Voters
All too often, modern Americans view voting as something routine and mundane. We often forget those who fought to gain the voting rights that we as citizens enjoy today. One of many of these groups was women. Although many struggled for this right, some interesting materials from the University’s Archives and Rare Books Library highlight this particular fight.
In May of 1885, the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association was formed in Painesville, Ohio with the “purpose of securing to every properly qualified woman in the State the right to the ballot.”5 In 1908, the group met in Columbus for their annual meeting. Here the women discussed and adopted a “Plan of Work” for their future efforts. They decided to pay “especial attention to agitation, education, and organization” including securing a Woman’s Day at the Ohio State Fair, and gaining endorsements from labor, religious, political, educational, and philanthropic associations. Their plan of work also emphasized that “the primary purpose of the suffrage club is to secure equality before the law, and not to provide entertainment for its members.”6 Yet the association also broadened its purposes slightly stating that “sanitary conditions, the milk and food supply, village or city ordinances dealing with questions of health, education, and morals, all intimately affect the home, and are proper subjects for consideration.”7 A printed pamphlet containing the minutes of this meeting is housed in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books Library.
Cincinnati women were involved in the suffrage movement at both the state and national levels. Miss Annie Laws, whose membership card is shown below, was one of these suffragettes. Laws was also active with the community in other ways. She helped to organize the Cincinnati Training School for Nurses, took an active role in the American Red Cross, was president of the Cincinnati Kindergarten Association, one of the founders of the Cincinnati Women’s Club, and helped organize the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs.8
