♪♪
Back in the mid-1800s, women's
rights were weak
in many states.
Women couldn't own property,
make contracts,
file for divorce,
go to college or
earn their own money.
In Iowa, women were more
fortunate than
those in the eastern
parts of the country.
In fact, Iowa was
considered to be so
progressive that in an
1867 lecture, a New York
newspaper editor named
Theodore Tilton predicted
that Iowa would be the
first state in the union
to achieve political
equality of the sexes.
At that time, Iowa
women were allowed to attend
college, inherit on equal
terms with men, and
purchase property.
They were county
superintendents, served on
school boards, and
practiced law.
But women still weren't able to
participate fully in society.
What they really wanted,
and needed,
was the right to vote.
♪♪
In the 1860s, Iowa women began
to build from the
ground up what would become the
suffrage movement.
They formed small clubs
across the state in cities
like Algona, Burlington,
Monticello and Dubuque.
Through written correspondence,
they encouraged other
Iowa suffrage supporters to
start their own associations.
These clubs eventually built
enough support that
in 1870, they convinced the
state legislature to
approve an amendment that would
allow women to vote.
However, by Iowa law, an
amendment must pass two
consecutive sesesions of the
General Assembly
before bringing it to the
electorate.
This was particularly difficult
because at the
time, the legislature only
convened every other year.
To help coordinate efforts and
keep the momentum
going, suffragists formed a
statewide organization
called the Iowa Woman's Suffrage
Association,
later known as the Iowa Equal
Suffrage Association.
As you might imagine, it
takes a lot to get all
these different people
living in all these
different counties in
Iowa to work together.
And so a lot of the tasks
of the IESA, the Iowa
Equal Suffrage Association
was coordination.
They sent a
lot of letters.
They have a lot of
literature, they have a
newsletter that they will
produce and through the
written word, they will
really try to keep people
in line and make sure that
everyone's on the same
page.
Despite their efforts, during
the meeting of the
General Assembly in 1872, the
Women's Suffrage Amendment
was struck down in the Senate by
a margin of 2 votes.
Suffragists discovered that
changing the minds of
the men in their lives,
especially those in power,
was just plain hard!
Woman suffrage
was radical.
The idea that women could
vote and what that meant,
that it signaled that
women were somehow equal
on an equal playing field,
on an equal plane to men,
especially in a political
and legal sense, this was
disturbing to a lot of
Iowans at this time.
Women were supposed to be
moral guardians of the
home.
Their role was to protect
their children and to take
on a public political role
for many people that was
disturbing.
♪♪
Anti-suffragists desperately
tried to maintain
the idea that a woman's place
was in the home.
They claimed that access to the
ballot wuld cause
women to abandon their
families, that women
weren't smart enough to
vote and that it would
make them less attractive.
Iowa suffragists, on
the other hand, were
determined to change
public opinion.
Across the state, they held
lecutres, circulated
petitions, wrote letters
and passed out literature.
Throughout their
campaigns, they received
help from the National
American Woman Suffrage
Association, which supplied
organizers with a plethora
of flyers, leaflets and posters.
As time went on and new
technologies like the
automobile arrived, their
methods of campaigning expanded.
So they continue with
petitions, but they also
add more direct open air
meetings for example.
They take to the
streets in 1908, they
have probably one of the
first parades ever in the
United States.
They staged it in Boone,
Iowa, where they had signs
and they walked up one of
the main streets in Boone
and then at the end of the
parade, Anna Howard Shaw
who's the president of the
National American Woman
Suffrage Association
stands atop a car and
delivers of speech for
everyone assembled to
hear.
These kinds of direct
action campaigns are
fantastic for getting out
their messages and it does
more than just handing
people a piece of paper.
What these open air
meetings do, or these
automobile canvasses and
parades do is force people
to reckon with what they
think about women's
suffrage.
They can't turn away or
they can't just drop the
sheet of paper
on the floor.
They
have to listen.
♪♪
Meanwhile in the Iowa state
legislature,
suffragists had been
caught in what Susan B.
Anthony called "a cat and
mouse game" for decades.
Some years, the amendment
would pass both houses
only to fail in
the next session.
Other years, the amendment
would pass in the House
and fail in the Senate,
or vice versa.
Eventually in 1913 and then
again in 1915, the
Iowa General Assembly
passed the required two
consecutive bills to get women's
suffrage on the ballot.
All that suffragists needed to
do now was convince
a majority of Iowa's male voters
to support the amendment.
By 1915, the fall of 1915,
the suffragists realized
that this is a
golden opportunity.
That's the one they've
been waiting for for
decades.
And so they are going to
pull out all the stops.
They have this extensive
plan where they're going
to go into all of these
townships and wards and
they're going to meet with
people on their front
doors.
They're also going to have
these lecturers go across
the state.
And they're going to have a
number of speakers
engage with audiences.
And then in mid May of
1916 they orchestrate this
massive statewide
automobile canvass where
women go out in their cars
and they move away from
the small towns and they
go to these more rural
hamlets and these farms
and they engage with
people who may not have
had those direct contacts
because they lived outside
of these more predominant
urban spaces.
And so they really do the
work to bring out the
suffrage message to
anyone who could hear it.
There's a great quote
where the suffragists say,
if someone says they
haven't heard of women's
suffrage its because they
weren't paying attention.
It's not because we
didn't do our work.
♪♪
Victory seemed
very likely.
The Iowa Governor,
state politicians and
influential newspaper
editors supported women's
suffrage.
The Secretary of State
predicted that suffrage
would win by a 20,000 vote
majority.
So it came as a surprise
that on June 5, 1916, the
amendment was voted
down by 10,000 votes.
It was really a slim
margin and suffragists
were crushed.
They were really
devastated.
They thought they had
created an effective
campaign.
They thought they had done
the work and they were
really bitter
by the results.
So they continue their
work prodding the
legislature.
And they do, because of
all this work that they
had done, it really
becomes pretty obvious
that people are
supportive, or more
supportive of the right
for women to vote. So
they do convince the
legislature to support
presidential suffrage.
But really it's less of
an issue because by that
point, the federal
amendment was coming from
Congress. In Iowa, it
really was a bigger deal
to support and ratify the
19th, what would become
the 19th amendment.
On July 2, 1919 in a
special session of the
38th General Assembly,
Iowa became the 10th state
to ratify the 19th Amendment.
After fighting for over
50 years, women in Iowa
finally had access
to the ballot.
What they have now
is the right to vote.
And that does make a huge
difference in cementing or
securing the things
that they could not do
beforehand.
Now they actually
have a say.
They don't just
influence and hope.
They can secure and
control their outcomes
with I think more
diligence and that's
really the important
difference.
♪♪
♪♪
