Two members of the League of Women Voters of Hancock County took a trip back in time on Oct. 15 to the Friends Meeting House in Dublin, where Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch helped launch the Centennial Celebration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. It was here that men and women gathered Oct. 14-15, 1851, to advocate for political, social, financial and educational equality for women.
This was a rabidly radical idea at a time when married women in Indiana (and the nation in general) faced restrictions not much different from those facing women in Middle-Eastern countries today.
At that time, everything a married woman owned — including the clothing they wore — belonged to their husbands. They could not speak in public to an audience that included men, and while they could earn income by teaching, making dresses, or other socially acceptable professions, everything they earned belonged to their husbands. If they chose to divorce — which was relatively easy at a time when Indiana was the historical equivalent of Reno for divorces — they’d likely lose custody of their children and would be left destitute.
Crouch, addressing those of us gathered in the church for the Indiana Women’s Suffrage Centennial Launch, summarized why it’s important to remember our early history when she said:
"I always say we can’t know where we are if we don’t know from where we came, and that is why today it is so terribly important, to understand where we came from and to appreciate where we are now and then to set our sights on where we want to go in the future.”
I agree, and this is one reason why I like to remind everyone that before women gained the right to vote in the United States, they lost it. Lydia Chapin Taft was the first woman to legally vote in the British Colonies in America — in favor of funding the French and Indian War effort. Hers was not a single exception, as women’s names appeared on the polling lists in Massachusetts and Connecticut as late as 1775. Thus, when Abigail Adams asked her husband to “remember the ladies,” she was not advocating for something new, but a continuation of a right for women who met certain conditions.
However, our founding fathers left the determination of voting qualifications to individual states, and thus New Jersey women were the last to lose their right to vote when their state redefined voters, in 1807, as “adult, white, male, taxpaying citizens.” For over a century afterwards, only a minority of Americans could vote.
If we look back to the history that the lieutenant governor referenced in Dublin, we see a decades-long effort toward “one person, one vote.”
The 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote while inserting “male” into the Constitution to prevent enfranchising women at the same time. The 17th Amendment put the election of senators directly into the hands of the voting public. The 19th Amendment abolished gender as a restriction, finally giving women the right to vote.
That wasn’t the end, however, as there were still many U.S. citizens who were disenfranchised.
The 23rd Amendment gave residents of Washington, D.C., the right to vote for president. The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax that had put voting out of reach of our poorer citizens. The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18, largely because we decided that if an 18-year-old could be drafted and die for his country, he should also be able to vote.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act further strengthened voting rights, but sometime after that, we seem to have lost sight of where we wanted to go or else decided that we wanted to roll back 100 years of progress. Instead of fixing the 1965 law after parts of it were declared unconstitutional, we stood by while many states worked actively to disenfranchise voters.
Is this really what we want? If history teaches us anything, it should be to pay close attention to the final lines of Martin Niemoller’s famous quote: “…Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
A lifelong resident of Hancock County, Linda Dunn is author of the book "Extraordinary Women of Hancock County: Suffragists and Trailblazers."
