Women did not vote for George Washington. Nor did they vote for John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or any president until 1920.
It is not because women didn’t like their politics. It is because they were not allowed to vote.
This week, the women’s right to vote in the United States turns 100. On Aug. 26, 1920, the U.S. Secretary of State certified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declaring that voting should not be denied on account of sex.
Locally that news spurred a flurry of voter registrations that won the League of Women Voters of Baldwin County an award in 1924 for registering the most women in the state of Alabama.
“There must have been people here really chopping at the bit, probably because of the progressiveness of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony,” said Lynne Switzky, president of the LWV of Baldwin County. “A lot of people there were very much in favor of women voting.”
The fight to pass the amendment lasted 70 years and is one of the longest social reform movements in U.S. history and came to a head during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. As women moved to the forefront of caring for the sick, Americans then, like Americans now, took notice of women’s roles in the community.
“All of a sudden there were face masks and protests and people had to stay inside because of the pandemic. Women contributed so much as caregivers and household labor that all of a sudden the world was more aware of how much women brought to table,” said Margaret Enfinger Pace, a Montrose based attorney and member of the LWV.
In Baldwin County the league not only registered voters, the members worked to improve social programs such as setting up orphanages and improving local roads. But by the 1930s the group had disbanded. The Great Depression hammered the region and made it difficult for members to afford gas to travel to meetings or buy food to serve attendees.
In the late 70s and early 80s, the league’s Baldwin County chapter kicked open its doors again with renewed vigor as women’s rights movements again marched on Washington. The current organization has 34 members and works to help inform the public about voting information and register voters.
As the organization gains attention nationally in celebration of the 19th amendment anniversary, members say the original intent, to fight for individual rights, resonates today in the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements.
“This is the American story. Our story is about fighting for rights, whether those are for women or black lives matter,” Pace said. “The suffrage movement was not that long ago and while we’ve come very far since that declaration there are some things we’re still debating. There’s a different code of morals for men and women and that’s what we’re seeing in the Me Too movement right now.
“It was an uphill battle just as it is now,” she said. “It just didn’t happen. People protested and held conventions and advocated for their views. The right to vote was not given, it had to be taken.”
That fight can be seen in the continued efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, proposed in 1943, which simply guarantees that equal rights shall not be abridged on the basis of sex. The amendment failed to find approval on state ballots and has since expired.
“It seems so not controversial, it’s one sentence. Of course women are equal yet people don’t want to pass it,” Pace said.
As the march continues LWV members say marking the 100th anniversary of the women’s vote to right is more important than ever.
“Right now the world is upside down,” Pace said. “We have to celebrate the march towards democracy, no matter how unequal the march has been.”
