Online Exhibitions:

NOW IS THE TIME!/WOMEN MUST WAIT!: Suffrage Activities in Rensselaer County

Woman Suffrage. Even today, 75 years after the 19th Amendment was passed, those two words evoke strong reactions. From the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in July of 1848 to the final ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920, there was a long progression of constant, undefeatable energy directed against the status quo which prevented one half of the population from real participation in the political life of the nation.

This exhibit places the national suffrage movement into local, Rensselaer County, context for the first time. The profiles of ten women seen here only allow an introduction to the reasons/beliefs that made people choose one side or the other on this issue. There are many other people who took part in the debate at various levels around the county. Their dedication and hard work are brought to light through newspapers, archival collections, photographs and oral histories which provide a good look at the controversy 75 years later.

By the late nineteenth century, as more and more women were educated, a movement started that saw the founding of clubs of all kinds. The self- and civic improvement focus of many of these groups was a comment on the times where women began to have more of an impact outside of the home. As the national suffrage organizations became more sophisticated, political equality clubs began to be established around the state. The Valley Falls PEC founded in 1903 by Blanche Stover Clum and a group of dedicated women, was part of a grass roots organization that worked for the next two decades to assure the right to vote. The Club, now the Valley Falls Women's Club, is still active, continuing a tradition of community activism that expanded beyond the original focus.

In the 11th Campaign District of the Empire State Campaign Committee, meetings were held to train suffrage workers and inform the faithful of up to date developments. This time was recognized as the "victory period of suffrage." In 1915, the voters in Rensselaer County and New York State defeated the suffrage amendment, an event that galvanized suffrage forces. In 1916, a suffrage plank was in both major party platforms. Picketing of the White House, using the methods of British suffrage activists, heightened awareness around the nation. In 1917, after two years of hard work convincing the men upon whom any change depended, the efforts paid off and the voters finally voted in favor of woman suffrage in New York State. That event inspired renewed suffrage efforts in the rest of the country. In Rensselaer County, however, the amendment was defeated despite all the work by the various pro-suffrage groups.

Once New York had passed the amendment in the 1917 election, women began to participate at all levels of local politics. The Town of Brunswick voter registration books for 1918 and 1919, when women could vote, shows the addition of women to the rolls as soon as it was possible. The records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections bear out this immediate involvement by newly enfranchised women, with female candidates for a number of local offices running as early as 1918 in some communities. The newspapers exhorted this unknown political entity to use their new privilege wisely and fairly. The large factories in Troy provided female workers with time off to vote, strongly suggesting they vote early in the day.

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