All Citizens: a new documentary

The Lombard Historical Society (LHS) and Tim Frakes Productions Inc. announced the premier and showings of a new documentary - All Citizens: The Lombard Women who Voted 29 Years Before the 19th Amendment and the Story of Those Who Made it Possible. All Citizens is a reenactment of the day that Lombard women made history and voted on April … Continue reading All Citizens: a new documentary

Voting Was Only the Beginning for American Women

By Jennifer Duvall – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. Mrs. George Welles demonstrating with other suffragists in Chicago, Illinois, before going to Washington, DC, to participate in a suffrage demonstration on March 3, 1913. DN-0060283, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News collection, Chicago History Museum. In March of 1919, the United States was … Continue reading Voting Was Only the Beginning for American Women

The Illinois WCTU and Suffrage

By Matthew Norvell – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. The women’s suffrage movement and the temperance movement were two of the largest reform campaigns of the Progressive Era. Although at first glance these two political movements appear to have had little reason for crossover, they were in fact closely related. To … Continue reading The Illinois WCTU and Suffrage

The Two-Fold Struggle: African American Republican Women’s Clubs

By Ve’Amber D. Miller – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. “However much the white women of the country need suffrage, for many reasons which will immediately occur to you, colored women need it more,” Mary Church Terrell wrote, encouraging black women to vote for the Republican ticket [1]. African American women … Continue reading The Two-Fold Struggle: African American Republican Women’s Clubs

Agnes Nestor – Working Women’s Advocate

By Scarlett Andes – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. Agnes Nestor, a prominent labor leader and educator, stands out as an unusual contributor to the fight for women’s suffrage in Illinois, which she saw as directly tied to working women’s interests. Born in 1876 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Agnes Nestor … Continue reading Agnes Nestor – Working Women’s Advocate

Making the World Better: Lucy Stone

By Erin Witt – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. “From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman” [1]. This was how Lucy Stone began an 1848 speech and how she also began her political life. Early on, Stone saw the differences in the way … Continue reading Making the World Better: Lucy Stone

Elizabeth Boynton Harbert

By Davis Stubblefield – Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. When people think about the major figures of the Suffrage movement, several names immediately spring to mind: Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. For Illinois, and particularly Evanston and the Chicago area, another name should be just … Continue reading Elizabeth Boynton Harbert

The Founding of the National Woman’s Party

By Casey Terry - Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019. Women at the founding of the National Woman's Party at the Blackstone Theater, 1916. Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1922), Jun 06, 5. One of the most important groups formed in the U.S. to fight for women’s political rights was the National Woman’s Party. … Continue reading The Founding of the National Woman’s Party

Suffer Not the Rain: The 1916 Suffrage Parade in Chicago

By Lucas Bensley - Loyola University Chicago, PhD in History, Fall 2019 On the afternoon of June 7, 1916, 5,000 women marched through a torrential rainstorm to the Republican National Convention site in downtown Chicago. Their goal: to compel the delegates of the Grand Old Party to add a woman’s suffrage plank to the party platform. … Continue reading Suffer Not the Rain: The 1916 Suffrage Parade in Chicago

1914 Suffrage Parade: Celebration and Call to Action

By Miranda Ridener - Loyola University Chicago, Masters in Public History Program, Fall 2019 On May 2, 1914 women and men took to the Chicago streets to parade in support of woman’s suffrage. The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association organized the parade under Grace Wilbur Trout’s presidency. The parade highlighted the national suffrage movement and coincided with … Continue reading 1914 Suffrage Parade: Celebration and Call to Action