Tag Archive for "Women’s Suffrage" - The Adirondack Almanack

Posts Tagged ‘Women’s Suffrage’

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Adirondack History Museum Celebrating Suffrage Centennial

Until 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote in New York State. That changed on November 6, 1917, when New Yorkers voted to give women the ballot. The Adirondack History Museum is marking the occasion with “Adirondack Suffragists: 100 Years of Votes for Women,” a multimedia exhibit highlighting the national, state and regional aspects of the movement.

Though preceded by many western states in state-level action, New York was nonetheless a major national battleground in the fight for women’s rights in general and in the struggle for the passage of a national woman’s suffrage amendment – one finally ratified in 1920 as the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. » Continue Reading.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Suffrage Rally Reenactment to Commemorate Suffrage Centennial

by Editorial Staff

The Glens Falls Area Suffrage Centennial Committee will present a Suffrage Rally reenactment to commemorate the New York State Woman Suffrage Centennial to be performed in Glens Falls on Sunday, May 7 from 1 to 3 pm at the gazebo in City Park. This event is free and open to the public.

The Suffrage Rally will reenact the history of the campaign for women’s voting rights through historical speeches, letters and songs. Featured will be national figures such as Susan B. Anthony, Inez Milholland, and Carrie Chapman Catt, all of which had local ties. Visitors will also hear from lesser known suffragists, like Warren County leader of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, Emily Nordstrom. Reenactors presenting the anti-suffragist view will also be on hand. Dr. Charles Dana, neurologist, and Lucy Price, a Vassar girl who spoke here while making a tour of the northeast in 1915, are on the roster. » Continue Reading.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Sandra Weber: Lessons from Suffrage Movement

by Sandra Weber

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For decades, history books have fed us the simplistic notion that women struggled for the vote while men opposed them. Hogwash! Some women opposed suffrage and some men supported it. The issue was a battle about the sexes; the battle itself was fought by women and men against other women and men.

The North Country region resembled most of upstate New York in the 1800s, rural and a hotbed for reform movements: abolition, prohibition, forest preservation, women’s rights. Of course, there was also opposition to some of these changes. The major reason for resistance to women’s rights had to do with long-held conventional notions about the roles of men and women, the roles of blacks and whites, and the interpretation of the Bible. In general, these views supported a white patriarchy and contested any threat to the perpetuation of its authority. » Continue Reading.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

‘Bluestockings’ Once Battled for Women’s Rights

by Lawrence P. Gooley

Women’s history month (March) is a reminder of the struggles they have endured for equality and fair treatment. Unity is important in any movement, but in the North Country, women were often on opposing sides in the battle for equal rights. The region’s rural nature had much to do with that division, as did the population’s roots: mountain folk, farmers, and miners were primarily immigrants (many via Quebec) from European countries that were overwhelmingly Catholic or Protestant.

Resistance to change was organized by branding the opposition as silly and simultaneously ungodly. For more than a century in the United States, those promoting women’s rights were labeled Bluestockings, a term that has been used both in a complimentary and a pejorative sense.

Its origins are nebulous, but it’s known that in the 1700s, Bluestockings in England were educated women unwilling to settle for being simply an adornment on a man’s arm. They learned languages, engaged in political discussions, and sought to better themselves by gaining certain rights previously enjoyed only by the privileged in society: men.

» Continue Reading.