Today in Herstory: Suffragists Across NYC Hold Rallies and Meetings and Deliver Speeches for 24 Hrs
Today in Herstory: Suffragists Across NYC Hold Rallies and Meetings and Deliver Speeches for 24 Hours Straight
(James Montgomery Flagg’s cover illustration for this week’s issue of “Leslie’s,” showing a “Votes for Women” advocate in a Revolutionary War uniform with a reminder that “taxation without representation” continues for women. It’s captioned: “As her father fought so will she.”)
October 29, 1915: The final few days and most strenuous phase of the New York State suffrage campaign was kicked off just after midnight this morning when the Women’s Political Union began 24 hours of continuous speeches at 47th and Broadway. But that was only the first of 250 open-air meetings held today in various parts of New York City by suffrage groups as the November 2nd election approaches and last-minute arguments are being made to every potential male voter.
The Woman Suffrage Party has begun its own speech-making marathon at Columbus Circle, and among those expected to take the podium later this evening will be “General” Rosalie Jones. She led her hardy band of suffrage hikers from Newark, New Jersey, to Washington, D.C., in February, 1913, and on two hikes from New York City to Albany in December, 1912 and January, 1914.
The rally at Tompkins Square began a few hours ago and features a band, with Dora de Vera of the Boston Opera Company doing the singing. Another of the big rallies being held tonight is in Madison Square with music provided by the 100-piece Beethoven Symphony Orchestra.
But tonight’s rally in Carnegie Hall was certainly the biggest, as well as the best advertised. Not content to just distribute massive numbers of flyers about it around town, its sponsors had young women, led by a bugler, and wearing front and back “sandwich boards” promoting the rally, walking around town from 2 p.m. until just before the meeting began. This is a typical example of the enthusiasm of the entire campaign, because there was really no chance that the event would be less than a sellout thanks to Carrie Chapman Catt presiding, and a number of noted orators making the case for suffrage.
One of the Carnegie Hall speakers was Representative Edward Keating, Democrat of Colorado. He got a laugh when he addressed some of the statements made by anti-suffragists that “Votes for Women” has been a failure in the Western States: “I ride in the subways here in New York and I read the anti-suffrage signs and learn many new things about the West that I never knew before.”
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http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/29/today-in-herstory-suffragists-across-nyc-hold-rallies-and-meetings-and-deliver-speeches-for-24-hours-straight/
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Too many women have had their rights threatened or taken away. We can't forget that!
