The Suffrage Battle Comes to Maryland
While Maryland was not among the 36 states whose ratification of the 19th Amendment affirmed women’s suffrage as part of the Constitution, proximity to Washington D.C. made it an ideal base for activism. Maryland’s Equal Rights Society was one of the first state-centered suffrage organizations in existence, and Baltimore saw one of Susan B. Anthony’s last public appearances when it hosted the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Convention in 1906. Just two months after the amendment was officially adopted, it was in Baltimore that it received formal challenge in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—where it was unanimously upheld.
Maryland’s Goucher College, founded in 1885 as the Women’s College of Baltimore City, was a “nursery for militant suffragists” because of its students involvement in progressive politics. Students and faculty alike became interested in and strong advocates for women’s suffrage, hosting speakers and holding debates on the subject to raise awareness and inspire action.
Numerous Goucher students attended College Night at the 1906 suffrage convention in Baltimore, and more than 100 Goucher suffragists attend the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.
Student Ida Glatt was a key suffragist at Goucher. Glatt was involved in several leftist causes including the labor movement, and helped to found and lead the Goucher Equal Suffrage League. It was Glatt who wrote directly to the National Women’s Party’s Alice Paul to volunteer Goucher students for pickets at the White House in 1917.
Student participation in suffrage activities proved to be a flashpoint for controversy. Goucher’s president, William Guth, forbade students from participating in the 1917 pickets, arguing that it would bring unwanted negative publicity to the school. Undeterred, Glatt and more than two dozen classmates headed to Washington D.C. in February for “College Day” on the picket line, making Goucher College the most represented school on the line.
Baltimore hosted the 38th Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in February 1906 at the Lyric Theatre. The program for the convention listed a week’s worth of events, including reports from state chapters of the association, instrumental and choral performances, “Tributes of Gratitude” from representatives of women’s colleges, prayers, and various symposia. Goucher College (then called the Women’s College of Baltimore) participated wholeheartedly, with the dean of the school leading the evening prayer on the opening day of the convention, and the college purchasing advertising in the program.
We do not ask the ballot simply as a right, though if it be a right it cannot be rightfully denied us; we do not ask it as a privilege, though if it be a privilege, it must be ours unless we admit the existence of a privileged class, which is inimical to the principles of a republic; we demand it, because it is a duty, and one which no good citizen has a right to shirk.
—Excerpt from public invitation to 1906 Convention Courtesy of Library of Congress
Some presentations focused on increasing participation among college and working women; the women who had been in the earliest generation of activists were growing too old for the active work of the movement. The convention in Baltimore was one of the last public appearances of Susan B. Anthony, who would die just a month later at the age of 86. In her address, Anthony told the audience “[t]hose older women have gone on and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone…The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop” (New York Post).