Sunday Edition: West Coast Suffrage
This week we are choosing to highlight suffrage movements of the West, particularly in California. In 1911, California became the sixth state to grant women's suffrage. This is nine years before the United States ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While California was one of the first states to hold referendums on women’s suffrage, the 1896 rejection of Amendment 6 would lead to many years of struggle for women seeking the right to vote. The books on display this week explore California’s history and legacy as it pertains to women’s suffrage. On display we have: The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage by Alan P. Grimes; Selling the City: Gender, Class, and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940 by Lee Simpson; Class Coalition and Class Conflict in the California Woman Suffrage Movement: the San Francisco Wage Earners' Suffrage League 1907-1912 by Susan Englander; How the Vote was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 by Rebecca J. Mead; and, Becoming Citizens: the Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880-1911 by Gayle Gullett. These books are on display at Mudd Center for you to check out!
As a part of this Sunday edition, we are also highlighting a few California early 20th century suffrage archives from Adam Matthew Digital, an incredible global digital archive best known for its primary source material. The first is a Leaflet of the California Equal Suffrage Association, a handbill from 1911 Catholic Clergyman D.O. Crowley’s support of women’s suffrage, an advertisement titled “Justice to California Women.” Oberlin College has access to all of Adam Matthew’s collections, spanning content from the 15th-21st centuries. Check out these archives and more here!
