In 1900, Harriet May Mills of Syracuse, New York, stood before the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to give a compelling speech, which described women鈥檚 advancement over the past century in the United States. Mills focused particularly on progress within the academy, as she was one of the first female graduates of Cornell University.[1] Her address opened with several descriptions of early schooling for young women, including one from former First Lady Abigail Adams. Quoting Adams, Mills explained that before the Civil War: 鈥淔emale education in the best families went no farther than reading, writing, and arithmetic and, in some rare instances, music and dancing.鈥�[2] Mills recounted the comments of another woman who had attended a finishing school in Charleston, South Carolina at the onset of the 1800s. She attested that she came out with little beyond 鈥渒nowledge of sixty different lace stitches.鈥�[3] Mills stressed that most Americans viewed higher education for women as unnecessary and detrimental to society in the nineteenth century. They regarded 鈥渂luestockings,鈥� or female intellectuals, as distressing figures who strayed from the status quo.[4] Opponents predicted 鈥渢he perilous track to higher education鈥� for women would leave behind a path 鈥渟trewn with wrecks.鈥�[5] Mills argued that it took the work of 鈥渁 few brave, strong souls who saw the truth and dared to proclaim it鈥� to create transformation in these contentious circumstances.[6] She remarked cunningly that because of the relentless efforts of a daring minority, there existed now 鈥渙ver thirty thousand of these college-educated wrecks, the majority of them engaged in the active work of the world.鈥�[7]
Many of the pioneer activists who helped to open the doors of colleges and universities to women served simultaneously as leaders in the campaign for equal voting rights. However, most early suffragists faced adversity when they tried to secure support for their political movement in return for contributions to these academic campaigns. They found that supporting women鈥檚 education was not the same as supporting their right to vote. Many prominent educators who acted as allies in the crusade for equal access to higher education in the nineteenth century disregarded or opposed the campaign for the extension of women鈥檚 voting rights. For example, well-known educators like Emma Hart Willard, creator of a renowned teacher-training program in Troy, New York, and Catharine Beecher, who opened an early seminary for young women in Hartford, Connecticut, backed away when asked for their support.[8] New York Bishop William Croswell Doane was an outspoken opponent, despite being the overseer of the Albany boarding school that College Equal Suffrage League founder Maud Wood Park attended as a child. Doane argued feminists wanted to start a 鈥渞evolution鈥� or a 鈥渧iolent change鈥� to seize men鈥檚 positions as leaders.[9] Equal franchise activists were accused of having a radical message and characteristics that would rub off on students. Well into the first decade of the twentieth century, strong opposition among many parties within the educational realm remained, as many feared further scandalizing their schools by admitting women students and supporting women鈥檚 suffrage.
According to challengers, suffragists were the worst women, vulgar and violent people with 鈥渟harp tongues and sharper pens.鈥�[10] The typical organizers who supported women鈥檚 right to vote harbored 鈥渨arped imaginations,鈥� 鈥渟creamed themselves hoarse on platforms,鈥� and wrote 鈥渢hemselves into a rage,鈥� all while manipulating impressionable young people to defend their campaign.[11] Interestingly, the anti-suffragists who campaigned against women鈥檚 right to vote within the academy were often the most aggressive in words and tactics. The mainstream suffragists on campus opted for a more respectable political style, which they felt would be most palatable given the social and political climate.
Administrators, scholars, faculty, staff, and students who were against the cause bolstered the majority position, which gave them license to be bolder. They saw the benefit of maintaining the status quo and were able to be more unbridled in their political arguments and campaign tactics. Unlike suffragists, they sought to uphold public opinion rather than change it. In the United States, there were some shocking displays, such as the anti-suffrage march in the 1910s at Columbia University, which had students marching in costume as suffragists, mocking their opponents. An activist dressed as the New York suffrage parade leader Inez Milholland, riding a white mule instead of her white horse. Other participants carried baby dolls that were lit on fire as torches. Still, even the more contentious tactics of American anti-suffragists could not compare to the actions of their counterparts in the United Kingdom.[12] Anti-suffrage students in England, Scotland, and Ireland confronted the suffragette violence of the Women鈥檚 Social and Political Union head-on, mirroring their destructive methods to capture media and political attention and fight back.
