The "Women Voting Rights Are A Century Old!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution which was ratified on August 18, 1920.  The 19th Amendment gave women in the United States the right to vote.  That is...it gave White women the right to vote!  Many feared that if voting rights would be asked for all races, it would be more difficult to get the amendment passed.  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton occasionally delved into "ugly racist rhetoric" that prioritized "educated, virtuous White women over Black women.  Activist Sojourner Truth, a former slave, broke with Stanton to include women of every color.  But, even after the Amendment was ratified, poll taxes and other obstacles made it almost impossible for 
African American women to vote, especially in the South.  It wasn't until the passage of the 24th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that millions of African Americans were able to vote.  Here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Marianna Gibbons Brubaker, the second wife of Lancaster Newspaper columnist Jack Brubaker's great-grandfather, Oram David Brubaker, opposed the right of women to vote.  A bit of background about Marianna would tell you that she was a member of the family that operated the Underground Railroad station in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania.  The family helped to transport over 1,000 runaway slaves north to freedom.  Marianna was a graduate of Millersville Normal School and became a teacher.  She was a founding member of Lancaster's NAACP and a leader of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.  She was a Quaker who believed in equality for all women, but wasn't an advocate of woman's suffrage.  Jack Brubaker thought she just had to be for equality of women in all things, but not so.  He did check the archives of the local newspaper and found that she did vote in the November 2, 1920 election when woman could finally vote!  Marianna was always opposed to women voting, but voted since Mrs. Leah Cobb Marion, our W.C.T.U. State Treasurer was running for U.S. Senator, and she decided to vote for her, only.  It was always a mystery to Jack why his relative was against women voting when she was always for women equality.  Another related story about the woman's suffrage movement was from October 30, 1756 when a widow named Lydia Taft used her husband Josiah's proxy vote to help decide whether the town of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, would increase its contributions to the French and Indian War.  Seems that Lydia was a the first woman in colonial America to cast a vote.  The Suffrage movement began in full force following the first Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.  It was at this event that a public call was made by Frederick Douglass to allow women to vote.  During the next decade conventions would begin to pick up steam for the movement until the Civil War began.  After the war some women weren't confident that the advancement of both African Americans as well as women to gain voting rights could be pursued.  Then in 1869 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton created the national Woman Suffrage Association based on the idea that the 15th Amendment be opposed until it included woman's right to vote.  Anthony was arrested in 1872 for voting in the presidential election and fined $100.  Then in 1910 in the state of Washington, women slowly began making inroads toward meaningful change nationwide.  WWI helped create change as women filled roles of men who had gone to fight in the war.  In 1918 President Woodrow Wilson praised the suffrage movement which helped push the 19th Amendment toward the finish line.  

At the time, 36 states had to ratify an amendment before it passed, and on August 18, 1920, Tennessee voted 49 to 47 to accept and fully allow women to legally vote.  The following day in Lancaster "The Daily New Era," headline read "Tennessee Ratifies Suffrage Amendment By Vote of 49 To 47 And Women Have Right To Vote In Every State At All Elections."  It's been over 100 years now since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.  An important piece of legislation in the history of the United States.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.