Wearing White: Historic Election Recalls Women’s Suffrage Movement

The Berkeley Independent
BANC MSS C-B 595 Carton 4

As reported in many online media outlets, from the The Today Show to Harper’s Bazaar to Business Insider many women (and some men) voting in the 2016 election today are wearing white. The color is a nod to the women’s suffrage movement, which resulted in ratification of the 19th Amendment (1920) granting women the right to vote. During their lengthy campaign, with origins in the mid-19th century, women wore white. Along with gold and purple, white became one of the official colors of the 1916 National Women’s Party.

Suffragettes on Parade in Downtown Los Angeles, before 1920

Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

Women won the right to vote in California in 1911. Proposition 4 of 1911 (or Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 8) granted women the right to vote in state elections almost a decade before the 19th Amendment provided women's suffrage throughout the United States. California was the 6th State to do so. You can read more about this at this online exhibition. 

Source: https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/06/october-6-1911-as-california-suffrage-vote-nears-activists-remain-positive/

Among the prominent women at the forefront of the suffrage movement in California was Phoebe Apperson Hearst, whose lifetime, 1842–1919, also spans women’s fight for the right to vote. One of California’s and the nation’s most prominent philanthropists, Hearst was the widow of Senator George Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and one of the wealthiest women in America. 

A staunch supporter of education for girls and women, she was the first female regent of the University of the California and founder of the University’s Lowie Museum of Anthropology, later renamed the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. She was a member of the national advisory council of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and served as vice chairman of the National Woman’s Party. 

In honor of Phoebe Hearst's historic contributions to California, particularly in education, the California Historical Society launched the Phoebe Hearst Educational Fund in 2015 (as part of the Centennial of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, the 1915 World's Fair that Hearst played a critical role in organizing).  You can read more about this effort by clicking HERE.

Phoebe Apperson Hearst (1842–1919), undated California Historical Society

Suffragettes on Parade in Downtown Los Angeles

,

before 1920

Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

California, Primarily

California Counts, 2015 
Courtesy KPBS

“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, 1913

Teddy Roosevelt made this analogy in his 1913 autobiography while expressing support for women’s suffrage. “I believe for women, as for men, more in the duty of fitting one’s self to do well and wisely with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot,” he explained.

In today’s political climate, with emotions running high, voters appear to be using their votes as rifles. Once Californians have cast their votes, will they have voted “well and wisely”?

As California prepares for its primary election on June 7, we look at some reminders of past primaries, some groundbreaking, some surprising, some tragic—and some very recognizable.

1912

Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson, 1912
California Historical Society

In the 1912 election, Progressive (Bull Moose) Party nominee Theodore Roosevelt teamed up with California Governor Hiram Johnson. It was the beginning of both the Progressive Party and the primary process in California. Prior to the primary, presidential candidates were selected by their fellow politicians.

1932

(Left) John Nance Garner California Button Ribbon, 1932 
Courtesy http://oldpoliticals.com
(Right) John (“Cactus Jack”) Nance Garner, c. 1905
Courtesy www.old-picture.com

California Democrats originally from the South won the day in the 1932 primary as House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas beat New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. When it became clear that Roosevelt was considered the stronger candidate in the general election—despite being short of the two-thirds votes required for nomination—Garner cut a deal and joined Roosevelt’s ticket as vice president.

1936

(Left) Upton Sinclair, c. 1920–39
Courtesy Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, UCLA Library
(Right) Governor Earl Warren, 1946 
California Historical Society

Running as a Democrat, Socialist Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, campaigned against poverty in California’s 1934 gubernatorial race, receiving almost 900,000 votes. Two years later, he ran in the 1936 presidential primary against Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning 11 percent of the Democratic vote. Republican Earl Warren was favorite son in the 1936, 1948, and 1952 primaries. He never won the Republican nomination but obtained judicial influence as the fourteenth Chief Justice of the United States.

1960

"It’s Nixon in ’60!” Bumper Sticker, 1960
California Historical Society

A 1960 California Republican Party pamphlet touted Nixon as “the most able and electable presidential prospect, of either party, in the Nation. Republicans, leading Independents and thoughtful Democrats throughout the State are swelling the ranks of one of the greatest citizens’ movements in California history.” In his closely contested race against John F. Kennedy—undermined by a poor showing during the presidential debates—Nixon lost the popular vote by .2 percent and the electoral vote by a 302–219 margin.

1968

Victory Celebration, 1968 
Courtesy Herald Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

Democrat Robert Kennedy addressed enthusiastic supporters in the ballroom of Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, after winning the 1968 California presidential primary the previous day. Shortly after delivering his victory speech, Kennedy was critically shot in a hotel kitchen corridor. He died the next day. Kennedy’s assassination, which closely followed Martin Luther King’s (April 4, 1968), “shattered the nation,” the U.S. News & World Report observed.

1972

George McGovern, Dennis Weaver, and Tom Bradley, date unknown 
Courtesy Gary Leonard Collection, Los Angeles Public Library

Despite a “Stop McGovern” campaign led by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, Senator George McGovern’s anti-Vietnam War platform helped him win California’s winner-take-all delegates in the 1972 California Democratic primary against Hubert Humphrey. Factors such as his  outsider status, perception by others as a left-wing extremist, and lack of party support, however, cost McGovern’s the election against incumbent President Richard Nixon by a wide margin.

Shelly Kale
Publications and Strategic Projects Manager
skale@calhist.org

Sources

• Akhil Redde Amar and Richard Pildes, “Bell Ringer: History of the Presidential Primary System,” C-Span Classroom; http://www.c-spanclassroom.org/Lesson/2220/Bell+Ringer+History+of+the+Presidential+Primary+System.aspx
• Robert Sam Anson, “McGovern ’72: An Oral History,” VF News, November 6, 2012; http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2012/11/george-mcgovern-richard-nixon-election
• History of California Presidential Primary, Texas Liberal Blog; https://texasliberal.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/history-of-california-presidential-primary/
• “It’s Nixon in ’60,” Nixon for President Committee of Northern California, 1960; California Historical Society Collections
• Rich Rubino, “Anybody But Trump, Anybody But Carter, Anybody But McGovern,” Huffpost Politics Blog; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rich-rubino/anybody-but-trump-anybody_b_9554804.html
• Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: MacMillan, 1916); http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/autobiography.pdf
• “The Election of 1960,” U.S. History; http://www.ushistory.org/us/56a.asp
• Kenneth T. Walsh, “How Robert F. Kennedy’s Death Shattered the Nation,” U.S. News & World Report, June 5, 2015; http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/04/how-robert-f-kennedys-death-shattered-the-nation

Yes, Virginia, We Have Another Election Coming Up

First Women to Vote in California, 1912; California Historical Society, CHS2011.559

After a long battle, California finally granted women the right to vote in state elections in October 1911. In this photograph, three of the first women in the state to vote cast their ballots at a poll booth in March 1912. It was not until 1920, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, that the national fight for women’s suffrage ended. Even then, women were slow to acquire the voting habit, taking about 60 years to equal or exceed the number of male voters casting ballots, according to the Pew Research.   

By Steve Swatt

Voters in many parts of California face another Election Day on November 3 that few are aware of and in which even fewer will participate. We won’t be electing a president or governor, but voters throughout California will be deciding local, nonpartisan issues—such as mayor and sheriff in San Francisco, school board members in Palos Verdes and El Segundo, and local taxes in Hermosa Beach and South Pasadena.