USA Suffrage Literature

April 23rd is a very important day for the literature world. This day is known as International Day of the Book or World Book Days, a yearly event on April 23rd, organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. In adition, it's the day in which each country commemorate their best writters.

Because of this, we want to present the USA suffrage literature because this was also an important way to fight for their rights and show the female power education. Furthermore, an astonishing number of canonical and popular US writers voiced their support of woman suffrage through literary works. 

Between the  most important figures, we can mention:

 Fanny Fern, for example, wrote pro-suffrage essays such as “Independence” and “Shall Women Vote?”. 

 - Harriet Beecher Stowe published serialized fiction such as "My Wife and I" and fictional dialogues such as "The Chimney Corner" that expressed moderate support for suffrage. 

Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps authored suffrage literature for children. 

Twentieth-century authors Gertrude Atherton, Mary Johnston, Zona Gale, Edna Ferber, and Mary Austin all wrote novels that describe aspects of American suffrage in moving detail.

 

Even avant-gardist Gertrude Stein considered the suffrage theme when she wrote an opera libretto memorializing Susan B. Anthony, The Mother of Us All twenty-five years after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In addition to these more canonical figures, many popular writers–sensation novelist Lillie Devereux Blake, satirical poet Alice Duer Miller, and Western writer Abigail Scott Duniway–also made significant contributions to the suffrage literary tradition.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SUFFRAGE LITERATURE:

 Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall and Other Writings. Ed. Joyce Warren. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986.

—-. “A Divided Republic: An Allegory of the Future,” in A Daring Experiment and Other Stories. New York: Lovell, Coryell, 1892:  346–60.

Duniway,Abigail Scott. Edna and John [1876]. Reprint, Pullman: Washington State University Press, 2000.

Ferber, Edna. Fanny Herself. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1917

BIBLIOGRAPHIE:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Day#Spain
- http://womensuffrage.org/?p=529

AIN'T I A WOMAN?

If we are talking about women who fought for having rights and being as free as men were, we have to talk about Sojourner Truth too. 

That name makes us suspect something: 

- “sojourner” means “someone who stays temporarily” and combined with the word “truth” makes us imagine that it is “a woman who had temporarily the truth”. 

Sojourner Truth not only claimed rights of African Americans, but she also stood up for women's equality.

White and black women working together was an uneasy mix. Historically talking, it was a very difficult situation. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), started demeaning African American women. It cause was focused on enfranchisement for white women. So it started an emerging “Anti-Black” sense.  

The main goal of NAWSA's movement was to marginalize as many African-American women as possible. 

Through this effort African American women developed the idea of the "educated suffragist”, which meant that being educated was a requisite for being allowed to vote. 

At first, African - American female activists organized themselves creating the African - American Suffrage Movement.The women's suffrage movement began with women such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Ella Baker, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, and many others.

After the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, women both in the North and in the South started voting. Because of white people’s fears of black ones having political power, black women faced a lot of difficulties to vote until the 1960s.

Her innumerable speeches asking for both women’s rights and freedom of slavery, made her a particular personality in American history.

Sojourner Truth was born as slave in New York, called Isabella Baumfree. This woman continued her journey going to Florence, Massachusetts, where is still remembered today by a statue in her honor. 

There, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry looking for justice and improvement of society. 

Living in that town, she met the famous William Lloyd Garrison (who became a friend of her), and with other leaders, they achieved founding the antislavery resistance center. 

Sojourner also met Olive Gilbert who wrote The Narrative of Sojourner Truth. 

Before dying in Michigan in 1883, she met other important person and was photographed with him in a very controversial picture because of the disposition of them in the photo. This person was Abraham Lincoln, former President of the United States. 

In the picture, we show here, we can see a black woman who is sitting and a white President who remains standing next to her. 

During the 1840s, this courageous woman was involved in the antislavery movement, and by the 1850s she was also involved in the woman’s rights movement. Her most famous speech took place in 1851 at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. It was called: “Ain’t I a Woman?”

This spontaneous speech is one of the most well-known ones that remains in the American and World history. 

She was known as an outspoken feminist and antislavery fighter. She could be proud, because she is still remembered by many people as an inspiring woman.

