The Suffrage Movement

Next Gathering: August 27, 2020, 6:15 pm (via Zoom link)

Please watch the 4 hour video that focuses on the last eight years leading up to the vote on Suffrage in 1920.  These episodes are in season 32 of American Experience, and are titled “American Experience: The Vote.” I couldn’t find them on Amazon and had to stream directly from PBS (maybe they’re on YouTube).

If you have time you might watch the 4 hours of “The Ascent of Women,” by Amanda Forman. We got it on Amazon although I think it’s carried by Acorn.  A bit about many great women from all cultures and times.  Did you know the first poet whose name we know is a woman named Enheduanna?  One of her poems is in one of the High Services.

In the Vote you’ll meet some wonderful people worth studying.  If there’s one you particularly resonate with, bring at least a Wiki page on her life:

1791: Mary Wollstonecraft, whose husband’s expose memoir after her life destroyed the effect she wanted to have.  The people she was trying to debate could throw her arguments out without consideration by saying, “harlot.”  Worth reading a summary of her arguments.

1791: Olympe de Gouges, a French woman who was guillotined two years later.  She was too strident.

Lucretia Mott was an American bridge between 1791 and 1840.  Another Quaker who thought we was as worthy as men before God.

The Pankhursts – Emmeline, Sylvia and Christabel in the UK.  They trained Alice Paul who’s gone to study in the UK.

“The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.”; “Trust in God - she will provide.”; “Justice and judgment lie often a world apart.” Harriet Stanton Blatch, training “front door” lobbyists.

Carrie Chapman Catt

Especially Alice Paul – un-lady-like, she even “demands.” – House of Representatives from Montana.

And the Anti-Suffragettes, did you think there’d be that many.

Oh, Woodrow Wilson

Notice the hard choices forced on people wanting voting rights for Black men and women when the Amendment said only, “Black Men.”

The split between the middle class (go-Slow) and the militant reformers.

Trying to decide what to do when being polite and diffident still doesn’t convince the people in power to relinquish their power.

You’ll see what politics are really about that might affect your thinking about what the leaders of Black Lives Matter might do.

And what you may feel called to say to the outside world and inside your Community and family.

How historic change teeters on a knife edge of one vote.

If you were to write a playbook for successful social movements, what would it advise?As a side note – sometime, watch the episodes from the 1992 Ken Burns series, “America,” on how congress works and the one on Huey Long (the playbook will look familiar).