Schenken Suzanne O’Dea. From Suffrage to the Senate: An Encyclopedia of American Women in Politics (2 Volumes)
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rights, voting rights, and educational opportunities were too implausible
for contemplation. Two African American women, however, grace the era
with their courage, dedication, and devotion to freedom: Sojourner Truth
and Harriet Tubman. Sojourner Truth denounced slavery and slaveown-
ers with fierce and compelling rhetoric. Tubman conducted slaves on the
Underground Railroad into freedom.
The women’s rights movement receded into the background during the
Civil War but reappeared with a vengeance over the exclusion of women
from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Controversy over the
amendments spawned the American Woman Suffrage Association and the
National Woman Suffrage Association, both in 1869. The two groups
merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA) in 1890, and the concentrated effort to pass the woman suffrage
amendment became less fractured. Suffragists’ unity, however, ended in
the 1910s, when a militant organization, the Congressional Union, split
from NAWSA. The Congressional Union staged demonstrations, picketed
the White House, and frustrated NAWSA’s attempts to conduct a refined
campaign. After Congress passed in 1919 and the states ratified in 1920 the
Nineteenth Amendment granting voting rights to women, NAWSA reor-
ganized itself into the League of Women Voters (LWV), and the Congres-
sional Union reorganized itself into the National Woman’s Party (NWP).
The LWV’s initial mission was to educate newly enfranchised women
on voting, issues, and related matters. It joined other women’s groups to
pass measures that established a woman’s citizenship independent of her
husband’s citizenship and created a maternal and infant health program,
among others. Politicians passed the laws because they believed that
women would vote as a bloc, but that phenomenon did not materialize
until the 1980s in what became known as the gender gap.
The National Woman’s Party drafted and presented the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA), a measure that was introduced in 1923 and every
subsequent session of Congress until 1972, when it passed. The ERA lan-
guished for almost fifty years and is an important part of the drama of
women’s acquisition of political power, even though it was not ratified.
From the 1920s into the 1960s, social reformers opposed the ERA because
they believed that it would make protective labor legislation unconstitu-
tional. Protective legislation included limits on the number of hours
women could work, the hours of the day they could work, and the weight
they could lift. The NWP viewed the legislation as barriers to women’s
employment options, whereas social reformers viewed it as safeguarding
women’s health and well-being. The ERA and other women’s issues
moved to the forefront in the 1960s and 1970s as the feminist movement
developed. Feminists were inspired, in part, by the civil rights movement.
Introduction xli
For African Americans living in the South, slavery ended in 1865, but
oppression did not, and civil rights were only an illusion. Periods of lynch-
ing in the 1890s, 1920s, and 1940s wreaked havoc across the South. Out-
raged by the injustice and further angered by civil authorities’ failure to
intervene, black women led antilynching crusades throughout the South
and carried the stories into the North. Their efforts from the grassroots
level to the congressional level significantly contributed to reducing the
incidence of the crime. Violations of voting rights and other civil rights,
however, continued unabated. African American women across the South
risked their jobs, their homes, and their lives to end the tyranny of segre-
gation and denigration that intruded on every aspect of their days. Some
became icons of the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates, and
Fannie Lou Hamer stand among the nation’s patriots for their passionate
commitment to the country’s fundamental beliefs in equality, liberty, and
freedom. They, the hundreds of women and men who followed their lead-
ership, the men whose stories are better known, and the young people
who shared their beliefs presented the story of racism and violence in
words and images so potent that the nation responded. The Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other measures are part of
their legacy.
