Suffrage Press Superintendents: Expanding Women’s Narratives during the Suffrage Era

Abstract

In 1898, the National-American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), at its national convention in Washington, DC, launched a plan to organize press work that would publicize the suffrage cause more effectively in local communities through city newspapers and smaller country papers. The previous two years, NAWSA supplied duplicated articles and other print materials each week to state press superintendents for dissemination to newspapers, but this arrangement did not capture “in full the opportunities the press offers.” Under a revamped system that would feature local and county press superintendents working with their hometown and community newspapers, NAWSA would be able to “build as rapidly as possible a machinery of organization” and reach the public more thoroughly. Further, that same year, NAWSA press superintendent Jessie Jane Cassidy wrote a nearly three-page article in the association’s monthly newsletter describing the importance of “ideal press work” in reaching the majority of US newspapers. She cited three reasons why the goal of “ideal press work” was not being met by the suffrage associations. First, the number of press workers was insufficient. Second, newspaper editors preferred original content over duplicated material. Third, getting the best material to be published as news was challenging. These reasons, though, only scratched the surface of the difficulties that suffrage press superintendents faced. Focusing discourse on suffrage press superintendents expands the scholarship on women’s narratives during the suffrage era. The worthiness of the publicity efforts among suffrage press superintendents is important to highlight, but it also is critical to investigate the challenges that suffrage press workers encountered. For instance, press superintendents were appointed or elected—often without pay or little reimbursement for related expenses, such as postage, travel, paper, and other needs. One of Kentucky’s notable suffrage press superintendents, Lida Calvert Obenchain, successfully grew into her role, but like her predecessors, she encountered trials, both personal issues and those related to the suffrage cause. Press superintendents also pleaded with other suffrage workers to circulate literature about suffrage. In her report to the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association in 1908, Lily Wilkinson Thompson, state suffrage press superintendent and treasurer, said she sent letters to more than two hundred newspaper editors, asking for space to publish suffrage items. Later in her report, she issued a plea for women to obtain suffrage leaflets from the national headquarters and share them with friends and foes: “Among the former as a means of inspiration, among the latter as a means of information.”