Women's Suffrage Movement

Women’s Suffrage Movement

By: Sarah Rodey

MODERN AMERICA: 1900 TO 1945

HIST 364 6380

Professor Steven Sharoff

September 26, 2014

How did the Women’s Suffrage Movement change America? At one point in time it was thought that a women’s place was barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. The question is when did this idea change, how did it change, and who help change this image of women? The Women’s Suffrage Movement was a long and delicate process, starting in 1840 when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were barred from attending a World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London (NWHM). Even though the event did not take place in the United States it fueled the fire for the Women’s Suffrage Movement. There are those who were against the movement and allied themselves with the anti-suffrage movement. One of those people was an independent woman and a member of the politically-active Roosevelt Family, Kate Shippen Roosevelt opposed women gaining the right to vote.  In her diary, written from 1912-19, Mrs. Roosevelt, the widow of Theodore Roosevelt’s first cousin, Hilborne L. Roosevelt, often expressed her negative views on this heated debate. Describing women’s right to vote as, “simply unnecessary,” Mrs. Roosevelt did not mince words.  She along with, for the most part middle to upper-middle class, conservative Protestants like herself subscribed to the notion that women were biologically destined to be childbearers and homemakers (Hazard). Unfortunately there were those that became violent. During one of the largest protest of the suffrage movement, many protesters were assaulted by those in the crowd who opposed the women's right-to-vote campaign. Attacks ranged from spitting and throwing of objects to all-out physical assaults. While many women were injured, the public was outraged at the violence that translated to wider support for the suffrage movement (Gibson Aug 12, 2011). It was not until August of 1920 the nineteenth Amendment was ratified...