History
Right to vote, the right to have a voice
early representation of women in local government. “There was a special session of the legislature in 1918 which let women vote in the Democratic primary,” Harrigan said. “That effectively meant that women were voting in the general election, since Texas was, at that time, really a one party state, a Democratic state. So it’s interesting, before women were voting in the United States, women were making decisive votes in the Texas primary. That’s really important.” Even during a mass movement, women’s suffrage on a national scale struggled to get through federal legislature owing to the South’s staunch opposition to feminist ideals. You can’t underestimate how huge the changes were. Andrea Hamilton, History instructor
But finally, in 1920, the 19th Amendment passed and gave women the right to vote. “It was huge symbolically,” Hamilton said, “and there was a lot of worry among the men who hadn’t wanted to give women the vote that suddenly women were going to vote in this block and throw off politics. Other than a few issues, a lot of women tend to vote with their class, not as a block.” Dr. Joanne Green, political scientist and TCU Interim Chair of Women and Gender Studies, compounds on the symbolic value of the 19th Amendment. “The 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote in all elections was a significant step in allowing women all rights of citizenship,” Green said. “Others, like the right to a trial by one’s peers, the right to claim one’s wages and the right to be protected against discrimination based upon one’s sex took many more decades, but ensuring the right to vote was a significant step,” Aside from politics, however, women already had a significant role in society. “I’d also say that by the time women were getting the vote in 1920, you’ve already reached a point where women made up over half of the college population, and a lot of other societal changes had taken place that changed womens’ lives,” Hamilton said. To Hamilton, the women’s rights movement saw a decline after the passage of the 19th Amendment. “The reality was that women still couldn’t practice law in most states,” Hamilton said, “and schools still had quotas, and women still didn’t get custody of their children, and they still couldn’t hold a credit card in their own name, and so all those other issues were still there.”
The timeline July 19, 1848
The Seneca Falls Convention in New York meets to discuss women’s rights and marks the start of the women’s suffrage movement.
March 13, 1913
Women from Texas and around the country march on Washington, D.C., in the Woman Suffrage Procession.
July 27, 1918 Women possess the right to vote in the next Texas primary after Governor William Hobby passes new legislation.
After the suffrage movement, the National Women’s Party emerged, seen as another “radical” group of women. They continued to lobby to change women’s roles in the family and in society. “You get the Great Depression and the World Wars, and that consumed a lot of national energy, so it was relatively quiet,” Hamilton said. In the wake of the 1960s social movements, the women’s rights movement gained an additional wave of widespread popularity. “You got other kinds of cultural changes in the 60s, so more women protest and advocate for change,” Hamilton said. Yet there is still work to be done. Women fall behind in national averages in civic representation, Kay Bailey Hutchinson remains the only woman to serve in the United States Senate in Texas history and women are not equally dispersed throughout the House of Representatives. “Only 9 [Texan] women have served in the House, currently there are the most ever – 6 – 16.7% of the House delegation – below the national average of 23%,” Green said. “25% of the state legislature is female, as compared with the national average 29%, but the numbers are increasing and Texas women are a force with which to be reckoned.” Leader of the Hockaday chapter of the NewGen student advocacy group Premanshi Agarwalla ‘22 feels learning from the women’s suffrage movement provides a path toward a more equal future and a larger role in government for women. “The women obviously had opinions, but they weren’t represented in the democracy,” Agarwalla said. “Even though you say you’re a democracy, in order to be truly representative of the people, you have to be willing to listen to what they have to say. It’s not enough to only listen to who you want to listen to.” Now, Harrigan looks forward to a female-powered future, hoping that republican ideologies will be strengthened through equal representation and increasing numbers of women in government. “The idea that women are increasingly running for office means that we are going to have a more representative state, and a more representative country in the future,” Harrigan said. “Who knows if the women who are casting their votes are voting for a liberal candidate, a conservative candidate or somewhere in between, but they will be a part of the process, which can only obviously be for the good.” STORY Henry McElhaney, Toby Barrett GRAPHIC Morgan Chow
August 18, 1920
August 6, 1965
The 19th Amendment is ratified after being passed by Congress the previous year.
The Voting Rights Act is signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which prohibits discriminatory processes in the voting system.
