California State University, Long Beach

Suffragists

 
 

With the ratification of the 19th amendment in August, 1920, woman's suffrage was granted to most women in the United States. This marked the culmination of a long organized struggle that began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. For the next seventy two years, women participated in a host of organizations and engaged in a range of activities to gain the right to vote. Some, like the General Federation of Women's Clubs with its three million members, were highly respectable mass organizations comprised mainly of older, married women. Others, like the Women's Political Union, which was modeled after its British counterpart, were more militant and smaller, and its members were generally younger. Although most of the suffrage organizations were composed mainly of White women, African American women also participated in the suffrage struggle, mainly in their own clubs and organizations. The suffrage series was initiated in 1972 as a project of the newly formed Feminist History Research Project. The eight narrators interviewed by Sherna Berger Gluck were active in the suffrage movement in the early part of the 20th century. Their activities, which took place outside California, ranged from organizing or participating in college suffrage groups, to marching in parades, speaking atop soap boxes on street corners, and picketing the White House. Some were also involved in the drive to ratify the 19th amendment. Many of them remained active in social issues after their move to California. Several of the women interviewed for the project gained public attention as a result of their participation in the 50th anniversary celebration of the ratification of the woman's suffrage amendment in Los Angeles in 1970. Full life histories were recorded for 4 of the women. [Note: highly edited transcripts with five of the women are available from the Oral History Program at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, and an edited narrative version of the interviews with the same five women was published under the title "From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk About Their Lives," edited by Sherna Berger Gluck , originally published in 1976 by Vintage, and reprinted by Monthly Review Press in 1985].

Recent Submissions

  • Thygeson, Sylvie (6/27/1868 - 5/1/1975); Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer (2020-01-30)
    INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This single interview with Sylvie Thygeson was recorded under less than ideal conditions in the lounge of the convalescent hospital where she was confined. Bingo numbers were being called out in the ...
  • Goldman, May (189? - ); Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer (2020-01-30)
    INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This single interview with May Goldman focuses on her suffrage involvement while at Barnard, and a brief discussion of her career after 1928, when she began a social work career. 1/18/1973
  • deFord, Miriam Allen (8/21/1888 - 3/1/1975); Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer (2020-01-30)
    INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the third interview with Miriam Allen deFord, which took place five months after the first two. In the interim, she was hospitalized for a broken shoulder and pelvis. She looked more frail ...
  • deFord, Miriam Allen (8/21/1888 - 3/1/1975); Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer (2020-01-29)
    INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This second interview with deFord took place only two days after the first, initial interview. 3/8/1973
  • deFord, Miriam Allen (8/21/1888 - 3/1/1975); Berger Gluck, Sherna, interviewer (2020-01-29)
    INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - This is the first interview with Miriam Allen deFord, conducted in her rooms in the rather shabby hotel in which she had lived for more than thirty years in the heart of the San Francisco Tenderloin ...