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“Failure is Impossible” Test your knowledge of women’s history Compiled by Marianne Scholl and Nancy Silk

Delve a bit into Washington State history, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how progressive our state has been when it comes to women.

You probably already know that Washington currently has the distinction of being the first and only state with the governorship and both senate seats held by women, but did you know that Seattle was the first major city in the country to elect a woman mayor or that we were the sixth state to elect a female governor?

And did you know that unlike the U.S. Constitution, the Washington State Constitution contains an equal rights amendment which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in all areas of public life?

In honor of March as Women’s History Month, here’s a quick quiz that takes on these and other milestones, both here at home and farther afield. Test yourself on just how well you know women’s history. Hint: Some questions have more than one answer.

1. WHEN WERE WASHINGTON WOMEN GRANTED THE RIGHT TO VOTE?

A) 1881
B) 1888
C) 1910
D) 1920

2. WHAT AREAS OF EDUCATION WERE COVERED BY TITLE IX, WHICH RICHARD NIXON SIGNED INTO LAW AS PART OF THE 1972 EDUCATION AMENDMENTS?

A) Employment
B) Athletics
C) Technology
D) Math & Science

3. WHO WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?

A) Shirley Chisholm
B) Victoria Woodhull
C) Hillary Clinton
D) Angela Davis

4. WHAT SUFFRAGIST WAS ARRESTED AND CONVICTED OF ATTEMPTING TO VOTE IN THE 1872 ELECTION?

A) Susan B. Anthony
B) Elizabeth Cady Stanton
C) Sojourner Truth
D) Lucretia Mott

5. WHO WAS BERTHA LANDES?

A) Seattle’s first female mayor
B) Seattle’s first female city council president
C) Washington’s first female governor
D) Boeing’s first female test pilot

6. WHO WAS THE FIRST BLACK WOMAN ELECTED TO CONGRESS?

A) Carol Moseley Braun
B) Angela Davis
C) Sonia Sotomayor
D) Shirley Chisholm

7. WHEN WAS THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT FIRST INTRODUCED INTO CONGRESS?

A) 1923
B) 1950
C) 1967
D) 1972

8. WHO WAS WASHINGTON’S FIRST FEMALE GOVERNOR?

A) Christine Gregoire
B) Catherine Dean May
C) Julia Butler Hansen
D) Dixy Lee Ray

ANSWERS:

1. A, B and C, if you consider Washington when it was still a territory.

The first attempt to grant Washington women the right to vote dates back to 1854, just a year after Washington was incorporated as a United States territory. That early effort failed as did several subsequent attempts to enfranchise women. Famed suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony traveled to Washington in 1871 to urge the territorial legislature to pass a suffrage bill, but it took ten more years before the legislature voted in 1881 to extend voting rights to white, English-speaking women. In 1884, the Washington Territorial Supreme Court, citing a technical flaw in the original legislation, struck down women’s suffrage.

The back and forth continued in 1888, when the territorial legislature passed a law restoring Washington women’s voting rights. Later that year the territorial Supreme Court once again nullified women’s suffrage, arguing that Congress had not intended to enfranchise women. Women’s suffrage was on the ballot when the state constitution was ratified 1889, but it lost by 19,000 votes.

Flash forward to 1909. The Washington suffrage movement under Emma Smith DeVoe of Seattle rejected public rallies and the aggressive, publicity-grabbing tactics of the British suffragettes and began what it referred to as a “still hunt.” This was a campaign of persuasion that focused on mobilizing wives, mothers and sisters to influence the men in their lives to support suffrage. As Shanna Stevenson, author of Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington, points out, the movement also used modern campaign tactics of canvassing poll lists, distributing literature and forming coalitions with labor unions and other groups.

The “quiet” approach worked, and in 1910 Washington became the fifth state in the union, and the first in the 20th century, to pass women’s suffrage. The success in Washington is credited with reinvigorating the suffrage campaign that culminated in the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1919. It went into effect in 1920 after 36 states ratified the amendment, so you could also count answer D as correct.

Nevertheless, federal citizenship laws still meant that Native Americans and some Asian immigrants could not vote until 1924 and 1952 respectively. And although African American women legally gained the right to vote in Washington in 1910 and nationally in 1920, discriminatory practices that prevented their voting in parts of the country were not eliminated until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

2. A, B, C and D. We know that Title IX was a huge leap forward for women and girls in sports, but Title IX is much broader and mandates equality in more than just athletic programs. It also addresses equal access to higher education, career education, employment, math and science, testing and technology, stating that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

3. B. All of the women listed have run for president, but Victoria Claflin Woodhull was the first female presidential candidate long before women were allowed to vote. She was nominated by the Equal Rights Party in 1872 and ran against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant on a platform of social and political reform.

