Precedents

Abstract

The American woman suffrage movement inspired women to take actions unprecedented for their sex, such as marching in parades and picketing the White House. In addition, suffragists also engaged in new kinds of political action designed to persuade legislators—at the time all male—to remove from state constitutions the word “male” or “men” as descriptors of voters. New York City suffragists pioneered in such political work. They not only turned the tide in New York State but also provided a model that suffragists elsewhere followed. This chapter covers the contributions to this process made by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union of New York; the settlement, labor, consumer, and municipal reform movements; and individual suffragists such as Harriot Stanton Blatch, Rosalie Gardiner Jones, Carrie Chapman Catt, Harriet Burton Laidlaw, and Mary Garrett Hay.