On Oct. 10, 1911, the men of California graciously voted, in a
statewide referendum, to permit women to also vote. This year marks
the centennial of that long-in-coming sea change.
On Oct. 10, 1911, the men of California graciously voted, in a statewide referendum, to permit women to also vote. This year marks the centennial of that long-in-coming sea change.
A few years earlier, in 1896, a similar statewide referendum had failed. And reaching even further back, as early as 1893 the California Assembly and Senate had both passed a suffrage bill, but Gov. Markham (who was married with five daughters) vetoed it.
Californians can take pride in the fact that not only did they significantly precede the national passage of suffrage – which didn’t come until 1920 – but also it was a California senator who introduced the amendment that passed in 1920.
Senator A.A. Sargent launched the 19th amendment in 1878: yes, it took 42 years. Drafted for him by Susan B. Anthony, its wording remained unchanged. It was men’s minds that had to change.
Gilroy has several connections to suffrage. One was a major activist named Sarah Severance. Originally touring up and down the state to lecture on temperance for the Christian Women’s Temperance Union, she endorsed the group’s hatred of alcohol and its destructive influence of families.
Ironically, it was the early alliance of temperance and suffrage groups that in part spelled failure for women getting the vote. There was great money involved in liquor sales, and men predicted women would institute prohibition if armed with a vote.
In fact, when the issue of suffrage went unsuccessfully to a statewide referendum in 1896, the Liquor Dealers League urged its members, “See your neighbor in the same line of business as yourself, and have him be with you in this matter.”
Severance was born in 1836 near Seneca Falls, New York, the heart of the suffrage movement. That city hosted the first women’s right convention in 1848, when Severance was doubtless an impressionable 12-year-old. She came west to teach, and founded the Gilroy Seminary in 1868 on Railroad Street between Martin and Lewis streets.
Very small, the school had only three instructors. Originally a nonsectarian girls’ seminary, it later became co-ed. In 1880, there were 24 female students and 20 male. The 1890 city director lists Severance as a “farmer” residing at the seminary.
In 1889, Severance went to Sacramento with a school suffrage petition. This would permit women to vote only in school elections, possibly a plan to create a wedge in public sentiment. Men might be more likely to grant power in an arena viewed as female anyway, and then women could then ask more. It passed the Senate, but not the Assembly.
In 1891 she and others spoke before the Judiciary Committee. The bill again passed the Senate, but it was so late in the year the Assembly had already adjourned.
As Howard S. Miller writes on his HeritageShared website, “Sarah Severance was a tough-minded politico with an acid wit and little patience with reactionary men. Her admirers described her variously as ‘the Gladstone of the WCTU,’ and ‘Sarah the Sarcastic.’ She wrote the most remarkable campaign document of the ’96 suffrage crusade, a satirical play titled ‘Extra Session of the California Legislature.’ It dramatized a fictional all-female Sacramento legislature debating the question of whether or not men deserved the vote. Severance drew her character’s lines from the daily journals of the actual all-male California assembly. Gender-bent, of course, their anti-suffrage arguments sounded absurd.”
That 1896 campaign failed, and Severance blamed “Greed, liquor, lust, and ignorance,” writes Miller. She resolved that, “Our work should be with the voters, each woman making a few unbelievers her especial mission.”
Severance addressed the crowd at San Francisco’s Century Club in 1899, part of a state meeting of suffragists, celebrating Susan B. Anthony’s 80th birthday. She was a member of the American Woman Suffrage Association, a splinter group off the National Woman Suffrage Association which was formed of more conservative women who wanted to discuss only suffrage and not related issues like divorce laws.
In 1910, the Anti-Saloon League backed the suffrage crusade, and 74-year-old Severance was named honorary chair. Thankfully, the 1911 campaign succeeded. Dying in 1929, Severance was one of the lucky ones who lived to see the national passage of suffrage. Many of the Seneca Falls women, including Susan B. Anthony, Martha C. Wright, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, never saw the fruits of their incredible lifelong labor.
For those interested in the suffrage fight, consider driving to Oakland Oct. 2, when a suffrage reenactment parade will be held. You may march or observe, and you can even purchase a $10 Votes for Women sash, just as the original 1908 marchers wore. For more, visit www.waterfrontaction.org/parade.
