Normally, JK1901.A24 1880 sits tucked away on a third-floor shelf at the Moritz College of Law library.
More precisely, JK1901.A24 1880 sits tucked away in an envelope which is stapled between two champagne-colored cardboard pieces which sits tucked away on a third-floor shelf at the Moritz College of Law library.
If someone is looking for the 22-paged JK1901.A24 1880, they might miss it.
But the short string of letters and numbers that make up JK1901.A24 1880 tells a tiny piece of American history:
In late January 1880, eight women from five states stood before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Each had five minutes to argue for a 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Emma McRae of Indiana spoke first.
“We need the right to vote, in order that we may have protection. We need that right as one indispensably necessary to our security in the enjoyment of other rights. We need the ballot because through the medium of its power alone we can hope to wield that influence, to which we claim to be entitled,” McRae said. “Therefore, I have come from the State of Indiana, to give utterance to the voice of the mothers among the women of that State, in behalf of their petition of the right to vote.”
McRae and the seven other women, Catharine Stebbins, Lillie Devereaux Blake, Phoebe Couzins, Jessie Waite, Elizabeth Saxon, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan B. Anthony, were delegates of the National Woman Suffrage Association. The association was founded by Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1869.
It took 36 years and 36 states to ratify a 16th Amendment to the constitution and when all was said and done, Congress was given the power to collect income taxes, because the 16th Amendment argued for by the delegates in January of 1880 failed in the Senate seven years later.
More than 40 years passed, 10 new states were added, three Constitutional amendments were ratified, a global pandemic killed more than 50 million people and a world war blazed across Europe before women had the right to vote.
Aug. 18, 1920, marks the ratification and adoption of the 19th amendment which held that “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.”
The language of the 19th Amendment echoes the 16th amendment proposed in the 19th century.
In the archives at Ohio State, and in its libraries, the story of how women fought for the right to vote is told through pamphlets, cartoons and Lantern newspaper clippings.
Explore some of these materials below.
Pro-Suffrage Materials
Pro-suffrage materials included in Ohio State’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library housed at Thompson Library. The rare book library digitized three scrapbooks of pro- and anti-suffrage campaign materials. Not much is known about the scrapbooks, not even the names of the Ohio State librarians who put them together in the early 20th century. To view the full collection of materials, visit the university library’s website.
On Ohio State’s campus, the College Equal Suffrage League pushed for women to have the vote. In late May 1912, three league members debated three members of the Athenaean Literary Society who were against women’s suffrage. In a May 22, 1912, Lantern article, the Athenaean “woman haters” were identified as Bert Evans, Lester Patton and Arthur Burket. The league lost the debate with the faculty judges voting in favor of the Athenaean society.
A Makio, Ohio State’s yearbook, from 1913. Two of the three league members, Izola Fries and Beulah Wardell, who debated the Athenaean members are in the club’s picture. The third member, Lillian Coler, is not pictured but is included in the club’s 1913 roster.
The league was founded by Latin Professor Samuel C. Derby’s wife — who is not identified by her first name in Lantern articles from the time or in Samuel C. Derby’s obituary. Along with Mrs. Samuel C. Derby, the Dean of Women Students Caroline Breyfogle organized the college league.
Anti-Suffrage Materials
Because man is man, and woman is woman.
Because the suffrage is not a question of right or of justice, but of policy and expediency…
Because it means simply doubling the vote, and especially the undesirable and corrupt vote of our large cities.
Because the woman suffrage movement is a backward step in the progress of civilization, in that it seeks to efface natural differentiation of function, and to produce identity, instead of division of labor.
To view the full collection of materials, visit the university library’s website.
While suffragettes tackled the 19th Amendment, female Ohio State students pushed for greater representation on campus.
As suffragettes in the United States marched, were imprisoned, went on hunger strikes and picketed in front of the White House, female Ohio State students pushed for a different type of vote.
In late March 1919, Joy Rogers, then-president of the Woman’s Council, proposed a petition advocating for a bicameral student government — one where men voted for male representatives and women voted for female representatives on the Student Council.
“The women of this University are at present inadequately represented by the student governing body,” the petition reads. “We consider it justice that government of the entire student body should be by representatives of the whole student body.
Nearly 250 women signed the petition the night of March 26, 1919, intending it be sent to the Student Council for review the following week.
After more than two months of delayed deliberation, an amendment solidifying women’s role in student government was added to the university’s constitution May 28, 1919. It passed 157-20, according to The Lantern archives. Five women and five men would be elected to the Woman’s Student Council and the Men’s Student Council, respectively, and the councils would handle issues affecting the entire university together.
Less than 15 months later, on Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, securing a woman’s right to vote in the U.S.
Take a look through the archives and see the battle for representation that played out on Ohio State’s own campus.
The Lantern, May 28, 1919
Header image: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [LC-DIG-hec-09404]
TEXT: SARAH SZILAGY | CAMPUS EDITOR & JACK LONG | MANAGING EDITOR FOR DIGITAL CONTENT
WEB DESIGN: JACK LONG | MANAGING EDITOR FOR DIGITAL CONTENT