User:ScoutHarris/draft of women's suffrage in Virginia synopsis

Moved to Main Space July 14, 2019

Women's suffrage in Virginia began 1870 with the founding of the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association by Anna Whitehead Bodeker. Bodeker tried to stir up public support for women's suffrage by publishing newspaper articles and inviting nationally known suffragists to speak. However, post-Civil War societal demands for women to uphold traditions of Southern womanhood won out, and the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association shut down less than a decade after its founding. In 1893, Orra Gray Langhorne founded the Virginia Suffrage Society as part of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but it folded before the turn of the century due to low membership numbers.

In November 1909, about 20 Richmond- area activists—including Lila Meade Valentine, Kate Waller Barrett, Adele Goodman Clark, Nora Houston, Kate Langley Bosher, Ellen Glasgow, Mary Johnston—founded the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. A few months after its founding, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia joined NAWSA. The league had about 100 members in its first year of operation. In 1917, it had more than 15,000. By 1919, the league had 32,000 members and was the largest political organization in the state of Virginia.

The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia educated Virginia's citizens and legislators by canvassing houses, distributing pamphlets, and sending its members on speaking tours around the state. The league also regularly petitioned Virginia's General Assembly to add a women's voting rights amendment to the state constitution, bringing the issue to the floor in 1912, 1914, and 1916; they were defeated each time. Meanwhile, Virginia suffragists encountered strong opposition to their cause by an anti-suffragist movement, headed by the Virginia Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage, that tapped into traditional, conservative beliefs about the role of women in society and racial fears.

When the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in June 1919, Virginia suffragists lobbied for ratification, but Virginia's politicians refused. However, women of Virginia got the right to vote in August 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment became law after it was ratified by 36 states.

Virginia wouldn't ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1952.