The Womens' Suffrage Movement in the 19th Century

Image of poster for the Federal Theatre Project play, Lucy Stone, 1939-05-07.

Photo from Federal Theatre Project's Lucy Stone. Here, Stone testifies before congressional committe, 1939.

Scene 8 from the Federal Theatre Project play, Lucy Stone, 1939.

Womens' and racial equality activist Ida B. Wells as pictured on the book, To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells by Linda O McMurry, 1999.

Women in the Home detailing the contributions women make to their housholds and arguing that they should have the right to vote, 1910. 

Sketch of Susan B. Anthony from Women Vote!, by Christine Heller, 2017.

The 19th Century was marked by the beginning and increase in visibility of the Women’s Movement in America. In 1848 at the Seneca Falls (NY) Convention three hundred women and men led by organizers Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton garnered controversy, not by suggesting that women be given the right to vote, rather by publishing a statement asserting that “all men and women are created equal”. In 1869, as Congress was considering the 15th Amendment giving the right to vote to African American men, Womens' Suffrage leaders Lucy Stone, along with Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, testified before Congress, in an attempt to have women included. As the Progressive Movement gathered steam in the 1890s women’s suffrage became a key part. Because women took on most of the family nurturing roles in the home they were seen as more morally motivated than men and more likely to help clean up societal problems if given the opportunity to vote. Journalist, racial equality activist, and women’s suffragist Ida B. Wells lived and illustrated the injustices that African Americans, particularly Affican American women, faced during Reconstruction and the early 20th Centurythrough her writings and activism.