trend for even the front page articles. I get the feeling that women’s suffrage wasn’t considered a tremendously important issue by the population at large while today we look back on it as a major step forward in United States society.

Formatting

The difference in formatting between current newspapers and the past was really interesting. I should have expected it but was taken aback by the lack of pictures which have become almost an essential part of today’s news coverage. The goal seemed to be to squeeze as many words on a page as possible, which personally made it hard for me to read the older coverage. This was caused by both smaller print and less advanced printing presses. The font used also tended to be more compact than what is used presently. Maybe people had better eyesight back in the day. That said, paper is a very temporary article and some of this may simply be due to decaying over time. Some of the anachronisms were pretty interesting, such as the use of “miss” to identify women which is out of style today. The headlines tended to be smaller than those we see today, often they were hard to tell them apart from the text itself. Leads also tended to be more roundabout in their approach. While nowadays journalists try to fit as much of the important W’s in the first sentence, the older coverage often wouldn’t give you even the names of the people involved until well into the story. I also noticed that it was not uncommon to identify a subject by their first name.

Pictures

The pictures of coverage were obviously in black and white but otherwise they were pretty similar to what we see today. There was no Photoshop back in the day so you could argue that they were a more trustworthy source than today. Illustrations were also used a lot more often than they are today, especially in advertisements. The descriptions of pictures were similar to today’s but it was pretty common to see them published without credit to the photographer.

From AP Images

In Conclusion

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by the past coverage of women’s suffrage; it tended to be unbiased despite the industry being ridiculously dominated by males. I would’ve liked to see the issue more prominently in the papers but expectations were exceeded.

Ana Vaso works at KTSW 89.9, the campus radio station.

Zac Carlson also works at KTSW 89.9 as the web content editor. 

Jon Wilcox is a mass communication student at Texas State. 

Nicole Barrios is a news reporter for The University Star campus newspaper.