{"id":75149,"date":"2019-01-29T22:28:58","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T04:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=75149"},"modified":"2019-01-29T22:29:13","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T04:29:13","slug":"frances-willard-and-the-fight-for-womens-suffrage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/frances-willard-and-the-fight-for-womens-suffrage\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Willard and the fight for women’s suffrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nora Mabie<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

The Midterm elections of 2018 catapulted women to political victories at all levels of government, with a record number<\/a> of women now serving the 116th Congress. These historic triumphs take on new meaning as we approach June 2019, marking 100 years since Congress passed the 19th Amendment<\/a> granting women the right to vote.<\/p>\n

One of the heroes of the movement to get the vote is Frances Willard, a suffragist whose home and museum in Evanston celebrates a woman and a political master worth remembering.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But Willard did not begin as a suffrage hero. In fact, she got her start as a leader of the Woman\u2019s Temperance movement, which advocated against the sale of alcohol in America. However, Willard\u2019s true moment of genius struck in 1876 in Columbus, Ohio, while she was in the middle of a prayer.<\/p>\n

Willard describes the moment of enlightenment in her autobiography, Glimpses of 50 Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon my knees alone, in the room of my hostess, who was a veteran Crusader, there was borne in upon my mind, as I believe, from loftier regions, the declaration, \u2018You are to speak for woman\u2019s ballot as a weapon of protection to her home and tempted loved ones from the tyranny of drink.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With this revelation, Willard developed her \u201cHome Protection\u201d argument, aligning the more conservative temperance movement with the radical women\u2019s suffrage movement.<\/p>\n

The temperance movement relied on traditional domestic roles for women \u2013 many believed it was a woman\u2019s duty to care for the house and children. However, where husbands spent the majority of their paychecks on alcohol or when drunken husbands became violent with their children and wives, home life was threatened. Willard argued that in order to protect their homes, women needed the right to vote in local elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is that even though the Temperance movement was domestic and traditional, it also led women into the world of public policy and public life,\u201d said Kate Masur, an associate professor at Northwestern University whose research specializes in 19th century American history.<\/p>\n

Willard\u2019s Home Protection idea galvanized immediately popular support. She traveled around the world delivering speeches and distributing Home Protection manuals. Willard later wrote the Polyglot Petition, which would permit the Home Protection ballot, allowing women to vote on local issues. Woman’s Christian Temperance Union missionaries sent the petition around the world and gained more than 7,500,000 signatures. The petition was a strategic political breakthrough because women could endorse it even if they couldn\u2019t vote.
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