[Detail] Filipino Varsity Four.

7) Women's Suffrage

One of the great issues in the first decades of the twentieth century was women's suffrage. As early as 1903, Chautauqua performer Billy Arlington included a burlesque lecture entitled "Female Suffrage" in his "Minstrel Reminiscences," in which he dressed as Susan B. Anthony.

• Do you think that Mr. Arlington's portrayal of Susan B. Anthony was serious or humorous?
• What does this portrayal tell us about opinion at the turn of the century?
• What members of Mr. Arlington's audience might have been offended by his burlesque?

The issue of voting rights for women, however, became more serious with time and the Chautauqua platform was a place where many noted women's rights activists made their appeal for equal political power and responsibility.

The Subject Index heading, Women Orators, yields dozens of documents including promotional materials for speakers such as Grace Wilbur Trout and Bertha Pratt King. Among King's advertised speeches is one concerning women's suffrage:

This subject is now one of the most important before American men and women and is dealt with in concise and vigorous fashion. A brief sketch shows what men have done in the past to gain their enfranchisement. Then follows an interesting outline of the objects of the movement. The lecture is serious and convincing, yet full of humor.

• Why would women suffragists be interested in what "men have done in the past"?
• Why would humor be effective in such an address? Why might a booking agency insist on some humor?
• What types of groups might protest an appearance by Ms. King?
• How do the materials on Mrs. Trout differ from those promoting Ms. King? How would you expect the two speakers to be different?

With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, many woman orators took to the Chautauqua platforms to lecture on the proper use of political power, the potential gains to be made from newly-enfranchised female voters, and the necessity of leading by example.

A search on keyword suffrage results in eighty documents including materials for early women political figures such as Nellie Tayloe Ross, "The First woman governor of Wyoming" and Jeannette Rankin, the congresswoman from Montana. The materials for Ross observe:

Governor Ross so directed the affairs of the state of Wyoming that she achieved nation-wide recognition, and not a single act or omission of hers was cited to impugn the fitness of women for public office. As her two-year term of office drew to a close, she issued a challenge to her opponents "to point out a single act of mine wherein I have failed because I am a woman, and wherein a man would have succeeded because he is a man." That challenge was never met.

• What does Ms. Ross's success say about the women's suffrage movement as a whole?
• Is it important to know that Ms. Ross succeeded her recently deceased husband as governor of Wyoming?
• Why might women's rights have been more accepted in the relatively new western states?
• What might have been the affect of lectures by Ms. Ross or Ms. Rankin upon young female Chautauqua audience members?
• Do current female politicians need to defend their position vis-a-vis their gender?

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