Constitution of the St. Joseph County Equal Suffrage Association.
An Original Suffrage Recordbook
[Suffrage]. [Constitution of the] St. Joseph County Equal Suffrage Association. [Missouri: St. Joseph County Equal Suffrage Association, 1914].
Folio; pebbled cloth; remains of calf spine; calf tips worn and chipped; heavily worn; interior notebook-style lined pages occasionally discolored.
A memento of a precipitous moment in suffrage history: the official “diary” kept by the St. Joseph County, Missouri, Equal Suffrage Association, containing some 21 pages of notes detailing the group’s monthly meetings from Spring of 1914 until Fall of 1917. The minutes, entered in autograph into this store-bought ledger by the group’s Recording Secretary, provide us with a hitherto unforeseen glimpse of the daily workings of a women’s rights organization which operated on the local level. Contemporary historians now acknowledge that it was, of course, due to the tireless efforts of women in these smaller, geographically-centered pro-suffrage communities that the 19th Amendment was eventually adapted nation-wide.
A singular document, which illustrates the degree to which political strategizing on a local basis affected and strengthened the broader pre-suffrage feminist cause. The activities recorded in this ledger are those of middle class women who donated their time, money and ideas on behalf of their less privileged sisters. The diary contains many charming and revealing entries. Among the notable motions recorded in the minutes are the group’s vote on whether to participate in a pro-suffrage demonstration ([p. 7]); the group’s discussion of whether to participate in a commemoration of Elizabeth Cady Stanton‘s centennial birthday celebration ([p. 14]); and the organization’s decision on whether to rent a pro-suffrage booth at an upcoming county fair ([p. 18]). (It should serve as no surprise that the group decided affirmatively in all the above cases.) Also remarkable is the actual hand written constitution of the St. Joseph County Equal Suffrage Association, which is entered in full as the first three pages of ledger text, and finally, this prescient observation, casually incorporated into the minutes of the organization’s June 1917 meeting: “Dr. Haines made an appeal for earnest work for suffrage in the next two years, saying that suffrage leaders felt sure that the federal amendment would be carried in the next years if the work was carried on vigorously” ([p. 21]). American women’s suffrage attained a partial victory in June 1919, when the Senate, acting on the House’s approval one month prior, passed the 19th Amendment; the fight was fully won on August 26, 1920, when U.S. women were awarded the right to vote in the upcoming November elections.
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