The ReMarker • October 29, 2020
T
he American people’s right to vote, while in recent elections overlooked by the general populace, represents what it means to be an American. Through the ballot, the governed can express their consent with operations and representation on both local and federal levels. Yet, in the 2016 presidential election, 49.6% of eligible voters did not vote, according to the United States Election Project. With the 2020 presidential election upon us, we look back at one group’s 70-year-long fight for the vote. While so integral to government function and equal representation, the vote has not historically been guaranteed to all. This past August marks the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment, the amendment that gave women the right to vote. To history instructor Andrea Hamilton, however, the 1848 Seneca Falls convention serves as the starting point for a sevendecade-long women’s suffrage movement. “Seneca Falls is the first convention where there was a formal declaration calling for women’s right to vote,” Hamilton said. “It was really connected with the abolitionist movement. People working for women’s suffrage believed that women would get the right to vote after the Civil War, when African Americans got the right to vote.” While female activists were first seen as radical, the Progressive Era’s widespread social activism led to a shift in public opinion in the early 20th century: women’s suffrage became a mass movement. “A lot of different groups who became interested in women getting the vote for a variety of reasons,” Hamilton said. “People working for labor reform wanted women to get the vote. People on different parts of the political spectrum who would vote really differently on other issues all agree that they want to fight for women to get the vote.” It crossed party lines. It crossed regional feuds. It united many parts of America, but the suffrage movement was still unpopular in the South. “The issue in the South was largely that they didn’t want Black women to get the right to vote,” Hamilton said. “You’ve got Southern segregationists and white Southern men who didn’t want any women to get the vote, because they saw it as giving Blacks more lobbying power, and they think they’ll attack segregation then.” For Texas women, however, representation in elections preceded the 19th Amendment owing to unique legislation. Tenured Texas Monthly journalist and New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of the Alamo Stephen Harrigan maintains the significance of this
Issues
Today, women comprise more than half of voters in the United States. But it was just 100 years ago when they received the franchise to participate in the American electoral process.
3
Election
An in-depth policy comparison of presidential platforms along with student opinions. Pages 4-5
Life skills
Taking a look at valuable practical life skills for young adults. Page 6
Service
Why are students required to complete community service hours in a COVID-19 climate? Page 7
In brief VISITING SCHOLARS PROGRAM Dr. Katherine Magruder was named Head of the Visiting Scholars Program by Head of Upper School Colin Igoe Oct. 2. Magruder is exploring the option of inviting virtual guests. “We’re in the brainstorming phase,” said Magruder, who teaches sixth grade humanities. “Generally the way it works is the coordinator will start soliciting ideas from the community, and people will mention names they would like to be a part of the program. There’s a little bit of work that needs to be done there to figure out the logistics and feasibility.” The Visiting Scholars Program provides students with opportunities to hear from learned lecturers, artists and thinkers. Past guests have specialized in a variety of different fields, including poetry, literature and science. Last year, visitors included astronomer and astrophysicist David Shoemaker and journalist Bryan Mealer. VIRTUAL ADMISSIONS Due to the inability for interested families to visit campus, the Admission Office has organized virtual “Coffee Break Live”, which will be virtually hosted with over 150 families from across the nation in September. The goal is for on-campus events to return as soon as possible, but virtual events will continue to be included to better serve out-of-town families. NATIONAL MERIT Thirty-two seniors were named semifinalists for National Merit Scholarships by the National Merit Scholarship Program Sep. 9. The seniors are among only 16,000 semifinalists from across the country. After following the prerequisite guidelines, they will continue to the Finalist section of the NMSP, where over half are expected to receive one of 7,600 National Merit Scholarships. The students named include Alam Alidina, Michael Anderson, Jacob Bell, Beto Beveridge, Beau Exall, Jackson Fair, Jordan Gaines, Fritz Hesse, Matthew Ho, Anish Karthik, Mustafa Latif, Jamie Mahowald, Rishi Mohan, Sam Morgan, Cristian Pereira, Robert Pou, Antonio Quinones, Cooper Ribman, Siddhartha Sinha, Ned Tagtmeier, Sai Thirunagari, Varun Trivedi, Michael Vanesko, Vatsal Vemuri, Benny Wang, Mason Westkaemper, Drew Woodward, Max Wu, David Yang, Charlie Zhang, Han Zhang and Jerry Zhao.
