From Confrontation to Collaboration, 1916 and 1917

This chapter examines the second referendum campaign in 1917, as collaboration with public officials replaced confrontation. Less than a month after New York men rejected political equality in 1915, the Empire State Campaign Committee hosted a “Reorganization Convention,” one outcome of which was the birth of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. For years activists had aggressively claimed a “right to the city.” Now, those in the Woman Suffrage Party used that right to help the city during a devastating polio outbreak and World War I: distributing medical information to tenement dwellers, tracking sanitary code violations, and facilitating the wartime military census. The change in strategy was stunningly effective. New York women finally won the ballot, with Gotham carrying the state amendment.