Women voters!

 

“Some whose names are to be found all through the Social Register marched side by side with working mothers with babies in their arms. A large proportion of the marchers were young girls who would not be old enough to vote were they enfranchised. They made up in beauty what they lacked in years and were cheered all along the crowded Fifth Avenue sidewalks.” New York Evening World newspaper, 23 October 1915.

Organized by Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, the largest political demonstration to its date in support of the right of women in the US to vote occurred on 23 October 1915. The demonstration consisted of a march of an estimated 25,000 people down 5th Avenue in New York City, New York. An editorial in the New York Times warned that if the suffragists ever accomplished their goal that “they would demand all the rights that implies. It is not possible to think of women as soldiers and sailors, police patrolmen, or firemen.” The three mile protest march from Washington Square to Fifth-Ninth Street (where the Apple Store now is on 5th Ave) was also noted as the largest parade to its date ever held in New York City and attracted tens of thousands of spectators along its route. The state of New York enfranchised women to vote in 1917 - three years prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In 1919, Carrie Chapman Catt would call for an organization she named the League of Women Voters, and that organization would be formed in 1920 and exists to this date.

Thanks to FB post by Jim Welch

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We must do democracy. That goes far beyond simply casting your vote. We must all actively champion the causes that ensure the common good.

 -Martin Luther King III, human rights advocate (b. 23 Oct 1957)