The belief in equality that civil rights leaders espoused resonated with
women, who considered their status and found it unacceptable. For most
women, however, Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique crys-
tallized their discontent. Her articulation of the barriers between women
and their full participation in the nation’s political, social, and economic
life gave women a guidebook for examining their own lives. Also in 1963,
the President’s Commission on the Status of Women released its report
itemizing the laws and policies that stood between women and equality.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, served as one of the most pow-
erful catalysts for motivating women into action. The act primarily ad-
dressed discrimination on the basis of race. Title VII prohibits discrimi-
nation in employment on the basis of race, but unlike other sections of
the act, it also prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. Title VII also
created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to en-
force the law. The EEOC’s resistance to responding to sex discrimination
complaints led to the founding of the National Organization for Women
(NOW) in 1966. In addition to NOW, dozens of local and regional groups
sprang up, independent of each other, across the country. Energetic and
committed women formed rape crisis centers and child care centers, iden-
tified domestic violence as a legal problem, and coined phrases like “dis-
placed homemaker.” Women lobbied Congress and their state legislatures
to enact new policies to remedy these and other problems. Solutions that
xlii Introduction
seemed obvious to these women appeared radical to other women, men,
and policymakers.
In some ways, the proposals that feminists offered did have radical as-
pects to them. Claiming that the personal is political, feminists sought to
change the distribution of power and to make matters that had tradition-
ally been considered private or personal issues into public ones. They
sought equality and visibility. Their agenda included the legalization of
abortion; lesbian rights; and equality in education, employment, and
every other aspect of life. They challenged religious beliefs and practices,
and they objected to the use of gender-based nouns and pronouns. Two
major successes came within a year of each other: Congress passed the
ERA in 1972, and it went to the states for ratification; and the U.S.
Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.
The changes overwhelmed many women and men. To preserve the sta-
tus quo, halt the progress of the ERA, and reverse the legalization of abor-
tion, new groups formed. Phyllis Schlafly fought ratification of the ERA
for almost ten years and succeeded. The amendment failed to be ratified
by the required thirty-eight states and died in 1982. Prolife groups sought
passage of the Human Life Amendment and failing to do that, effectively
limited access to abortion through state and federal laws. Abortion re-
mained legal, but legal restrictions and social pressures constricted its
availability. Progress in fulfilling the feminist agenda in other areas stag-
nated as well in the 1980s.
Also in the 1980s, however, increasing numbers of women ran for pub-
lic office and won. In 1981, there were 912 women in state legislatures; a
decade later, there were 1,359 women in state legislatures. In 1981, there
were twenty-one women in the U.S. House of Representatives and two
women in the U.S. Senate; in 1991, there were twenty-eight women in the
House and four women in the Senate. The increases continued in the
1990s, with 1,652 women serving in state legislatures in 1999, fifty-six
women in the U.S. House, and nine women in the U.S. Senate that year.
Some of the women in state legislatures and Congress held feminist be-
liefs, but not all. Conservative women who opposed the feminist agenda
entered the political arena to gain political power.
The political power that women have obtained as officeholders, lobby-
ists, and voters has transformed issues considered radical or marginal in
the 1970s and 1980s into matters of national debate. Initially articulated
by feminists and identified as women’s issues, many of these issues have
lost their gender labels and taken their places in candidates’ and policy-
makers’ lists of priorities.
In 1971, for example, Republican president Richard Nixon vetoed a $2
billion child care package because he felt it might encourage mothers to
Introduction xliii
enter the paid workforce. Child care programs were an issue in the 1988
presidential election and in 1990, Republican president George Bush
signed a package of more than $22 billion in tax credits and new grant
programs. In another example, Bush’s veto of a measure to require em-
ployers to permit their employees to take leaves for childbirth, adoption,
or family illness was a campaign issue in 1992. Democratic presidential
candidate Bill Clinton promised to sign the policy into law if Congress
again passed it. After women voters gave him the margin of victory in the
election, Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Child
support enforcement offers a third example. Custodial parents, generally
women, had sought help collecting delinquent child support payments for
years but with few results, until members of Congress realized that a sig-
nificant number of the families were on welfare. The Personal Responsi-
bility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and the Deadbeat
Parents Punishment Act of 1998 significantly increased government in-
volvement in collecting delinquent child support.
In the almost 400 years since European women became permanent set-
tlers on this continent, American women have transformed their status
from invisible and silenced observers into policymakers and leaders.