The bellicose actions of anti-suffragists overseas went well beyond the aggressive actions of college anti-suffragists in America. In the United Kingdom, opponents from different colleges and universities participated in shockingly confrontational campaigns and staged alarming and violent demonstrations against their opponents. During the early twentieth century, undergraduates from places like England, Scotland, and Ireland acted as a vigilante force to protect their campuses and their government by declaring their war on suffragists. Angered by the demonstrations and destruction caused by the radical suffragette movement in the UK on their campuses, college students banded together to confront their challengers. As the English suffragettes became known for their destructive attacks on government structures, commercial institutions, and other forms of public property like campus buildings, student opponents became known for violent ambushes on the buildings owned by women鈥檚 rights campaigners in response, suggesting that not enough was formally being done by authorities to protect them.
In the early twentieth century, English pupils who opposed the vote formed mobs to attack businesses and meeting places run by suffragettes. Gangs of anti-suffrage students targeted press shops and bookstores that peddled women鈥檚 suffrage propaganda. On one occasion, two hundred medical students in London fought back against the suffragettes in 1912 by planning a raid in the city on their opponents鈥� key headquarters. Undergraduates gathered in the dark and marched to a building run by the Women鈥檚 Press, which displayed much suffrage literature in the window. They hurled stones until they smashed all the glass 鈥渢o an accompaniment of cheers鈥� from onlookers who watched the demonstration.[13] In Bristol, England in 1913, a brutal attack by students occurred on a WSPU shop after authorities found evidence connecting the suffragettes to a fire that burned the new athletic pavilion at Bristol University. Students had heard investigators uncovered printed propaganda from women鈥檚 rights activists, including a letter insisting authorities free an arrested suffragette. They plotted revenge blaming them for the devastation.[14] Seeking retribution for the damage to their campus, a mob of about three hundred university pupils attacked the local suffragette store. Creating a large bonfire in the street, the young opponents burned literature, including books, newspapers, and leaflets. They 鈥渄anced around the flames鈥� to the cheers of spectators.[15] Student activists justified these types of dramatic and destructive tactics by arguing they needed to protect their country and their campuses from the dangerous suffragette movement.
The violence occurred in response to the unrelenting suffragettes, who tried to not only disrupt campus life by destroying property essential to student life and services, but also disrupted college political presentations. For example, students at Glasgow University struck back in 1912 after suffragettes interrupted the campus address of Chief Secretary for Ireland Augustine Birrell. Later that day, hundreds of pupils marched to offices of the Women鈥檚 Social and Political Union in the city where they rioted and took part in vandalism. Undergraduates stoned the building, smashed, the windows, and destroyed the interior by stealing property such as suffrage banners. Although some police officers turned the other way, ignoring this destruction, the event in 1912 resulted in the arrest of ten students.[16] On another occasion, in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh in 1913, a group of students attacked their opponents for interrupting a campus ceremony. That year, school officials planned a special address by politician Lord Richard Burdon Haldane. He was in line to receive a presidential badge from the institution, but the badge disappeared. Administrators and young scholars suspected the suffragettes were behind the missing medal. Angry students marched to the local offices of the women鈥檚 rights group, the Women鈥檚 Freedom League, and 鈥減artly wrecked them鈥� using a 鈥渨alking-stick鈥� to shatter the windows.[17]
When college students were not fighting back by destroying property, they were copying the other activities their militant opponents used such as breaking up their opponents鈥� gatherings. Like their opponents, students became increasingly indiscriminate in their ambushes over time, disrupting the events of suffrage militants and nonviolent activists (suffragists) alike, fed up with the entire movement. In 1907, one hundred medical students from King鈥檚 College and St. Mary鈥檚 Hospital invaded a local suffrage meeting at the Paddington Baths in England. They entered the hall where the suffragists planned to speak, making loud noises and singing to block presentations. Students threw 鈥渢ubs of isocyanide鈥� on the floor, released mice into the building, and lit firecrackers.[18] As the meeting ended, undergraduates marched to the front of the room where they destroyed the speaker鈥檚 platform, smashed a table, crushed a water bottle, ripped down posters, stole banners, and knocked over several chairs. As one witness later explained, 鈥淭hey were like wildcats.鈥�[19] Student activists viewed these actions as acceptable responses as suffragettes continued to entire their college theaters, classrooms, and other university spaces to interfere with processions and upset the peace, affecting their college experience.
