THE SUFFRAGISTS WERE IN THE FINAL PUSH TO ACHIEVE VOTES-FOR-WOMEN DURING THE 1918-19 FLU EPIDEMIC! THEY PERSISTED!
I have heard that many clubs had wonderful plans to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote in August 1920, after a nearly 75 year effort!
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, many of those plans have had to be cancelled. However, let’s continue to celebrate that important right-to-vote milestone for women during the next club year, through August 2021. I’d love to hear your ideas and plans. Here are some ideas that clubwomen can do while staying at home and social distancing:
*Make signs for members and neighbors’ yards to fit over borrowed or left-over political or realtor signs: “The (club name) Woman’s Club celebrates 100 years of Women’s Right to Vote!!” Depending on the time, you might add: “Be sure to vote by Nov. 3, 2020.”
*Ask your members to research suffragist symbols and colors, and suffragist leaders. Share their research with your clubwomen on Zoom calls or emails, or in your club newsletter or website.
*Use the ESO program of GFWC to add suffragist books to your reading list. Books such as Sisters, the Lives of America’s Suffragists by Jean H. Baker, or Inez, by Linda J. Lumsden, Votes for Women!: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot, by Winifred Conkling, The Woman’s Hour: the Great Fight to Win the Vote, by Elaine Weiss, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote, by Susan Ware.
*The Woman’s Club of Raleigh has revised their elaborate plans and instead will install sunflower pinwheels at their clubhouse. Do you know why they chose sunflowers?
More on Voting and Suffragists next month….
Lois Nixon
GFWC-NC Civic Engagement and Outreach chair