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Essay / Historical events surrounding the women's suffrage movement in the United States
Although the women's suffrage movement was solidified by a common goal, it was divided among those who believed in a struggle parallel with those who were less privileged women and those who excluded them. . “From Seneca Falls to the vote? " by Nancy Hewitt, Annelise Orleck's "Common Sense and a Little Fire," and the film about Ida B. Wells examine the covers behind the women's suffrage movement that complicate the traditional narrative of the 1920s. As women fought to obtain rights, they claimed that to become fully independent, they had to vote on the laws that affected them. However, in reality, African American, immigrant, and working women were excluded from political organizations that addressed the issue of the women's suffrage movement. Thus, the most important lesson we learn from the history of women's struggle for full citizenship is that although women's right to vote represented progress on a national scale, less privileged women have been increasingly marginalized. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Cady Stanton who supported anti-immigrant suffrage and lived by the idea that wealthy American women should use the vote to care for the "little daughters of the poor" (Orleck, 94). Harriot Blatch, on the other hand, thought differently, believing that poor women should have a say in improving their living and working conditions. Creating distance from some less privileged women officially transformed the women's suffrage movement into a bourgeois issue. For example, certain immigrant groups such as Cuban and Italian immigrants and many poor whites were excluded from the polls by intentional laws that used literacy tests. to discriminate against racial minorities. Such conflicts are demonstrated by the experiences of Asian and Mexican American women who would be denied the right to vote until the United States accommodated their bilingual needs by translating ballots into their native languages. of the marginalized group. Orleck describes how working-class women wanted to use the vote to redistribute wealth throughout the lower class, upper-class women sought equal access to power, money, and prestige as their brothers and sisters males or their husbands had already acquired. These differences not only divided their values but also the strength of the factions of the suffragists to get along. With the exclusion of black, immigrant and white women, different organizations would form, diminishing the power of unity. What would it have meant for women to demonstrate together, regardless of class and race? As one of the first African American civil rights leaders and suffragists, Ida B. Wells created a new form of resistance by using the power of her pen to help African Americans overcome oppression. For example, she urged blacks to boycott the new Memphis streetcar line, and in doing so she convinced hundreds of African Americans to settle in the Oklahoma Territory. As a suffragette, Wells participated in several national suffrage parades and founded the first black suffrage organization known as the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago. Despite her success as a journalist and organizer, Ida B. Wells also faced discrimination within the suffrage movement itself,..