Now considered a woman born a century before her time, Woodhull was the first female trader on Wall Street, a brilliant orator and a determined champion of women’s rights and fair labor laws. She also stirred controversy for her support of “free love” and sex education. She used the fortune she made as a stockbroker to publish a weekly newspaper which addressed these and other taboo subjects. Her paper’s biggest claim to fame: in 1871 it printed the first English version of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

4. A. All of these women were early women’s rights activists and leaders in the suffrage movement, but only Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting. In 1872, citing her citizenship under the 14th amendment, she went to the polls in Rochester, New York, to cast a ballot in the presidential election. Anthony was arrested, and then tried, convicted and fined $100. She refused to pay the fine and that, apparently, was the end of that.

During the same election, Sojourner Truth showed up at a polling booth in Battle Creek, Mich., and demanded a ballot. She was turned away but not arrested. The Supreme Court ruled in 1875 that “while women may be citizens, all citizens were not necessarily voters, and states were not required to allow women to vote.”

5. A and B. In 1922, Bertha Knight Landes (1868-1943) and Kathryn Miracle were the first women to be elected to Seattle’s City Council, and Landes was the first woman to be city council president. In 1926, Landes was elected mayor of Seattle, becoming the first woman to head a major American city.

Landes ran on an election platform of “municipal housekeeping,” arguing that it was time to clean up city politics. Her scandal-free administration was instrumental in improving public transportation, city finances and public parks, but she lost her bid for reelection in 1928, despite endorsements from Seattle’s major newspapers, the Central Labor Council and the Prohibition Party. She attributed her loss to “sex prejudice” and her relatively unknown opponent’s lavish campaign budget. Others say her support of prohibition hurt her politically.

Landes went on to write extensively for national magazines, encouraging other women to get involved in politics. She also played a leading role in numerous women’s organizations, including the Women’s University Club, Women’s Century Club, League of Women Voters of Seattle and the Soroptimists, a volunteer service organization for business and professional women.

6. D. Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress when she won the seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District in 1968. She served seven terms, and in 1971 she helped found the National Women’s Political Caucus. She was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and ran for president in 1972 with the slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed.”

7. A. The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced into Congress in 1923 by two Republicans, Senator Charles Curtis and Representative Daniel R. Anthony, Jr., a nephew of suffragist Susan B. Anthony. The ERA was subsequently introduced into every session of Congress until it passed with slightly revised wording in 1972.

The first draft of the amendment was written in 1921 by Alice Paul (1885-1977), head of the National Women’s Party, and introduced in Seneca Falls at the 75th anniversary celebration of the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention.

It read “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” In 1943 Paul rewrote the amendment, now called the “Alice Paul Amendment” to reflect the 15th and 19th Amendments: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Only 35 of the necessary 38 states ratified the amendment within the seven-year deadline. A three-year deadline extension failed to secure any more ratifications, with five states voting to rescind their ratifications. A lawsuit over the constitutionality of the extension of the ratification deadline and the rescinded ratifications eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1982 the Court dismissed the case as moot because the 1972 ERA had failed to win ratification in enough states, even with the three-year deadline extension.

That wasn’t the end of the ERA, however. Since 1994 there have been ongoing efforts to secure ratification in three more states. Ratification resolutions have been introduced in the legislatures of most of the 15 states that never ratified the ERA approved by Congress in 1972, but no legislature has approved ratification.

In 2007 and again last year, joint resolutions were introduced in Congress with the original language of the 1972 amendment minus a deadline for ratification by states.

Washington is one of only 16 states to have an equal rights amendment in the state constitution. The state amendment prohibiting discrimination based on sex was approved by voters in November 1972. The national amendment was ratified by the Washington state legislature in 1973.

8. D. In 1976, Dixy Lee Ray, a Stanford-trained marine biologist who had served on the Atomic Energy Commission and as assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, was the first woman elected governor of Washington. That made her the sixth woman in the country to be elected governor of a state and only the second to do so without succeeding her husband.

The first resident of the Governor’s Mansion to not have a first lady, Ray hired her sister Marion Reid as secretary and official hostess. Reid convinced the new governor to exchange her men’s shirts for blouses and to abandon her trademark white knee socks.

Ray was elected as a Democrat, but by the time reelection rolled around, she had antagonized much of her party with her strong support for nuclear power, unrestrained growth and massive oil tankers in Puget Sound. She also alienated women who had supported her by refusing to campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment. She lost in the Democratic primary.

Yakima state legislator Catherine Dean May (Choice B) was the first Washington woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 4th Congressional District and Julia Butler Hansen (Choice C) was the second in the 3rd District. Four out of Washington’s nine congressional districts have yet to elect a woman to Congress.

FOR MORE WOMEN'S HISTORY

National Women’s History Project

Women Firsts in Seattle Government

Washington Women’s History Consortium

History Link, the free online encyclopedia of Washington State History

©Copyright 2010, Caliope Publishing Company