Quiet Push to Recognize Suffrage Sites
by Peggy Simpson
Women's
April 9, 2009
http://womensmediacenter.com/ex/040909.html
Spearheaded by New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter,
powerful chair of the House Rules Committee, legislation
was signed into law at the end of last month that will
help celebrate the not-so-ancient history of how women
won the vote in the
Virtually unnoticed by the national news media, a Votes
for Women History Trail in western
authorized to recognize the suffragists who helped
transform this country. The trail will be operated by
the National Park Service (NPS) if Congress provides
follow-up funding for the bill, which passed Congress in
late March and was signed into law by President Obama
shortly before his European trip.
A Votes for Women History Trail would create a drivable
route that visits up to 20 significant sites in the
suffragists' prolonged battle for the vote, from the
Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, near
first women's rights conventions, to the trail's western
anchor in
person for the trail has been Representative Louise
Slaughter, D-NY-a former chair of the congressional
women's caucus-who has sponsored the bill since 2002.
"So many people forget that it was just 89 years ago
that women were finally allowed to vote in this
country," Slaughter said. She praised Obama for signing
the bill "to celebrate the historic events and recognize
the important sites that served as the backdrop in the
struggle for women's equality." The Votes for Women
trail will let Americans "learn more about the heroines
who changed history and opened the doors of opportunity
for future generations of women."
Good political strategy helped move the trail into
reality. Slaughter's counterpart in the Senate had been
Hillary Clinton, now secretary of State. As a stand-
alone bill, the Votes for Women trail had faced one
obstacle after another. Slaughter, now the House Rules
Committee chair with much clout in the
delegation, worked with Senator Charles Schumer, D-NY,
to get the Votes for Women bill included (with 160 other
House-passed bills) into the 2009
Management Act.
In addition to the trail, the new law will expand the
current National Register travel website, "Places Where
Women Made History." As of now, only 44 percent of the
298 sites relevant to women's rights are included in
this. And only 57 of those listed are national historic
landmarks, including the Susan B. Anthony House.
The law also will direct the Department of Interior to
establish a public-private National Women's Rights
History Project Partnership, to help develop
interpretive and educational programs dramatizing the
national women's rights history. The partnership would
be run by a non-governmental entity and would provide
grants to state historic preservation offices for up to
five years to survey, evaluate and nominate women's
rights history properties to be added to the National
Register of Historic Places.
The National Park Service already operates the Women's
Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. Its
mission would expand to developing brochures,
interpretive documents, maps and an official uniform
symbol to mark the Votes for Women History Trail.
Deborah L. Hughes, executive director of the Susan B.
Anthony House, said that while they probably would get
no direct funding under the trail project, she expects
national and international visibility to increase
dramatically. She is in the midst of a membership and
fundraising drive to retrofit the Anthony house and to
develop an adjacent carriage house as a place for
workshops and programs.
It's something of a miracle that the house still exists-
in much the same configuration as it was when Anthony
lived there from 1866 until 1906. It remained in
private hands until 1945.
At that time, Hughes said, the
Women's Club approached the owners to see if they could
put a sign on the house. That's how they learned the
house was about to be sold again. The federation bought
it and preserved it, with volunteers only, until a first
staff person was hired in 1992. Hughes came 18 months
ago and, in addition to fundraising, is expanding links
with scholars to alert them to the five boxes of
Anthony's correspondence, which individuals have donated
over the years. Most scholars have no idea these
invaluable original sources exist, Hughes said, since
Anthony donated her papers to the Library of Congress.
In a feasibility study on the trail, the NPS said that
"by any measure, the women's rights movement is among
the fundamental, far-reaching, modern reformist
traditions in
the women's rights tradition has been characterized by
its challenge to women's subordination to men and its
insistence on a standard of equal treatment, opportunity
and rights. .
"Far from being confined to a corner of American history
as a `special interest,' the battle for women's rights
lies at the center of the public traditions of the
nation. The long pursuit of equality between the sexes
has had immense consequences in American history."
In the 19th Century,
edge of the women's rights movement.
On July 19, 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention
was held at Wesleyan Chapel in
Jane Hunt and Mary Ann M'Clintock. The Declaration of
Sentiments, calling for a broad range of rights for
women including suffrage, was signed by 68 women and 32 men.
Susan B. Anthony later formed the Equal Rights
Association which refuted ideas that women were inferior
to men and fought for the right of women to vote, own
property, keep their own earnings and have custody of
their children. She persuaded the University of
In 1869, Stanton, Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and
others formed the National Woman Suffrage Association
and Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell and others formed the
American Woman Suffrage Association. These two groups
merged in 1890 and held mass campaigns to win the vote
over the next three decades. That finally occurred with
passage of the 19th Amendment to the
certified on August 26, 1920.
The precise locations to be included in the Votes for
Women History Trail will be decided later, but the NPS
feasibility study included a map featuring these sites:
1. Susan B. Anthony House in
2. Antoinette Brown Blackwell childhood home in
Henrietta
3.
(where Anthony was convicted for illegally voting)
4, 5. M'Clintock house and the Jane Hunt house in
6, 7, 9. Jacob P. Chamberlain, Lorina Latham and
8, 10, 11,12 Wesleyan Chapel, First Presbyterian
Church, the Race and Hoskins houses in
13. Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in
14. Harriet May Mills house in
15. Matilda Joslyn Gage house in
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