california history - California Historical Society

In this photograph, San Francisco shopgirls andclerks register to vote circa 1911, the year Californiaadopted women’s suffrage. In July 1920,a month before ratification of the NineteenthAmendment to the U.S. Constitution, Dr. MaryRoberts of Los Angeles responded to charges thatvotes by women, as prey of politicians, had led tocorruption and crime. Summarizing achievementsin California politics since 1911, she recalled: “Intheir first encounter with the Legislature womencitizens showed remarkably good sense in the wayin which they brought their political power tobear . . .—got behind a few measures important tothe welfare of women and children and let pass thehundreds of other bills whose supporters clamoredto secure the ‘woman vote.’”Library of CongressCaroline died in 1914, before the mass awakening of the nation’s women to the desire for suffrage. In this 1915political cartoon, a torch bearer personifying Votes for Women triumphantly strides across the western states,where women already had won the right to vote, as eastern women, their arms outstretched, await her influence.Below the drawing, a poem by suffragist Alice Duer Miller encourages women to follow a path of unity,its first verse urging them forward toward the day, five years later, when the right to vote was secured.Look forward, women, always; utterly cast awayThe memory of hate and struggle and bitterness;Bonds may endure for a night, but freedom comes with the day,And the free must remember nothing less.Library of Congress; from a drawing by Hy Mayer1