SAN BERNARDINO — Inalienable rights often have to be won, said Josie Gonzales, chairwoman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.
After the hard work and determination paves the way for those rights, that’s when they become inalienable, Gonzales said at a celebration of the 100th anniversary of women’s constitutional right to vote in California.
When women won the right to vote in California on Oct. 10, 1911, San Francisco became the most populous city in the world where women had the same voting rights as men, said Gloria Anderson, president of the League of Women Voters San Bernardino Chapter.
Gonzales and Anderson were speakers at the celebration, held at the Native Sons of the American West meeting hall in San Bernardino.
The event honored both the women who successfully campaigned for the measure — and the men who voted for it, Anderson said.
One hundred years ago, California became the sixth state in the nation — all were in the West — allowing women to vote.
When that right passed in the state of Washington in 1910, it energized an eighth-month campaign leading to the passage of the legislation in this state.
The campaign was both innovative and comprehensive, Anderson said, and it later served as a model leading to nationwide women’s suffrage in 1920.
The campaign involved signs with simple campaign slogans, such as “Give your girl an equal chance with your boy.”
And these slogans were placed on large posters, displayed along the side of roads, on banners on the side of buses and at baseball stadiums, Anderson said.
Women’s suffrage proponents cultivated newspaper editorial writers and others with influence on public opinion.
The opposition, which was to a large extent funded by those involved with the sale of alcoholic beverages, had posters also, including one which said, “The Home Loving Women Do Not Want the Ballot,” she said.
When darkness fell on Election Day a hundred years ago, it appeared that the measure would be defeated.
The voter majority in large cities, including San Francisco and Oakland, were against women’s suffrage. A small majority in Los Angeles, however, were in favor of it.
But the next day as votes from rural California were counted, women’s suffrage passed by 3,587 votes out of more than 246,000 cast, she said.
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