March 03, 2006

Women's History Month

March is Women's History Month. I have never known a time when women did not have the right to vote for people who controlled their daily lives. In the middle of the 1800s when this nation was fighting a bloody civil war over the question of slavery, among other things, women in this country did not have the simple right to cast a ballot for even dog catcher.

On June 10, 1919, Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the 19th amendment granting national suffrage to women. From 1846 to 1919, different groups of women’s rights supporters had focused much of their energy on winning the vote, though each pursued different strategies. Although Wisconsin had not been completely unenlightened in its approach to women’s legal rights (the rejected 1846 constitution would have given married women property rights), neither had it been on the forefront of the cause. Just seven years before the 19th amendment passed, a statewide referendum on suffrage had met with a resounding two-to-one defeat, so it was in some ways unusual that Wisconsin was the first to ratify federal woman suffrage.

If you would like to read more, here is a link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/tp-032/

Posted by roadapples at 11:52 AM | Comments (3)