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272 Pages | 11
Suffrage and the City
New York Women Battle for the Ballot
Lauren C. Santangelo
The first account of the New York City suffrage movement from 1870 to state victory
Focuses on the built environment and the relationship between the city and the women's rights campaign
Utilizes the archive at Rokeby, still a privately owned estate, including sources detailing socialite Margaret Chanler Aldrich's participation in the campaign
In 1917, women won the vote in New York State. Suffrage and the City explores how activists in New York City were instrumental in achieving this milestone. Santangelo uncovers the ways in which the demand for women's rights intersected with the history, politics, and culture of New York City in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The fight for the vote in the nation's largest metropolis demanded that suffragists both mobilize and contest urban etiquette, as they worked to gain visibility and underscore their cause's respectability.
From the Polo Grounds to the Lower East Side, organizers championed political equality to anyone who would listen in the early twentieth century. Their Fifth Avenue parades showcased the various Manhattan subcultures, including industrial laborers, teachers, nurses, and even socialites, that they transformed into a broad coalition by the 1910s. Films and newspapers broadcasted their tactics to rest of the country, just as the national suffrage organization decided to draw on Gotham's resources by moving its own headquarters to midtown and thereby turning Manhattan into the movement's capital.
The city's mores, rhythms, and physical layout helped to shape what was possible for organizers campaigning within it. At the same time, suffragists helped to redefine the urban experience for white, middle-class women. Combining urban studies, geography, and gender and political history, Suffrage and the City demonstrates that the Big Apple was more than just a stage for suffrage action; it was part of the drama. As much as enfranchisement was a political victory in New York State, it was also a uniquely urban and cultural one.
Chapter 1: "The Wickedness of the Masses": The Perils of Suffrage, 1870-1894
Chapter 2: Becoming "A Lover of the Metropolis," 1895-1906
Chapter 3: Ushering in a "New Era" 1907-1909
Chapter 4: Geographies of Suffrage, 1910-1913
Chapter 5: "Suffrage 'Owns' City" 1913-1915
Chapter 6: From Confrontation to Collaboration, 1916 and 1917
Appendix: Key Suffrage Organizations in Manhattan
Lauren C. Santangelo is a Lecturer at Princeton University where she teaches in the Writing Program. She earned her Ph.D. at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and held a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellowship at the New-York Historical Society/Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School. She lives in Beacon, New York.
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