Votes for Delaware women / Anne M. Boylan.
"Votes for Delaware Women is the first book-length study of the woman suffrage struggle in Delaware, placing it within the rich historical scholarship on the national story. It looks especially at why, despite decades of suffrage organizing and an epic struggle in Dover, in the spring of 1920,...
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Online Access: |
Full Text (via ProQuest) |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | eBook |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Newark :
University of Delaware Press,
2021.
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Series: | Cultural studies of Delaware and the Eastern shore.
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Subjects: |
Summary: | "Votes for Delaware Women is the first book-length study of the woman suffrage struggle in Delaware, placing it within the rich historical scholarship on the national story. It looks especially at why, despite decades of suffrage organizing and an epic struggle in Dover, in the spring of 1920, the legislature refused to make Delaware the final state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Delaware was unusual as a border state that was segregated but did not disfranchise African Americans. The book traces how, starting in the 1890s, both white and African American women organized and advocated for "votes for women," first by revising the state constitution and then through a federal amendment, and explores what suffrage meant to each group. Within the state's two major suffrage organizations, the Delaware Equal Suffrage Association (DESA), an affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and the Delaware branch of the National Woman's Party (NWP), divisions over strategy and tactics widened into fissures, especially during the Great War, making it difficult to combine in a common endeavor. As in other states, anti-suffrage forces regularly raised the specter of Black women voting in order to discredit the campaign for the vote. Delaware's African American suffragists were vocal in their responses to anti-suffragists' claims, while also participating in occasional outreach across the color line to white suffrage allies. In the end, the book argues, a combination of racial and class issues, particularly political leaders' worries about how African American women might vote, partisan bitterness, concerns over taxation and schooling in a segregated state, and legislative gerrymandering, doomed the ratification effort"-- |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: | 1644532085 9781644532089 |