Corona Daily 356: Allowing Women to Vote?

Yesterday, I talked about the 2020 US presidential election. Something extraordinary happened 100 years ago, before the 1920 election.

If we think times are bad today, please read the history of 1914-1920. First the World War followed by a pandemic called the Spanish Flu. Year 1918 was the worst when the war and the lethal virus overlapped. WWI killed 17 million people, but the Spanish flu killed 50 million. More American soldiers died from the flu than in a battle.

In the 19th century, women didn’t have a right to vote anywhere in the world. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were elected exclusively by white males. In 1872, the nine male Supreme Court justices had confirmed the expression “all persons” in the 14th amendment doesn’t include women. Men opposed to allowing women to vote feared “petticoat rule”.

When men started dying in large numbers in the war, women took over their roles. Their number in the workforce was soon 25% higher than before the start of the war. Women had been banned from working in the textile industry. Now they started working not only there, but also in the military and police force.

Sometimes disasters can bring in revolutionary changes. The 14th century plague, one of history’s deadliest epidemics, set free many slaves in Europe and increased wages for the surviving labourers. The WWI and the Spanish flu made it impossible for men to ignore women’s contribution.

The woman suffrage (right to vote) movement gathered momentum. As women took over men’s jobs, they blew apart the arguments they were delicate and intellectually inferior.

US President Woodrow Wilson, silent for five years, finally said, “We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering, sacrifice and toil and not a partnership of privilege?”

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However, the start of the 1918 Spanish flu nearly put an end to the women’s voting movement. By October, the pandemic was so bad it was considered immoral for six women to meet in a parlour. They could campaign only through street signs.

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the American Woman Suffrage association, was bedridden by the flu. She needed to negotiate with John Walsh, a senator, but he was stricken with flu as well. Catt couldn’t come down, and Walsh couldn’t go up. A middleman was appointed to shuttle between them to conduct confidential discussions.

The Senate was dominated by Democrats from the South who were determined not to allow black women to vote. If black women can vote, they will think of themselves as socially equal, and the premise of white supremacy will be eroded, they said openly.

In two attempts, the women voting rights bill fell short by two votes. Then in September 1918 the flu came roaring back, eventually killing 675,000 Americans.

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During the war, the Red Cross had not allowed black nurses. But the pandemic became so severe that 18 black nurses were allowed to serve for the first time. Flu became an important moment for gender as well as race. Americans saw that not only women, but women of color were valuable as well. In total, eight million women volunteered as American Red Cross workers taking on duties from nursing to mechanics and bike messengers.

Throughout the pandemic, women suffragists fought for ratification. States, one after another, started granting voting rights. On 18 August 1920 Tennessee, the last state endorsed the 19th amendment (voting equality between genders), and US women won the right to vote. The presidential election of 1920 was the first when women from across the USA had voting rights on the same footing as men.

Ravi