Suffrage & Slaughter

Below are excerpts of a letter written by Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter on the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed August 26, 90 years ago, granting women the right to vote.

Dallas Morning News in 1917

“Now remembered as Women’s Equality Day, this day marks the further enshrinement of the concepts of liberty and equality for which this great nation stands….

Margaret Bell Houston. 1st president of the Dallas Equal Suffrage Association.

The 72-year struggle of suffragists, from the First Women’s Rights Convention in July 1848 to the passage of the 19th amendment on August 26, 1920, bears witness to the sacrifice and dedication of the leaders of the early Women’s Rights Movement….

Description of the woman suffrage campaign in 1913

Today, we stand on the shoulders of the leaders of this movement such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and the other courageous women who organized the First Women’s Rights Convention in nearby Seneca Falls….

Nona Boren Mahoney was the 1st president of the League of Women Voters in Dallas (1918-1920).

The “Declaration of Sentiments” speech that Mrs. Stanton delivered at the July convention called for “all men and women” to be recognized as created equal under the law….

Hortense Ward, chief justice of the 1925 all-female Texas Supreme Court.

In Congress, we elected our first female Speaker, my friend Nancy Pelosi in 2006. When she took the speaker’s gavel, surrounded by her grandchildren, she said we had finally broken the marble ceiling….

A portrait of Miss Lavinia Engle

And just this month the Supreme Court received its 3rd female justice when Elena Kagan joined fellow New Yorkers Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sonya Sotomoyer. Today more women sit on the bench than at any other time in our nation’s history….

Born just outside Palestine in 1866, Mary Kate Hunter played a significant role in recording, promoting and preserving the history of Palestine and Anderson County. A supporter of voting rights for women, Mary Kate Hunter organized and was first President of the Palestine Equal Suffrage Association, and held statewide office in the Texas Equal Suffrage Association in 1915-16. In Addition to her civic Duties, Hunter also was a published poet, Editor of a local society journal and board member of the Texas State Library.

As the first act of this Congress and the first law signed by President Obama on January 29, 2009, The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act helps victims of discrimination in the workplace right the wrongs done to them and paved the way towards greater fairness….

But today’s working women across America still only earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men….

Women today make up only 17% of the 111th Congress, with only 17 women in the U.S. Senate and only 75 women in the House of Representatives….

Thinking of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott reminds us to be relentless in seeking women’s equality.

The fight for women’s equality did not end in 1920, and we must continue to break ceilings and barriers for our future, and for the future of our children.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter

(Representing the People of New York’s 28th District)

Online Research :::

How many women are in congress today?  Search this database and find out which congresswomen are in office.  Choose one congresswoman and look at her website.  Tell your classmates something interesting you learned through your research.

My Texas Heroes : Elisabet Ney

Elisabet Ney was a progressive woman,  sculptor, and an advocate for the arts.  Biographies, such as Elisabet Ney Sculptor by Bride Neill Taylor,  portray her as a highly regarded woman who inspired others to continue her advocacy for the arts after her death.  However, she was criticized during her life because she did not fit into society.  She did not allow social pressures to persuade her to live within certain social rules. Elisabet did not see the need to dress like other women, identifying the dress code as monstrous because of it’s inability to show the true female figure.  After all,  she was a sculptor who appreciated the human body and its beauty!   Therefore, today, June 29, we remember Elisabet Ney on the the day of her death in 1907.

Portrait of Texas History

“She and her husband, Edmund D. Montgomery, moved to Texas in 1872 and purchased Liendo Plantation in Waller County.

She built a studio (now the Elisabet Ney Museum) in the Hyde Park area of Austin in 1892 and began lobbying notable citizens and the state legislature for commissions.

During the next fifteen years she completed a number of portrait busts as well as statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston, now in the state Capitol, and a memorial to Albert Sidney Johnston, in the State Cemetery. Copies of the Austin and Houston statues are also in the United States Capitol. In addition to her sculpting, Ney took an active role in artistic and civic activities in Austin.”  The Handbook of Texas Online.

New Vocabulary :

sursum =‘Lift up your hearts’ or from below, up

“It represents two children, a boy and girl, with heads uplifted and eyes directed upward, moving toward a height.  It is a work of intense conviction and conveys unmistakably the fixed ideas of her life.  The girl leads, the boy follows resting his hand on her shoulder.  Both say, “Upward,” in every line of their figures, but the inspiration is all from the girl.”  Bride Neill Taylor

What do you see in her sculpture?

Elisabet was the subject of gossip but never let it get her down.  She continued to produce important artwork.  What about her, do you think, was so fascinating that compelled people to spread negative rumors?  Bride Neill Taylor mentions that the people of Austin had a problem with the way she dressed.

Portal to Texas History

Have you ever experienced this type of gossip?  How do you think her circumstances were different from yours?  Has time changed social behaviors or rules in the last 100 years?

Even though she faced ridicule  throughout her life for being different, four years after her death, a number of her supporters founded the Texas Fine Arts Association in her honor.”