The A to Z of the Progressive Era by Peter C. Holloran & Peter C. Holloran & Alan Lessoff

Author:Peter C. Holloran & Peter C. Holloran & Alan Lessoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2009-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

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NATION, CARRY (1846–1911). Prohibitionist. Raised in Missouri, Nation founded in the 1890s a branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Kansas, where a statewide prohibition law went unenforced. In 1900, she became notorious for replacing the usual WCTU weapons against the saloon—prayers and hymns—with rocks and a hatchet. Her actions inspired local activists, who awarded her a medal inscribed “To the Bravest Woman in Kansas” (1901), and prohibitionists often wore lapel pins in the shape of a hatchet, but the WCTU disavowed her tactics. Portrayed in the press as an unwomanly fanatic, she earned her living on the lecture circuit.

NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION (NAWSA). In 1890, the rival American and National Woman Suffrage Associations united to form NAWSA; the renowned Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony served as the first presidents. The organization confronted circumstances that some historians label the “doldrums.” Between 1870 and 1910, proponents ran 480 state campaigns to achieve a scant 17 referenda, of which they won only two. After 1896, when Idaho and Utah adopted women’s suffrage, no statewide measure would succeed until Washington in 1910 and California in 1911. In 1890, only two major women’s organizations supported women’s right to vote: the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Despite organizing hundreds of state and local branches in the 1890s, the movement claimed fewer than 9,000 dues-paying members by 1900. One hopeful sign was that a growing number of localities and states granted women partial suffrage, allowing them to vote in elections for the school board or state legislature.

By 1900, new leadership, new organizing tactics, campaigns among college students and working-class women, the inspiration of the British suffrage movement, and greater centralization revived the movement. After 1910, the movement again made progress, especially in western states. In that year, dues-paying members numbered 117,000; by 1915, dues- and non-dues-paying members together amounted to two million. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party endorsed women’s suffrage; the General Federation of Women’s Clubs signed on in 1914.

As it grew more respectable, the organization increasingly relied on the support of wealthy women donors known as “allies,” who bankrolled the campaign but muted radical voices. At times, NAWSA questioned the qualifications of immigrant and working-class men for full citizenship rights. The group explicitly endorsed segregation and condoned disfranchisement of African American men in the southern states. African American women formed their own suffrage clubs in at least seven states by the early 20th century. The NACW and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) both had suffrage departments. Leaders such as Lugenia Burns Hope, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett saw the vote as a means of combating racism as well as sexual abuse of black women by white men.

NAWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt (1900–05, 1915–20) worked to transform the organization into a streamlined, professionally managed interest group. The years 1913–14 saw two major schisms. First, the decision to concentrate on a national constitutional amendment, instead

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