These raids on women鈥檚 rights meetings continued throughout the UK during the early twentieth century, sending the message that not all among the young college-aged generation supported the voting rights cause or at least the militant work of the Women鈥檚 Social and Political Union. In 1909, after suffragettes showed up in Newcastle to disrupt a presentation by Chancellor David Lloyd George, student opponents planned a strike. When the suffragettes tried to meet in town, undergraduates showed up carrying bells, whistles, trumpets, and other types of noisemakers to prevent the gathering.[20] Key suffragette leaders like Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters faced constant hostility from the students. During an appearance in Glasgow in 1913, vengeful undergraduates from Glasgow University ended the meeting. This time, however, suffragettes prepared better. Women鈥檚 rights activists employed a large group of bodyguards and dockworkers to protect them from ambushes by university students. As young people tried to enter and create commotion, fistfights followed. Guards kicked students out and physically assaulted them in struggles outside of the building. One undergraduate needed hospitalization because of a deep cut on his head. Reports stated many more young people left the property with 鈥渂lack eyes, bruised faces, and torn clothing.鈥�[21]
Reports of these chaotic meetings reached the United States in the early twentieth century. Violence between suffragettes and students became so bad that when Emmeline Pankhurst arrived in Chicago, Illinois to give an address in 1909, she told American audiences, 鈥淪tudents from colleges and other institutions make all the trouble for our movement in England. Some of our leaders have gone to jail because of violence precipitated.鈥�[22] Tipped off by suffragettes like Pankhurst, the American press covered accounts of the aggressive campaigns against the ballot carried out by college anti-suffragists overseas. Accounts streamed into American students through the news media and word of mouth. One Radcliffe undergraduate commented, 鈥淏efore I began my summer of suffrage work, I was distinctly scared鈥� My only knowledge of what experiences might await a worker for woman suffrage had been gathered from magazine stories.鈥�[23] Stories, write-ups, and accounts of battles between the radical women鈥檚 rights campaigners overseas and college student opponents shocked those within academic communities in the United States. Some some bolder and more boisterous tactics were used by American anti-suffragists on campus in the twentieth century. The campaign became more creative, entertaining, and desperate over time. However, as my new book Votes for College Women illustrates, the campaign never became as radical in the United States as it did in the United Kingdom 鈥� on or off campus.
[1]Harriet May Mills was born in Syracuse, New York in 1857. She graduated from Cornell University in 1879 just two years after the school started to admit women. She worked as a teacher in both Syracuse and Boston, Massachusetts before she involved herself in the women鈥檚 rights campaign after meeting pioneer Lucy Stone. Mills went on to become a prominent grassroots organizer. She helped to found the Syracuse Political Equality Club in 1892 and worked as president of this organization for three years. She served long stints as secretary and vice president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association during this period also.
Scholar Ellen Carol DuBois notes that Mills took a position as secretary for the College Equal Suffrage League of New York in 1908 in the later part of her suffrage career. Most notably, Mills became the first woman in New York to run for a state office when she campaigned for secretary in 1920. 鈥淎 Pioneer Woman Candidate for Secretary of State,鈥� in Current Opinion, ed. Edward Jewitt Wheeler, Frank Crane, November 1920, no. 5, vol. 69, 1920, 631-633, Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 130; Reverend William Martin Beauchamp,鈥淗arriet May Mills,鈥� in Past and Present of Syracuse and Onondaga County New York: From Prehistoric Times to the Beginning of 1908, vol. II (New York and Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1908), 985-986.
[2] Harriet May Mills, 鈥淭he Winning of Educational Freedom,鈥� in History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, vol. 4 (Rochester, N.Y.: Susan B. Anthony, 1881), 354-356.
[3] Harriet May Mills, 鈥淭he Winning of Educational Freedom,鈥� 354-356.
