This week we celebrate the 88th anniversary of American women
winning the right to vote.
This week we celebrate the 88th anniversary of American women winning the right to vote.
In the U.S., the first legal woman voter was Lydia Chapin Taft, who voted on at least three known occasions in an open New England town meeting, at Uxbridge, Mass., with the consent of the electorate – in 1756! Just 40 miles away in Boston, my great-grandmother, Harriett Brown, was still enthusiastically fighting side by side with other suffragettes for women’s right to vote on a national level in 1900.
She was an 11th-generation New Englander, a descendant of the first colonists in 1620. She couldn’t understand why it was taking so long for women to gain equal rights in governing this land her family had helped found based on ideals of religious, political and personal freedom.
Harriett wrote her own poetry and sold it to finance her efforts as a suffragette. Of course, she had to write under a pseudonym in those days, so that no one would realize she was a woman. Her pen name was “Laddie,” which was actually her beloved dog’s name.
The right to vote was important to Harriett, a woman who, as head of a household, supported herself and her daughter. Her husband had died at a young age from syphilis. He had worked as a professional carriage trimmer, making the accessories for carriages, which included everything from the tops of the carriages to all the decorated, upholstered and cloth or leather parts of the carriage and its harnesses. From his profession, which required a great deal of sewing, Harriett had learned how to make almost anything as a seamstress.
As a widow, she combined this knowledge with her interest in anatomy and was able to forge a living sewing customized apparel for people who wore prosthetics.
For example, doctors would refer patients to her who had recently had breast cancer surgery, and she would make the necessary undergarments for them with a built-in prosthetic insert. She moved to California and was able to buy her own home. She entered contests and won awards for her designs. In her free time, she continued to campaign for women’s right to vote.
When President Woodrow Wilson finally conceded and announced his support for the women’s vote on Jan. 9, 1918, Harriett was overjoyed.
The Susan B. Anthony Amendment (to give the right to vote to all female citizens) passed in the Senate by one vote. In 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, which made it officially the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
Today only Brunei, Saudia Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) deny women the right to vote, although according to Al Jazeera, current partial voting rights in the UAE will be expanded to all women by the year 2010.
In Lebanon, women can vote only if they have an elementary school level education.
Harriett made sure her daughter Eunice Katherine (my grandmother and namesake) was as well-educated as she could afford, and Eunice became the first female deputy probation officer in the Salinas Valley after women won the right to vote on Aug. 26, 1920.
If Harriett were alive today, she would be amazed we are celebrating the 88th anniversary of American women’s right to vote and to witness this year when her great-granddaughter was able to vote for a woman in a presidential primary election. One day the U.S. will have a woman president, and Harriett Brown, along with all the other women who fought so hard for women’s suffrage, will have had a hand in making it happen.
