{"id":56,"date":"2020-02-05T16:13:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T21:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/votes-for-delaware-women\/?page_id=56"},"modified":"2025-02-04T14:47:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T19:47:58","slug":"2-national-suffrage-organizations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/exhibitions.lib.udel.edu\/votes-for-delaware-women\/home\/2-national-suffrage-organizations\/","title":{"rendered":"2 – National suffrage organizations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

State suffrage campaigns<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Between 1869 and 1890, two major national organizations worked to win voting rights for women: the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Both had affiliates in Delaware; Greenwood\u2019s Mary Ann Sorden Stuart (1828-1893) served as the state\u2019s representative to the NWSA. The two groups pursued different strategies but eventually united in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeking state-level voting rights was a key strategy. By 1896, women had full voting rights in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. By 1914, Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Montana, and Nevada had joined the ranks of full-suffrage states, and Illinois had conferred \u201cpresidential\u201d suffrage. Campaigns for full suffrage took place in a number of other states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey in 1915, Iowa in 1916, and New York in 1915 and 1917. The successful 1917 New York campaign made it the first Eastern state where women won full suffrage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Delaware, suffragists sought state-level suffrage in 1896-1897, when a convention met to write a new state constitution. The constitution eliminated provisions that had disenfranchised most African American men, but kept the requirement that voters be male. Delaware suffragists then mounted campaigns \u2013 in 1913, 1915, and 1917 \u2013 to amend the constitution to eliminate \u201cthat little objectionable word \u2018male\u2019\u201d (as one suffragist put it in 1895) from the list of voter qualifications. The task was monumental. Any amendment had to be passed by both houses of the General Assembly in two consecutive sessions, yet Delaware\u2019s legislature met only every other year. Nevertheless, the state\u2019s suffragists persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WORKING WOMEN<\/strong> – This leaflet from the New York Wage-Earners\u2019 Suffrage League underlined working-class women\u2019s concerns and the connection they saw between their rights as workers and their rights as citizens. Posing a series of questions about the living and working conditions they faced, the leaflet\u2019s text presented voting as the key to improving them. Issued in the aftermath of a devastating fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, in which 146 workers died, the leaflet called attention to the often-wretched conditions facing urban working-class women and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n