[4] The term 鈥渂luestocking鈥� came from England, and people began to use it as a slang term to mean an intellectual, particularly an enlightened woman who sought greater education. The Bluestocking organization had brought together highly educated men and women to review and discuss literature in the late 1700s. Elizabeth Montagu and socialite Elizabeth Vesey formed the group. See Jane Robinson, Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education (London: Penguin Books Limited, 2009); Reconsidering The Bluestockings, ed. Nicole Pohl and Betty A. Schellenberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
[5] Harriet May Mills, 鈥淭he Winning of Educational Freedom,鈥� 354-356.
[6] Harriet May Mills, 鈥淭he Winning of Educational Freedom,鈥�354-356.
[7] Harriet May Mills, 鈥淭he Winning of Educational Freedom,鈥� 354-356.
[8] For more on Emma Willard See, Christie Anne Farnham, The Education of the Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press,1994), 61-63, and Sue Davis, The Political Thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Women鈥檚 Rights and the American Political Tradition (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 99. For more on Catharine Beecher see, Kathryn Kish Sklar, 鈥淐atharine Beecher (1800-1878)鈥� in G.J. Barker-Benfield and Catherine Clinton, Portraits of American Women: From Settlement to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 169-188; Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York: Norton, 1976).
[9] William Croswell Doane, 鈥淲hy Women Do Not Want the Ballot,鈥� September 1895, in Debaters鈥� Handbook Series, Selected Articles on Woman Suffrage, ed. Edith M. Phelps (Minneapolis, MN: H.W. Wilson Company, 1910), 272.
[10] Doane, 鈥淲hy Women Do Not Want the Ballot,鈥� 264,266.
[11] Doane, 鈥淲hy Women Do Not Want the Ballot,鈥� 264,266.
[12] 鈥淢ock Suffragists Startle Broadway,鈥� New York Times, May 16, 1913.
[13] 鈥淧ay Suffragettes in their Own Coin,鈥� Hartford Courant, March 5, 1912; 鈥淎ngry Suffragettes Raided by Students,鈥� Calgary Daily Herald, March 5, 1912.
[14] Elizabeth Crawford, 鈥淲ALKS/Suffrage Stories: The International Suffrage Shop,鈥� Woman and Her Sphere, (accessed December 6, 2013).
[15] Lucienne Boyce, The Bristol Suffragettes (Bristol: SilverWood, 2013); Lucienne Boyce, 鈥淭he Bristol Suffragettes Who Fought Fire with Fire,鈥� Bristol Post, September 17, 2013.
[16] 鈥淪tudents Raid the Suffragettes,鈥� Spokane Daily Chronicle, December 6, 1912; 鈥淪uffragettes and Students Clash,鈥� The Evening Record, December 6, 1912.
[17] 鈥淓dinburgh Students are Acquitted,鈥� Courier, November 21, 1913; 鈥淗aldane鈥檚 Medal Stolen,鈥� New York Times, November 16, 1913.
[18] 鈥淭he Suffragettes,鈥� Poverty Bay Herald, February 8, 1908.
[19] Quote from suffragist Kate parry Frye鈥檚 diary. Elizabeth Crawford, ed., Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye鈥檚 Suffrage Diary (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2013); Elizabeth Crawford, 鈥淜ate Frye鈥檚 Diary: 鈥楶addington Pandemonium,鈥欌�� Woman and Her Sphere, , (accessed December 6, 2013); 鈥淭he Suffragettes.鈥�
[20] 鈥淪tudents Break up Suffragette Meeting,鈥� Hartford Courant, October 9, 1909.
[21] 鈥淔ree Fight at Meeting of Suffragettes,鈥� Meriden Morning Record, March 14, 1913; 鈥淔ierce Fight at Women鈥檚 Meeting,鈥� Montreal Gazette, March 14, 1913; Untitled, New York Times, March 14, 1914.
[22] 鈥淪uffragist Leader Blames Students,鈥� Hartford Courant, November 26, 1909.
[23] Elizabeth Hawthorn, 鈥淎n Adventure in Democracy,鈥� Radcliffe Magazine, April 1915, 115-117.
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Kelly Marino is an Associate Teaching Professor in the History Department and Coordinator of Women鈥檚, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.
Fear and Learning by Glenda M. Flores