Throughout the process, men at every level have been their partners by
sharing the vision of full citizenship for all Americans, extending voting
rights to women, supporting legislation, and contributing in dozens of
other small and large ways. The story of women’s political involvement and
leadership has not ended. It continues to develop new plotlines and themes
as the nation explores the meanings of freedom, liberty, and equality.
xliv Introduction
From Suffrage to the Senate
Abbott, Grace (1878–1939)
One of the many social reformers influenced by Chicago’s Hull House and
its founder Jane Addams, Grace Abbott worked to improve the lives of im-
migrants and children, using her skills as a researcher to investigate and
report the conditions in which they lived and worked. She began her ca-
reer as the first director of the Immigrants’ Protective League, conducting
research on immigrants’ lives and writing a series of articles published as
The Immigrant and the Community (1917). Based on her research, Abbott
concluded that immigrants needed protection from aggressive employ-
ment agencies, and she proceeded to successfully lobby the Illinois legis-
lature for a measure to regulate them. In 1913, she directed an investiga-
tion into the exploitation of immigrants in Massachusetts and again
recommended proposals for the legislature’s consideration.
In 1917, Julia Lathrop, who was director of the Children’s Bureau in
the U.S. Department of Labor, invited Abbott to join her staff and direct
the implementation of the Keating-Owen Child Labor Reform Act. The
next year, however, the U.S. Supreme Court found the law unconstitu-
tional. Abbott, who had observed the abuses of child labor, became a ded-
icated advocate for a child labor amendment, which was passed by Con-
gress in 1923 but was not ratified by the states.
Abbott succeeded Lathrop as head of the Children’s Bureau in 1921
and had as her first mission the implementation of the Sheppard-Towner
Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921, which provided federal
grants-in-aid to states for maternal and infant health programs. Under
1
A
Abbott’s leadership approximately 3,000 child health and prenatal health
clinics opened across the country. Despite the program’s demonstrated suc-
cess and the protests of Abbott and other social reformers, Congress ended
it in 1929. During the 1930s, Abbott directed several studies on the De-
pression’s impact on children, describing the nutritional deficiencies, edu-
cational losses, and health hazards that threatened children’s well-being.
Neither the research findings nor Abbott’s pleas convinced President Her-
bert Hoover that children were suffering. After Franklin Roosevelt’s elec-
tion to the presidency, Abbott’s proposals for a mother’s pension and emer-
gency food and medical care for the neediest children gained acceptance.
Abbott resigned from the Children’s Bureau in 1934 to recover from
tuberculosis, but she remained involved in the agency as an adviser, help-
ing develop sections of the Social Security Act of 1935 that related to ma-
ternal and child health, aid to dependent children, children with special
needs, and crippled children. From 1934 until her death, Abbott was pro-
fessor of public welfare administration at the University of Chicago
School of Social Service Administration.
Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, Grace Abbott earned her bachelor’s
degree from Grand Island College in 1898, studied at the University of
Nebraska, and earned her master’s degree in political science from the
University of Chicago in 1907.
See also Addams, Jane; Child Labor Amendment; Children’s Bureau; Lathrop,
Julia; Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921
References Lindenmeyer, “A Right to Childhood”: The U.S. Children’s Bureau
and Child Welfare, 1912–1946 (1997).
Abel, Hazel Pearl Hempel (1888–1966)
Republican Hazel Abel of Nebraska served in the U.S. Senate from 8 No-
vember 1954 to 31 December 1954. Abel had run for the office for a very
specific reason: “To me it was more than a short term in the Senate. I
wanted Nebraska voters to express their approval of a woman in govern-
ment. I was a sort of guinea pig.”
Born in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, Abel graduated from the University
of Nebraska in 1908. A high school mathematics teacher and a high school
principal from 1908 to 1916, she left teaching to marry George Abel and
moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1916. She joined his construction com-
pany, and following his death in 1936, she became company president. She
was also a Girl Scout leader, treasurer of the Nebraska League of Women
Voters, and active in the Nebraska Republican Party, serving as vice chair-
woman in 1954. Her many activities in Lincoln earned her the nickname
“Hurricane Hazel.”
2 Abel, Hazel Pearl Hempel
In the summer of 1954, Abel, a Republican, became a candidate for
the U.S. Senate to complete an unexpired term that would have only two
months left at the time of the election. A technicality in Nebraska law pre-
vented candidates from running for both the unexpired term and the full
six-year term that would be filled in the election. During her short time in
office, Abel held the distinction of being the only senator to listen to all of
the debate to censure Senator Joseph McCarthy. She voted with the ma-
jority to censure him.
