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Belle La Follette’S Fight For Women’S Suffrage: Losing The Battle For Wisconsin, Winning The War For The Nation, Nancy C. Unger
Belle La Follette’S Fight For Women’S Suffrage: Losing The Battle For Wisconsin, Winning The War For The Nation, Nancy C. Unger
History
A century ago, on May 21, 1919, the US House of Representatives voted difinitively (304 to 89) in support of women’s suffrage. Two weeks later, Wisconsinite Belle La Follette sat in the visitors’ gallery of the US Senate chamber. She “shed a few tears” when it was announced that, by a vote of 56 to 25, the US Senate also approved the Nineteenth Amendment, sending it on to the states for ratification.1 For Belle La Follette, this thrilling victory was the culmination of a decades-long fight. Six days later, her happiness turned to elation when Wisconsin became the first …
Legacies Of Belle La Follette’S Big Tent Campaigns For Women’S Suffrage, Nancy Unger
Legacies Of Belle La Follette’S Big Tent Campaigns For Women’S Suffrage, Nancy Unger
History
In countless speeches and articles in La Follette’s Magazine, Belle Case La Follette urged that women needed the vote to secure “standards of cleanliness and healthfulness in the municipal home,” and because “home, society, and government are best when men and women keep together intellectually and spiritually.” This range of often mutually exclusive arguments created an inclusive big tent. However, arguing that women were qualified to vote by their roles as wives and mothers while maintaining that gender was superfluous to suffrage also contributed to an uneasy combination that would continue the conflict over women’s true nature and hinder their …