This is a list of West Virginia suffragists, suffrage groups and others associated with the cause of women's suffrage in West Virginia.
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This is a list of West Virginia suffragists, suffrage groups and others associated with the cause of women's suffrage in West Virginia.
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The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and part of the wider women's rights movement. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However, a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21, 1919, which was quickly followed by the Senate, on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification, achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption, and thereby went into effect, on August 18, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was certified on August 26, 1920.
Woman's Journal was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. In 1917 it was purchased by Carrie Chapman Catt's Leslie Woman Suffrage Commission and merged with The Woman Voter and National Suffrage News to become known as The Woman Citizen. It served as the official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association until 1920, when the organization was reformed as the League of Women Voters, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed granting women the right to vote. Publication of Woman Citizen slowed from weekly, to bi-weekly, to monthly. In 1927, it was renamed The Woman's Journal. It ceased publication in June 1931.
Nell Fidelia Mercer was an American suffragist. A member of the Silent Sentinels, she picketed Woodrow Wilson's White House in support of women's suffrage in the United States.
George Poffenbarger was a lawyer and long-time justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. He attended Rio Grande College in Rio Grande, Ohio and then taught school for seven years. After studying law under John W. English, a future West Virginia Supreme Court justice, he was admitted to the bar in 1887. After serving as a justice of the peace for two years, he was elected sheriff of Mason County in 1888. In 1900 he was elected to the Supreme Court of Appeals, defeating his mentor John English in the election. He was re-elected in 1912 and resigned in 1922, having served for 21 years.
Olivia Nye Simpson Poffenbarger was an American newspaper owner/editor, historian, social activist, civic leader, and Republican politician in West Virginia.
Izetta JewelKenney was an American stage actress, women's rights activist and politician. She became the first woman to deliver a seconding speech for a presidential nominee at a major American political party convention when she seconded the nomination of John W. Davis at the 1924 Democratic National Convention.
Joy Young Rogers was an American suffragette. She served as an assistant editor of The Suffragist.
Women's suffrage was established in the United States on a full or partial basis by various towns, counties, states, and territories during the latter decades of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. As women received the right to vote in some places, they began running for public office and gaining positions as school board members, county clerks, state legislators, judges, and, in the case of Jeannette Rankin, as a member of Congress.
The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia was founded in 1909 in Richmond, Virginia. Like many similar organizations in other states, the league's goal was to secure voting rights for women. When the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920, enabling women to vote in all states, the Equal Suffrage League dissolved and was reconstituted as Virginia League of Women Voters, associated with the national League of Women Voters. The 19th Amendment was not ratified in Virginia until 1952.
The "Prison Special" was a train tour organized by suffragists who, as members of the Silent Sentinels and other demonstrations, had been jailed for picketing the White House in support of passage of the federal women's suffrage amendment. In February 1919, 26 members of the National Woman's Party boarded a chartered train they dubbed the "Democracy Limited" in Washington, D.C. They visited cities across the country where they spoke to large crowds about their experiences as political prisoners at Occoquan Workhouse, and were typically dressed in their prison uniforms. The tour, which concluded in March 1919, helped create support for the ratification effort that ended with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920.
Women's suffrage was granted in Virginia in 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The General Assembly, Virginia's governing legislative body, did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1952. The argument for women's suffrage in Virginia began in 1870, but it did not gain traction until 1909 with the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. Between 1912 and 1916, Virginia's suffragists would bring the issue of women's voting rights to the floor of the General Assembly three times, petitioning for an amendment to the state constitution giving women the right to vote; they were defeated each time. During this period, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and its fellow Virginia suffragists fought against a strong anti-suffragist movement that tapped into conservative, post-Civil War values on the role of women, as well as racial fears. After achieving suffrage in August 1920, over 13,000 women registered within one month to vote for the first time in the 1920 United States presidential election.
The women's suffrage movement began in California in the 19th century and was successful with the passage of Proposition 4 on October 10, 1911. Many of the women and men involved in this movement remained politically active in the national suffrage movement with organizations such as the National American Women's Suffrage Association and the National Woman's Party.
The first women's suffrage effort in Florida was led by Ella C. Chamberlain in the early 1890s. Chamberlain began writing a women's suffrage news column, started a mixed-gender women's suffrage group and organized conventions in Florida.
Mary Elizabeth Simpson Sperry was a leading California suffragist who served as president of the California Woman Suffrage Association.
Mary Ellen Pollard Clarke (1862–1939) was an American suffragist. She was the editor-in-chief of the short-lived Virginia Suffrage News and the author of essays on public policy, literature, and suffrage.
Catherine Mary Flanagan was an American suffragist affiliated with the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association and later the National Woman's Party. She was among the Silent Sentinels arrested for protesting outside the White House in 1917.