Women’s Suffrage Booth at 1915 Exposition influential in Ratification of the 19th Amendment, August 18, 1920
by Laurie Thompson
In 1878, a women’s suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress. It wasn’t until forty-one years later, on June 4, 1919, that Congress approved the women’s suffrage amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. One hundred years ago, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote, was ratified by the states.
In California, Women had been granted the right to vote in 1911, and in 1915, the case for Women’s Suffrage was promoted at San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition (PPIE).
At the PPIE’s Educational Palace, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage hosted an exhibit featuring a giant petition to the 64th Congress in favor of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote. Local suffrage leader Elizabeth Thacher Kent “contributed the booth of the Union to the Exposition. It is a large artistically toned room in soft tan shades…. A meeting place and assembly hall for women leaders from all parts of the world, is what the big historic room has become.” (Marysville Evening Democrat, May 11, 1915).
The Marysville Evening Democrat comments that women from all over the world have spoken from the Congressional Union’s platform since the opening of the exposition and that among the prominent women leaders who have visited the booth was Helen Keller who predicted “that the national amendment enfranchising all women would pass within three years.”
One of the features which drew crowds to the booth was “the great record of the 63rd Congress, framed in purple, white and gold, the Union’s colors, and giving the record of every representative in the country, and just what his vote on the woman’s amendment was.”
“Rhode Island has sent a valuable painting of Susan B. Anthony, that great leader whose faith and whose courage still animates her followers, grown from hundreds into tens of thousands. It is estimated that since the exposition opened -a little more than two months ago- more than three thousand men and women have signed the great petition to the 64th Congress….”
The Evening Democrat concludes, “The Congressional Union Booth, however, is but the nucleus of the suffrage work at the exposition. Since the opening, many notable men and women have spoken in favor of the work undertaken by the Congressional Union, emphasizing the fact that the Union is bringing together into one vast body the women of the nation, both voters and non-voters.”
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
