The Southern Women’s Rejection League was a powerful force. My favorite Anti group was Women Voters Against Suffrage.
Yes, that’s right. These were women voters who promised to vote against men who favored women voting. It turns out that even before the ratification of the 18th Amendment, some states allowed women to vote. For instance, the progressive men in the Missouri Legislature had agreed in 1919 to allow women to vote, but only in presidential elections. Local concerns would remain the domain of men.
Missouri gave the ladies half a loaf, so to speak, until the 18th Amendment was ratified.
We are not that state anymore. In fact, I’m quite sure that a solid majority of the Missourians who heard the governor’s recent speech did not think — like I did— that it was an awkwardly worded tribute to the Suffs. In most of Missourah, they heard the speech and thought: The governor is doing it again. He’s putting truth to power. First, the wrong team wins the Civil War, and then women get the vote. We have known some rough times.
I am not sure when Missouri changed, but we certainly had changed by the time Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. I was living in Arizona at the time and, although I was not following politics closely, I heard of the work of Phyllis Schlafly.
She led the national fight against ratification of the ERA.