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Summary Civil Rights in the USA (): Women
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All key knowledge pertaining to women's civil rights in the USA between 1865 and 1992.
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The position of women in 1865:- Before the Civil War women had become more involved in public life but they were not
allowed to vote or become elected to office.
- Women took an active part in advocating for the abolition of slavery and the promotion of
temperance. Most of the social reformers/campaigners were white middle-class women
who had the time and money to devote to the cause. There were cases of African
American doing the same, such as Sojourner Truth.
- During the Civil War (1861-65), women found themselves taking charge of the households
in the absence of men. They raised funds, tended the wounded as nurses, and temporarily
replaced men in agriculture. Though, nursing was not seen as a real profession and
progress beyond nursing was limited.
- Most women stayed at home and were concerned with domestic affairs. Some women
worked out of the home but it was often in lower-paid, casual employment or unskilled and
poorly rewarded manufacturing jobs. There were few opportunities in professional work
outside teaching and nursing.
Women’s rights and campaigns during the nineteenth century:
- The campaign for prohibition:
- Women had been urging prohibition since the 1830s, but in 1847 the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became a major national organisation,
gaining 800,000 members by 1920.
- The WCTU and its leader, Frances Willard, lobbied the state legislature and got
areas and even whole states to ban alcohol sales.
- The campaign for women’s suffrage:
- Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman
Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869 after African Americans were given the
right to vote but women were not.
- In 1875, as a result of legal challenges by the NWSA, the Supreme Court
confirmed that women could not run for Congress but local states could allow
voting. Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870) were early pioneers of women’s suffrage
but there were often qualifications women had to meet to be able to vote (e.g:
some states only let married women with school-aged children vote). Southern
states were unwilling to give African American women the vote. There were also
women’s opposition groups that saw political participation as reducing the place of
women in caring for children.
- NWSA was rivalled with the American Woman Suffrage Association which admitted
men and focused more on getting women to vote in state legislatures. The two
organisations merged in 1890 to become the National American Woman
Suffrage Association (NAWSA).
- Jane Addams established the Hull House in Chicago in 1889 which acted as a social
centre for newly arrived immigrant families. The Hull House offered English classes,
childcare, and job-hunting help. By 1895, 50 settlement houses had been established
across the US and they attracted well-educated women with expertise to engage in the
work of reform.
- The National Consumers’ League (NCU) was set up in 1899 and advocated for women’s
rights in the workplace. They pressured for the improvement in wages of women and to
secure protective legislation for women and children in the workplace. They would give
adequate businesses the NCL White Label and boycotted unsatisfactory businesses.
- The National Association of Colored Women (NACW), formed in 1896, focused on on
the achievement of the vote for women but also campaigned to stop lynching and
discrimination. By 1915, the NACW had 50,000 members. By 1918, its membership had
increased to 300,000. A key figure in the movement was Ida B. Wells.
The 18th (and subsequent 21st) Amendment:
- The 18th Amendment, passed in 1917 and ratified in 1919, imposed the federal
prohibition of alcohol. The Amendment emerged from the organised efforts of the
temperance movement and Anti-Saloon League (ASL), which blamed alcohol for society’s
ills.
, - The ASL, allied with the WCTU, used lobbying tactics and campaigns to pass prohibition
laws in more than 9 states.
- By 1933, the 21st Amendment was passed to reverse prohibition since it had resulted in
Speakeasies (illegal liquor shops/clubs) and racketeering.
- This Amendment's passing was partly due to the campaigning of women’s anti-prohibition
groups - most notably the Women’s Organisation for National Prohibition Reform
(WONPR), led by Pauline Sabin (a former prohibition supporter).
- By 1931, WONPR had 1.5 million members nationwide - becoming the biggest organisation
pressing for repeal of the prohibition. In spite of this, Sabin and other high profile women in
the repeal campaign were frequently subjected to abuse from women who continued to
believe in the prohibition.
The 19th Amendment:
- The 1900s saw female activists taking influence from the British Suffragettes. There was
protracted picketing of the White House by women demanding the vote. Initially, this
provoked hostility but after WWI, women’s contributions changed public opinion.
- Alice Paul and Lucy Stone founded the Congressional Union (the fP3orerunner of the
National Women’s Party, 1916).
- With the US’ entry into WWI in 1917, NWSA urged the federal government to support
women working for the war effort.
- Leading suffragists like Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt campaigned to
persuade more states to allow women to vote. In 1919, Congress passed the 19th
Amendment, which was ratified in 1920, allowing female suffrage.
- The results of the Amendment were disappointing in the short term:
- Women still had to gain influence in the Democrat and Republican parties, which
remained male preserves.
- The women’s movements were divided on how best to use the vote.
- Women did not vote in huge numbers in 1920, in the first national elections in
which they were eligible to participate.
- The NWSA became the League of Women Voters, but attracted fewer than 10% of
its former members.
The New Deal:
- The 1920s had been, on the surface, a time of more freedom for women socially. In the
so-called ‘flapper era’, clothing was less restricted and there was more acceptance of freer
social and sexual behaviour. However, for most women, this freedom was limited. Rural
America did not experience the economic boom or social freecom of the cities. The effects
of the Great Depression from 1929 fell severely on women workers, who were often
expected to give up their jobs to unemployed men.
- Franklin Roosevelt promised a ‘new deal’ for America which materialised between 1933-39.
His wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was a vocal supporter of women’s rights.
- Women were given a place on many advisory boards within the new bodies set up to deal
with relief, recovery, and reform. There was a female cabinet member for the first time,
Frances Perkins, who was Secretary for Labor.
- By 1945, there were 254 women elected for state legislatures. Women gained from
legislation which affected working practices and conditions for all workers rather than any
specific New Deal legislation which promoted equality and opportunity.
Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League:
- The Comstock Laws (1873) made the sale, advertisement, and distribution of
contraceptives illegal. Before these laws, they had been on sale in pharmacies.
Contraceptives could still be bought, but it had to be “under the counter” and at a price,
which meant it was expensive for poorer families and poorer women were obliged to resort
to illegal abortion as a means of contraception, when they were either weary of relentless
child-bearing or unable to cope with another child.
- Margaret Sanger established the ABCL in 1921 and opened the first legal birth control
clinic in 1923 with financial backing from the Rockefellers. In the 1950s, raised money for
the development of the Pill.
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