The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s

Chapter Five: The Best Weapon for Reform: Women Lobbying with the Vote

Chapter Five The Best Weapon for Reform Women Lobbying with the Vote O n 16 October 1923, clubwomen from across Kentucky met in Louisville for a conference of state women’s organizations . Before the assembled women, the Republican and Democratic nominees for governor stood for questioning. The state’s League of Women Voters, Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Home Economics Association, Consumers League, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), Business and Professional Women, Girls’ Friendly Society, Daughters of Isabella, and Social Hygiene Association were coordinating their work through a joint legislative council, and the issues that the gubernatorial candidates faced reflected the council’s agenda. The women asked pointed questions about the candidates’ commitment to prohibition enforcement and adequate appropriations for the state’s Board of Corrections and Charities. They asked the candidates to “pledge” their “utmost support” and “agree, if elected,” to advance the legislative agenda presented that day. Just three weeks before election day, both of Kentucky’s candidates for governor spent precious time campaigning—side by side—before a group of demanding women. They did not send surrogates , and they did not decline the women’s invitation. When the men were done, the assembled women transcribed the candidates’ responses for distribution to other women and for future reference.1 As this episode demonstrates, activist white women recognized that the Nineteenth Amendment marked an important turning point in southern politics. It changed not only who cast ballots but also who counted as a constituent . With their votes, women commanded the attention of political candidates , and they used that opportunity to make politicians respond to legislative demands. White women reformers, who had long lobbied the political leaders of their region in support of legislative reform, understood the way their position had changed as a result of enfranchisement, and they embraced the vote as a powerful new weapon in their persuasive arsenal. Immediately 136 Women Lobbying with the Vote upon theirenfranchisementthey adopted innovative andsophisticatedlobbying techniques based on the power of women as voters. While they certainly continued to argue the merits of their legislative proposals, organized white women increasingly confronted their legislators with an electoral threat. No longer did they go to legislators as supplicants, requesting their support for legislation simply because it was the right thing to do. After 1920, southern white women approached their representatives as constituents and lobbied their legislators armed with the vote. Organized African American women, by contrast, remained largely unarmed . As much or more than white women, they recognized the potential of the ballot as a weapon for reform. Despite their widespread and concerted efforts to seize the opportunities offered by the Nineteenth Amendment, however, African American women were largely unsuccessful in obtaining access to southern polls. Thus, as white women’s political power surged in this period, the inability of organized African American women to obtain increased support from the state testified both to the racism of the region’s white leaders and to the power of the ballots denied African Americans. A cartoon published in the Woman Voter, a bulletin for Mississippi clubwomen , expressed the optimism that southern white women shared for the power of the ballot.2 The caption, “He’ll Have to ‘Kiss the Baby’ Now,” signaled southern white women’s belief that elected officials would be forced to offer legislative reforms in exchange for women’s votes. Female political leaders in Virginia echoed that sentiment when they called on newly enfranchised women “to endorse with their votes the measures they have hitherto been unable to support effectively.”3 A South Carolina activist declared that woman “is no longer a supplicant” and warned that “the ballot is a powerful weapon built for striking.”4 The Georgia League of Women Voters similarly described the vote as “The Best Weapon for Reform,” and the president of the North Carolina Federation of Women’s Clubs reminded clubwomen that “there is only one way actually to achieve progress and reform and that is through the ballot.”5 Throughout the region, in private correspondence and public pronouncements, southern white women expressed faith that their ballots would bolster their demands for reform. Clubwomen and suffragists alike were convinced that women would be able to “take advantage of enfranchisement as a means of securing the reforms for which they formerly worked indirectly.”6 Most scholars have contended that after their long struggle for the vote had ended, women were unable to leverage their ballots in the ways that they had hoped.7 Some studies have suggested that having...