Women's Suffrage Poster (digitally restored)
New York State Library
Every year, do you celebrate what happened on November 6, 1917? Maybe you should. On that day, the voters of the State of New York (all of them men, incidentally) decided that thereafter, women would be entitled to vote in all elections held in the state. Getting things changed took a lot of work by a lot of people - and some people in Hicksville were part of it.
Introduction
At the start of 1917, female American citizens who resided in any state east of the Rockies (except Kansas) had no vote, or only a limited vote. Among those states were four of the nation's most populous: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. During 1917, one of those four, New York, voted to open its ballot boxes equally to men and women.*
*Note that other constraints still remained. For example, many Chinese, whether male or female, were still denied citizenship, and thus were not eligible to vote.
The Woman Citizen, November 24, 1917
Above is an end-of-1917 map. Starting with the line of states that extends from Minnesota through Louisiana, and heading towards the Atlantic, there are thirty-one states. By this time, some had taken timid first steps towards women's suffrage. Incredibly, New York was the ONLY state of the thirty-one to have granted unrestricted suffrage to women!
There were many reasons, including the significant contributions being made by women to the country's war effort in 1917-1918, why the idea of full women's suffrage would continue to gain national support, but the victory in New York - the first in any of the original thirteen United States - was symbolic and inspiring. It showed America that the issue of women's suffrage need not divide the country between the West and the East, or between the Old states and New.
*
Obviously, the saga of women's suffrage in America is not in itself a Hicksville story - but it is interesting to see how things played out locally. The nation's cities may have hosted the biggest parades and conventions, but all across country, in towns and villages like Hicksville, people worked for years, organizing small lectures and meetings, sustaining public interest, debating with anti-suffragists, and garnering funds as well as people's support.
Let's take a look.
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