Citizen

Good morning, I am going through a documentary about women’s voting rights done by the Twin Cities PBS station.  The run time for this documentary is 56:46 it is called Citizen.

Women for a time were considered the property of their husbands.  Women were not even allowed to own property or have custody of their children.  Women wanted to be considered citizens of this nation and fully participate in the decisions of the nation.  They wanted to have the right to vote.  This documentary looks at a variety of activists such as Gertrude Bonnin and Nellie Griswold Francis.  These women worked for the right to vote.

This documentary kicks off with a look at a voting machine that was built in 1909.  In all likelihood, this voting machine is the last of its kind.  It was set up to only allow women to vote for school board and library board positions.  Next, it transitions to a college student setting up a table to talk about voting and getting students out to vote in the upcoming primary election.  It then transitions into a discussion on the 1870s and how women did not have the right to own property.  Widows had more rights, while wives could be subject to the whims of their husbands.  Women own property and voting was unthinkable.

Mary Wollstonecraft seems to have been considered the mother of women’s right to vote.  She wrote about how women should vote in the 19th Century.  The documentaries then transition into talking about the abolition movement and how women became involved in the Slavery Abolition Vote.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott emerged from this movement and decided to argue for women’s right to vote. 

In Minnesota, Harriett Bishop and Jane Gray were early women’s rights advocates.  The pioneers would have carved a life out of tough circumstances.  Women pioneers were especially tough and had to learn self-reliance, independence, and self-determination.  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would eventually recognize the early efforts and ladies behind women’s rights in Minnesota.  Women in Minnesota were active in advocating the right to vote.  Sarah Berger Stearns was one such woman and in Michigan would help push the University of Michigan to admit women into the college.  She and her husband would eventually settle in Minnesota.  Women in Minnesota not only worked on the right to vote but were out in the community working on other issues.

Julie B. Nelson was another women’s rights advocate in Minnesota.  She believed that women should be empowered and not be bound to the home. She came from Connecticut and settled in Minnesota when she was fifteen years old.  She was a university education and had a teaching degree.  She lost her husband due to illness.  Eventually, she would move south with a missionary group to teach African American students.

The women’s temperance movement also arose during this period.  Women were concerned about husbands going out and drinking excessively.  In the minds of some women, a drunk husband could come home and beat their wife.  A group of women would frame their argument for the right to vote as a way to protect the home.  They also argued for the right to vote on school boards because they wanted the best opportunities for their children.  Minnesota would put this question to the test and the women gained the right to vote in school boards.  It was a small stepping stone in gaining women’s right to vote.  How else would women advocate for the right to vote?  To learn more about how Minnesota advocated for women’s rights tune into the rest of this episode to find out more.

I was a little bit nervous about this documentary because the description did not mention any of the better-known players in gaining the right to vote.  However, as the documentary progressed big names like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were mentioned.  There were a variety of women mentioned from different backgrounds in this documentary.  The pacing of this documentary was good and the narration was very well done.  It provided a picture of the fight for women’s right to vote in Minnesota very well.  This would be good for a local history class rather than a general American history class.