Abel was a delegate to the White House Conference on Education in
1955 and a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission
from 1955 to 1959. In 1960, she unsuccessfully ran in the Republican pri-
mary for governor.
See also Bowring, Eva Kelly; Congress, Women in
References “Lady from Nebraska,” Newsweek, 20 December 1954, 20; Office of
the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives, Women in Congress, 1917–1990
(1991); Treese, ed., Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774–1996
(1997).
Abolitionist Movement, Women in the
In the 1830s, African American and white women from the North and the
South entered men’s political world to crusade against slavery. Outraged
by slavery’s inhumanity, they founded antislavery societies, broke social
taboos by making public speeches before audiences of women and men,
and petitioned Congress. The honor of their cause did not protect them
from public acrimony and derision or from threats of violence, and in the
process they carved new public spaces for themselves and laid the ground-
work for a women’s rights movement.
Women encountered their first significant obstacle to participating
in the abolitionist movement in 1833 at the founding meeting of the
American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. The meeting organizers
permitted women to attend the meeting but refused to let them speak
from the floor or join the society. After the meeting, a group of black
women and white women organized the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery
Society. In 1832, a group of African American women had already moved
on to the public stage when they formed the Female Anti-Slavery Society
of Salem, Massachusetts, one of the first abolitionist groups. Groups
formed in Boston, New York, and other communities, particularly in New
England. When the National Female Anti-Slavery Society convened in
New York in 1837, delegates from twelve states attended.
Participating in the abolition movement required courage as well as
commitment. Some courageous women, Harriet Tubman being a notable
Abolitionist Movement, Women in the 3
example, served the abolitionist movement as conductors on the Under-
ground Railroad, and others housed and fed fugitive slaves as they made
their way North. Even attending abolitionist meetings could be danger-
ous. For example, at a Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society meeting in
1835, William Lloyd Garrison was scheduled to speak, but after an angry
mob gathered, the mayor ordered the women in the convention hall to
leave. In order to provide some level of safety to the African American
women in the audience, each white woman accompanied a black woman
out of the building. Garrison did not escape—he was dragged through the
streets on a rope. At the second Anti Slavery Convention of American
Women, held in Philadelphia in 1838, a mob gathered outside the con-
vention and later burned the meeting hall.
Without voting rights, women were limited in the ways that they could
influence political decisions, but they conducted petition drives and gath-
ered thousands of signatures. In 1836, after abolitionist women had flooded
Congress with petitions to end slavery, Congress responded to their pleas by
passing a gag rule prohibiting the petitions from being read or considered.
The commitment to ending slavery compelled some women to break
the social prohibition against women speaking in public. Frances Wright,
Maria Stewart, and Angelina and Sarah Grimké all suffered criticism from
the public, the press, and the pulpit for publicly addressing mixed audi-
ences of women and men in the late 1820s and 1830s. In the next decade,
however, it became more common for women, including Susan B. An-
thony, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and Sojourner Truth, to use their ora-
torical skills on behalf of the abolition movement.
Women writers used their pens to expose the wretchedness of slaves’
lives and to descry the injustice of slavery. For example, in 1833 Lydia
Maria Child wrote the first antislavery book by a northern abolitionist
calling for the immediate emancipation of the nation’s 2 million slaves.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin humanized slavery for thou-
sands of readers, solidifying their antipathy to slavery.
As women continued to seek the end of slavery, they became in-
creasingly frustrated by the limits on their effectiveness as abolitionists
and their rights as citizens. One of the most historically significant exam-
ples occurred at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London.
Despite objections and heated debate, the convention ruled that only male
delegates could be seated. Among the women relegated to the convention
hall galleries were U.S. delegates Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stan-
ton. Excluded from active participation, the two women spent hours dis-
cussing women’s status and the need for change. Eight years later, they or-
ganized the first U.S. women’s rights convention and launched the
nineteenth-century women’s rights movement.
4 Abolitionist Movement, Women in the