Women's History in the Collections

Suffrage Banner - 1917

Suffragists from Orange County carried this banner down Fifth Avenue in New York City in a 1917 suffrage parade beseeching male voters to vote "yes" to a referendum granting women the right to vote. While New York can boast that Seneca Falls was the birthplace of women's rights, New York was one of the last states to grant women the vote.

Starting in 1854, women's suffrage petitions were annually presented to the N.Y.S. Legislature--and annually rejected or ignored. When Susan B. Anthony voted illegally in the 1872 election, she was arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined $100. A women's suffrage referendum in 1915 met with defeat, with rural upstate men and urban immigrant men allied in their opposition to women voting.

Suffragists viewed New York as "the keystone in the suffrage arch" because of its large population. "The Empire State Campaign" was hard fought. Inspired by the dramatic tactics of British suffragettes, the first American suffrage parade was held in New York City in 1910. Prior to this, American women did not demonstrate in such a public, or unladylike, manner. A daughter of one of the suffragists who carried this banner in the 1917 parade recalled a neighbor asking, "How could such a smart little lady like your mother do such a bad thing and march in the middle of dirty Fifth Avenue?" The marchers were met with shouts of "Go home and wash the dishes."

The 1917 referendum passed in large part because suffragists finally won over the urban vote. The New York Times (which was anti-suffrage) ran the headline "Suffrage Fight Won in the Cities." And The Schenectady Gazette stated "Now that women have been given the right to vote, the task devolves upon them of voting intelligently."

Christine Kleinegger, Senior Historian