Dakota Datebook: Suffrage, the League of Women Voters, and Abraham Lincoln Thursday, February 13, 2020

Prairie Public

On this date in 1920, more than 2,000 women from across the United States, including a delegation from North Dakota, were attending a convention set up through the National American Woman Suffrage Association at the Congress Hotel in Chicago. The weeklong convention was called a celebration of the emancipation of American women. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the Suffrage Association, stated that this “ratification convention” was “the most momentous of all conventions held in the last fifty-one years.”

The women had been hoping to celebrate the passage of the 19th Amendment, but only 31 states had ratified it by the time of the convention. New Mexico came on board before the convention’s end, but that was still only 32 of the 36 states required. So instead, the women celebrated their progress, though they still had plenty of work to do.

Read more at: https://news.prairiepublic.org/post/suffrage-league-women-voters-and-abraham-lincoln