How Did Delawareans Contribute to the Women’s Suffrage Movement?

In addition to the general history and the underlying racism of the women’s suffrage movement, it’s important to recognize some local heroes to mark the 100th anniversary of adding the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary, born in Wilmington in 1823 to free African American parents, was a powerful and outspoken advocate for the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage during the Civil War and beyond. Her family moved to Pennsylvania when she was ten years old for her education – black children were not allowed to attend school in Delaware – then to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act threatened her family’s freedom. Shadd Cary returned to the U.S. during the Civil War, encouraging African Americans to join the North in the fight against slavery. After the war, she became an active member of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), speaking to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the 14th and 15th Amendments and women’s voting rights. Shadd Cary died in 1893, and holds the honor of being the first African American woman newspaper editor in North America and the second African American woman in the United States to earn a law degree.

Mary Ann Sorden Stuart, born in 1828 and raised in Greenwood, Sussex County, had a reputation as an unstoppable force in Delaware’s fight for women’s suffrage. Described as having been “able to talk 10 hours a day at the rate of 200 words a minute,” she lobbied tirelessly for women’s equality – including property, earnings, and voting rights. Sorden Stuart served as Delaware’s representative in the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), and in 1881 convinced its leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to address the Delaware general assembly supporting women’s suffrage. She also organized Delaware’s first women’s suffrage convention, held in Wilmington in 1869. In 1990, Sorden Stuart was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Delaware Women in recognition of her contributions to the women’s suffrage movement.

Mabel Vernon, a Wilmington native and graduate of Wilmington Friends School, went to Swarthmore College with Alice Paul and became an early recruiter and fund-raiser for the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU) at Paul’s request. By 1913, she was the head of the joint CU-DESA headquarters in Wilmington and organized events in several major cities across the country. Vernon was known for her effective organizing abilities and “audacious demonstrations” – including smuggling a suffrage banner inside her coat to be famously unfurled in the front-row gallery seats of President Wilson’s December 1916 address to Congress – and was one of the first six women arrested for “obstructing the traffic” while picketing outside the White House for women’s right to vote. After the passage of the 19th Amendment, Vernon remained politically active by lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment, supporting women candidates for Congress, and joining the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Florence Bayard Hilles, from Newcastle, Delaware, was moved to the women’s suffrage cause after hearing Mabel Vernon give an impromptu speech at the Delaware State Fair. Her passion for the suffrage movement made her an “embarrassment” to her prominent Delaware political family – her brother, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all U.S. senators – but she remained unabashed, defiant, and outspoken. She donated her car to the cause, which became known as the “Votes for Women Flyer”, and used it as a literal platform to speak about suffrage in small towns throughout Delaware. Then, she took the Flyer on a nationwide tour that ended in Seattle, Washington, where she dropped pro-suffrage pamphlets over the city from a plane she rented. When World War I broke out and family criticized her for putting suffrage before patriotic duty to the war effort, Hilles responded by taking a job in a munitions factory and organizing workers there to seek an audience with President Wilson, arguing that their dangerous work in the factories warranted the same recognition – and vote – as the men fighting abroad. In memory of her actions for women’s suffrage across the country, the first feminist library in the U.S., located in the NWP headquarters in Washington, D.C., is named in her honor.

Source: The Morning News, Wilmington, Delaware, 04 May 1914

Read More About Women’s Suffrage in Delaware:

• Delaware Historical Society: Delaware Women’s Suffrage Timeline
• National Parks Service: Delaware and the 19th Amendment
• ESRI: Discovering Delaware Sites of the Women’s Suffrage Movement an interactive map

 

Delaware Events and Activities:

• Mary Ann’s List: Inspired by Delaware suffragists Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Mary Ann Sorden Stuart, this non-profit seeks to support, train and elect pro-choice, Democratic women to elected offices across Delaware.

• University of Delaware Virtual Exhibition: “Votes for Delaware Women” examines the ways in which Delaware’s suffragists—and anti-suffragists—pursued their goals and shared their messages.