The Woman Voter was a monthly suffragist journal published in New York City by the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP). [1] It ran between 1910 and 1917. [2] The first editor was Mary Ritter Beard. [3] Beard created a suffragist publication which was unique in offering coverage of topics that "cut across class, age and organizational boundaries." [4]
The Woman Voter was created in 1909 in order to keep members of the Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) informed about party activities, updated with pertinent news and editorials relating to women's suffrage. [1] The back of the publication included a "membership blank" to help increase the size of the WSP. [5] Beard started as editor of the journal in 1910. [6] With Beard's leadership, the Voter expanded its offerings, providing longer articles, stories about workers, and also stories for children about suffrage. [7] Beard also gave room in the Voter for the opinions of trade unionist, Leonora O'Reilly. [8] The author of 'The Woman Voter' was Vida Goldstein, a feminist and a suffragist.
Beard quit as editor in April 1912, and the new editor became Florence Woolston. [9] Woolston continued running the journal in a manner similar to Beard. [9]
In January 1913, The Woman Voter negotiated to merge with the newsletter of the New York State chapter of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and after 1913 and for a year, the journal was known as The Woman Voter and the Newsletter. [9] In 1914, Voter reverted to its original name and focused heavily on the upcoming vote for women's suffrage in 1915. [10]
When women did not get the vote in 1915, Woolston "returned the Voter to its broader mission." [10] Voter began to focus on the new vote for suffrage taking place in New York in November 1917, however, the publication had its last issue in May 1917 and then was merged into the Woman's Journal and The National Suffrage News . [10] The new publication was called The Woman Citizen . [10]
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Its membership, which was about seven thousand at the time it was formed, eventually increased to two million, making it the largest voluntary organization in the nation. It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1920 guaranteed women's right to vote.
The National Woman's Party (NWP) was an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage. After achieving this goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the NWP advocated for other issues including the Equal Rights Amendment. The most prominent leader of the National Woman's Party was Alice Paul, and its most notable event was the 1917–1919 Silent Sentinels vigil outside the gates of the White House.
Mary Ritter Beard was an American historian, author, women's suffrage activist, and women's history archivist who was also a lifelong advocate of social justice. As a Progressive Era reformer, Beard was active in both the labor and women's rights movements. She also authored several books on women's role in history including On Understanding Women (1931), America Through Women's Eyes, and Woman as Force in History: A Study in Traditions and Realities (1946), her major work. In addition, she collaborated with her husband, historian Charles Austin Beard, as coauthor of seven textbooks, most notably The Rise of American Civilization (1927), two volumes, and America in Midpassage: A Study of the Idea of Civilization (1939) and The American Spirit (1942), the third and fourth volume of The Rise of American Civilization series. A standalone book, Basic History of the United States, was their best-selling work.
The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was an American organization formed in 1913 led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage. It was inspired by the United Kingdom's suffragette movement, which Paul and Burns had taken part in. Their continuous campaigning drew attention from congressmen, and in 1914 they were successful in forcing the amendment onto the floor for the first time in decades.
Anti-suffragism was a political movement composed of both men and women that began in the late 19th century in order to campaign against women's suffrage in countries such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States. To some extent, Anti-suffragism was a Classical Conservative movement that sought to keep the status quo for women. More American women organized against their own right to vote than in favor of it, until 1916. Anti-suffragism was associated with "domestic feminism," the belief that women had the right to complete freedom within the home. In the United States, these activists were often referred to as "remonstrants" or "antis."
Doris Stevens was an American suffragist, woman's legal rights advocate and author. She was the first female member of the American Institute of International Law and first chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women.
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.
Nina Evans Allender was an American artist, cartoonist, and women's rights activist. She studied art in the United States and Europe with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Allender worked as an organizer, speaker, and campaigner for women's suffrage and was the "official cartoonist" for the National Woman's Party's publications, creating what became known as the "Allender Girl."
The Suffragist was a weekly newspaper published by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage in 1913 to advance the cause of women's suffrage. The publication was first envisioned as a small pamphlet by the Congressional Union (CU), a new affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which in 1917 became the NWP. It evolved into an eight-page weekly tabloid newspaper when the first issue appeared on 15 November 1913.
Woman's Century was the official organ of the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC), published in Toronto between 1913 and 1921. The magazine was relatively conservative, and supported World War I, but stood up for women's rights and universal suffrage.
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.
Ida Sedgwick Proper was an American suffragist, writer and artist. She was an art editor for The Woman Voter. Proper has work in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, and the Des Moines Art Center.
The Woman Suffrage Party (WSP) was a New York city political organization dedicated to women's suffrage. It was founded in New York by Carrie Chapman Catt at the Convention of Disfranchised Women in 1909. WSP called itself "a political union of existing equal suffrage organizations in the City of New York." WSP was many New York women's first experience with politics and "contributed directly to the passage of a woman suffrage amendment in New York state."
Gertrude Foster Brown was a concert pianist, teacher, and suffragist. Following the passage of women suffrage in New York State in 1917, and pending passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Brown wrote Your Vote and How to Use It, published in 1918. She was Director-General of the Women's Overseas Hospitals in France, founded by suffragists, in 1918. In addition to her work in the New York suffrage movement, she helped to found the National League of Women Voters. She was the Managing Director of the Woman's Journal from 1921-1931.
Mary Garrett Hay was an American suffragist and community organizer. She served as president of the Women's City Club of New York, the Woman Suffrage Party and the New York Equal Suffrage League. Hay was known for creating woman's suffrage groups across the country. She was also close to the notable suffragist, Carrie Chapman Catt, with one contemporary, Rachel Foster Avery, stating that Hay "really loves" Catt.
The Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women (MAOFESW) was one of the earliest organizations formed to oppose women's suffrage in the United States. The organization was founded in May of 1895. However, MAOFESW had its roots in earlier Massachusetts anti-suffrage groups and had a publication called The Remonstrance, started in 1890.
Edith M. Ainge (1873–1948) was an American suffragist and a member of the activist group the Silent Sentinels. Ainge joined the National Woman's Party (NWP) led by Alice Paul to advocate for women's right to vote in the United States, which was established with the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Ainge was arrested approximately five times from September 1917 to January 1919 for "unlawful assembly" at NWP protests, and she later served as treasurer of the NWP.
Mary Alden Hopkins was an American journalist, essayist, and activist. She served as editor for several leading magazines and did freelance work for literary groups including The Atlantic Monthly, TheAmerican Mercury, and The New York Times magazine. Hopkins published polemical pieces in both mainstream and special-interest journals on labor reform, dress reform, birth control, pacifism, vegetarianism, and suffrage. Her creative writing was shaped by her politics as she wrote poems and novels about peace, women's suffrage, and other social issues.
Marjorie Shuler was an American publicist and author for the woman suffragists from New York. She wrote for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) major publication, The Woman Citizen and was the author of several books about suffrage and voting, including The Woman Voter's Manual (1918) and one of the very few novels about suffrage, For Rent -- One Pedestal (1917). She was the daughter of Antoinette Nettie Rogers Shuler, a well known suffragist and one of the founders of NAWSA. Additionally, Shuler wrote a memoir of her flying trip around the world, the first ever by a woman, titled A Passenger to Adventure.
woman voter.