suffragette anna howard shaw speech central idea

Their communication strategies emerged at the beginning of a more conscious use of communication in the U.S. They cast ballots and picketed the White House, knowing this would send them to jail. For this reason, suffragists issued dramatic posters, clever postcards, broadsides with enormous headlines, and yellow sashes proclaiming 'Votes for Women.' To garner publicity they staged events-parades and pageants, hikes and strikes. Steiner (2020a) comments on the range of communication activities: Suffragists and antisuffragists, however, realized from the start that media were crucial to their success. This essay offers an overview of the communication research addressing the suffrage movement in the United States and of the communication dimensions of that movement and its centennial.Īs an exercise in political communication, the woman suffrage movement made use of a wide range of communication media and techniques, from public speaking to postcards. (The movement itself had relationships with the similar movement in Great Britain and Scotland-Kowal, 2000, Marcellus, 2013-but that movement falls outside of this review.) The suffrage movement and the centennial celebration invite attention to the communication that formed integral parts of the path from Seneca to Washington, DC.

Historians have provided detailed accounts of both the Amendment (Flexner, 1959) and of the long progress of the woman suffrage movement in the United States (Dodson, 2017). The House and Senate approved the 19th Amendment in 1919 and the necessary three quarters of the states completed the ratification process in August 1920.Īs a political process, the long struggle for woman suffrage was of necessity also a communication process, as both the proponents and opponents of suffrage sought to persuade others to embrace their cause. Constitution, originally limiting voting rights, allows amendment by votes of a two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, followed by a ratification by three quarters of the states. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' The U.S. The constitutional amendment, binding on all states, reads, 'The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. While some individual states and territories did allow woman suffrage, the federal government did not. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, bringing to fulfillment a process that had begun on the national level in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention. In the United States, the year 2020 marks the centenary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S.

Suffragette anna howard shaw speech central idea