Many newspapers published this speech in different versions, but the most known one is the following: 

http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp

A lot of famous women have read her speech since years. Here, we have a well-known face, reading this famous speech: Kerry Washington

We really recommend that you listen to this touching speech. So funny and amazing!

She also has a bust in the Capitol of WDC. Here we can see an imagen of the actual First Lady: Michelle Obama, gazing at this bust. She is the first African-American woman to have a memorial bust in the U.S. Capitol.

DOCUMENTARY: WHO WAS SOJOURNER TRUTH 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92bR2S2HoS0

BOOK: SOJOURNER TRUTH: A LIFE, A SYMBOL by Nell Irvin Painter 

BOOK: Gilbert, Olive.  NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH: A NORTHERN SLAVE, EMANCIPATED FROM BODILY SERVITUDE BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK, IN 1828

More information in the bibliography:

https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/sojourner-truth.htm

http://www.biography.com/people/sojourner-truth-9511284#synopsis

http://sojournertruthmemorial.org/sojourner-truth/her-history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_woman_suffrage_movement

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/TWR-16.html

Iron Jawed Angels

We have seen that the suffragist movement had left a deep mark in history. For this reason, the suffragist movement has been the topic of many creations in the world of art such as films, books and so on. However, in this section, we are going to focus on one film which created diverse critical responses and told such important event during the American Suffragist Movement in 1910: Iron Jawed Angels (2004).

The film tells the story of two suffragists: Alice Paul and Lucy Burns recognized by the fact of using peaceful and effective nonviolent strategies and dialogues to make the American feminist movement conscious of the importance of their fight in order to get the right to vote. We are going to comment on diverse important aspects:

Firstly, one aspect that we have to mention and explain it is the fact that they were the founders of a new group of suffragist: National Woman’s Party (NWP), after being pushed out of the NAWSA (National American Woman’s Suffrage Association).

The National Woman’s Party gave the priority to the passage of a Constitutional Amendment ensuring women’s suffrage. Paul and Burns learned a lot from the suffragettes in Britain. For instance, in relation to the violence, the suffragettes used it in order to gain publicity and make people conscious of the women situation. Thus, Paul decided to use publicity in order to ridicule and damage the Democratic Party and the President, at that moment, Woodrow Wilson. It is very interesting because since the beginning of the film, we can see that the British and American suffragist movement are linked which shows that all women supported between them.

The purpose of this group was “to secure an amendment to the US Constitution enfranchising women and to pass the ERA”. What is the ERA? The ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) was a proposed amendment to the US Constitution designed to guarantee equal rights for women.

Moreover, the members of this party were called Silent Sentinels because they used the silence as a form of protest. A curiosity was that they continued her campaign even when the US entered into the war in 1917. It was argued that it was hypocritical for the US to fight for democracy in Europe while it was denying its benefits to the US population. However, the suffragettes in Britain decided to stop when their country entered into the war in 1914.

In relation to the President, Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and the 28^th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He held off support for a nationwide constitutional amendment for the suffragist movement because his party was divided, including the South who was against anything related with rights, except for Arkansas. The National Woman’s Party spook badly of the President and his party for not having adopted any amendment on the matter. However, he kept in touch with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. 

Furthermore, in the film, we can see how the NWP protesters were against the President Wilson and tried to picket outside the White House. As a result, many women were arrested for their actions and imprisoned. Women were mistreated in the jail and so, they undertook to do a hunger strike. But, guards made them eat in an aggressive way. The same thing occurred in Britain to the suffragettes.

Officers making a suffragist eat in the jail

Another important thing was the Nineteenth Amendment. The NWP pressured the President to introduce this amendment into the Constitution, and finally, he did. The Nineteenth Amendment prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. This amendment was the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement in the US to get the vote.

In conclusion, we see the importance of films about this topic because it helps us to learn more about those women who fought for achieving the right to vote and get the equality between men and women. Also, it is important to know the details of the context because it can help us in understanding the reason of movements. 

In the next link, we can find the full movie and have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKZ2siXjijA 

Also, there are more information in the next links:

http://iron-jawed-angels.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Jawed_Angels
http://www.sewallbelmont.org/learn/national-womans-party/+https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Woman%27s_Party
http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/woodrow-wilson 

Thanks for your attention and hope that you'll enjoy! :)