book

Women's Suffrage and the Progressive Era

21 Pages 1003 Words 1557 Views

A group of abolitionist activists, mostly women and some men, gathered in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 to converse about the problems of women’s rights (invited by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both reformers.) The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. But immediately after the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony, a leading proponent of the suffrage and an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, demanded that the 14th Amendment include a guarantee of the vote for women. She believed that this was their chance to entice lawmakers for universal suffrage. With that, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners, arguing that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans. And in 1869, Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Women Suffrage Association, also known as NWSA. Other women later that year formed the American Women Suffrage Association (AWSA). Though women’s suffrage only became prominent during the late 19th century to early 20th century, the women who fought for the right to vote represented empowerment to all women out there, proving that they were not any lower than men. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, women not only worked to gain the right to vote, but also worked for broad-based economic and political equality and for social reform. The progressive campaign for suffrage prolonged until 1920. It wasn’t easy for the women to strive for their rights, causing many obstacles along the way. Regardless, women kept fighting for what they believed was right. My political cartoon expresses pictures on what they did back when the campaign existed. The ballot box with a piece of paper that states “women” serves as a symbol for having equal rights as men have. It wasn’t fair for women to have no right to vote because they were all human and they deserved as much as the men did

Read Full Essay