Tuesday, November 6 is Election Day. Do You Know Where Your Poll Is?
A leaflet on the Woman Suffrage Amendment not terribly unlike what we get in the mail these days previewing the ballot so voters are better informed to navigate the voting process
By Caitlin Hawke
Thanks to the considerable efforts of a load of brave people of the female persuasion like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her daughter and Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch, Susan B. Anthony, and Gertrude Foster Brown, it was 101 years ago tomorrow that New York State accorded women the right to vote, helping to pave the way three years later for the 19th Amendment. And by New York State, I really mean New York City, because if you look at the county by county breakdown (scroll all the way down), our urban forebears padded the 80,000 vote margin of victory.
The day that women's suffrage was on the ballot, 12,000 women stood on corners throughout the city encouraging people of the male persuasion, aka the then voters, to grant women the vote.
They were angry women. Docile women. Black women. Chinese women. Uppity and arrogant women. Handsome and plain women. "Women who knew their place." Working women. Moms and daughters. Religious women. Temperate women. Righteous women. Organized women. Women who loved men. Women who loved women. Women who persisted.
And lo! That day nearly half a million men voted with -- and really for -- them all.
The NYC Women Suffrage Party was looking for twice that turnout in support. They advertised in Columbia's Spectator the day before shooting for a million-man team. But I can't fault them for dreaming big.
Thanks to the considerable efforts of a load of brave people of the female persuasion like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her daughter and Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch, Susan B. Anthony, and Gertrude Foster Brown, it was 101 years ago tomorrow that New York State accorded women the right to vote, helping to pave the way three years later for the 19th Amendment. And by New York State, I really mean New York City, because if you look at the county by county breakdown (scroll all the way down), our urban forebears padded the 80,000 vote margin of victory.
The day that women's suffrage was on the ballot, 12,000 women stood on corners throughout the city encouraging people of the male persuasion, aka the then voters, to grant women the vote.
They were angry women. Docile women. Black women. Chinese women. Uppity and arrogant women. Handsome and plain women. "Women who knew their place." Working women. Moms and daughters. Religious women. Temperate women. Righteous women. Organized women. Women who loved men. Women who loved women. Women who persisted.
And lo! That day nearly half a million men voted with -- and really for -- them all.
The NYC Women Suffrage Party was looking for twice that turnout in support. They advertised in Columbia's Spectator the day before shooting for a million-man team. But I can't fault them for dreaming big.
An ad in Columbia's Spectator on November 5, 1917, the eve of voting day
Notorious ECS eight years after Seneca Falls with her force-of-nature to be, daughter Harriot in 1856.
In and among all of this rich history of suffering for suffrage, there's a gem: the overlooked story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, is one my readers will relish. Harriot, according to Douglas Feiden writing in Our Town New York for last year's centennial, was an inveterate upper west sider who lived at 250 Riverside Drive, right here at W. 97th Street.
Harriot had the distinction of living through most of the battle for women's suffrage, beginning as a babe in the arms of her mother, the battle's field marshal. Harriot grew to be a force to be reckoned with in Manhattan as the battle waged on to its glorious end on November 6, 1917.
Says Feiden: "Among [Blatch's] triumphs: In 1907, she founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, which trained working-class women to campaign for suffrage and was “open to any woman who earns her own living, from a cook to a mining engineer. Then in 1910, she organized the city’s first blockbuster suffrage parade, a march down Fifth Avenue climaxing in a giant rally in Union Square. Blatch and thousands of like-minded activists transformed virtually every nook and cranny of Manhattan — its streets, salons, townhouses, tenements, clubhouses, concert halls, vaudeville houses, boarding houses, hotels, parks, pools, auditoriums, alleyways and office buildings — into a living, breathing operational base for the suffrage movement."
Harriot had the distinction of living through most of the battle for women's suffrage, beginning as a babe in the arms of her mother, the battle's field marshal. Harriot grew to be a force to be reckoned with in Manhattan as the battle waged on to its glorious end on November 6, 1917.
Says Feiden: "Among [Blatch's] triumphs: In 1907, she founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, which trained working-class women to campaign for suffrage and was “open to any woman who earns her own living, from a cook to a mining engineer. Then in 1910, she organized the city’s first blockbuster suffrage parade, a march down Fifth Avenue climaxing in a giant rally in Union Square. Blatch and thousands of like-minded activists transformed virtually every nook and cranny of Manhattan — its streets, salons, townhouses, tenements, clubhouses, concert halls, vaudeville houses, boarding houses, hotels, parks, pools, auditoriums, alleyways and office buildings — into a living, breathing operational base for the suffrage movement."
Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch, second from left, hanging out with a bunch of "nasty women" at the Suffragettes' HQ on Union Square
New York was far from the first state to let women into the voting club. But that's a digression. What's important is that the ultimate change came through the grassroots of the states. And that it took a long, long time. Ohio voted women's suffrage down on that same day. But New York's upvote cranked the motor hard.
Vagaries of our 'states rights' vs. 'federal rights' dynamic are evident throughout our legal system, from managing voting, to our banking system, to the electoral college to name only a few. These will likely persist, thanks to our country's reverence for its founding documents. And anyone who rides the subway knows the vagaries of state-controlled city budgets despite larger urban tax bases and headcounts.
What the story of 1917 tells us is that our populousness in the Big Apple matters. It matters to the state. And it matters to the federation. Our votes do count. History bears that out.
Vagaries of our 'states rights' vs. 'federal rights' dynamic are evident throughout our legal system, from managing voting, to our banking system, to the electoral college to name only a few. These will likely persist, thanks to our country's reverence for its founding documents. And anyone who rides the subway knows the vagaries of state-controlled city budgets despite larger urban tax bases and headcounts.
What the story of 1917 tells us is that our populousness in the Big Apple matters. It matters to the state. And it matters to the federation. Our votes do count. History bears that out.
Today, I am grateful to those excellent women, like the ones above, who got out there 100+ years ago in each neighborhood of NYC. The women who patiently organized for decades. The people who made up the Women's Suffrage Party. And to the half million male voters of New York State on November 6, 1917 who just plain did the right thing.
Tomorrow, five score and a year later, the country will be looking to New Yorkers again.
Find your poll. Tip your (big, black, feathered) hat to the Stantons, mère et fille. Grab your umbrella. And hit the street, thinking about what corners all across the city looked like 101 years ago: 10, 15, 30 women deep. Recall for a moment those men who voted to enfranchise at long last their wives, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and lovers in the great state of New York.
And make your way to cast your vote as if someone else's suffrage depends on you.
Tomorrow, five score and a year later, the country will be looking to New Yorkers again.
Find your poll. Tip your (big, black, feathered) hat to the Stantons, mère et fille. Grab your umbrella. And hit the street, thinking about what corners all across the city looked like 101 years ago: 10, 15, 30 women deep. Recall for a moment those men who voted to enfranchise at long last their wives, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and lovers in the great state of New York.
And make your way to cast your vote as if someone else's suffrage depends on you.
The front page of the New York Times the day after the vote on NYS suffrage in 1917
The county by county breakdown on the 1917 NYS vote on women's suffrage
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