OLD CONCORD CHAPTER DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
  • Welcome
  • About Us
  • What we do
  • Our Patriots
  • Concord on April 19, 1775
  • Commerative Revolutionary War Events
  • Contact Us
  • In The Concord Jounal
    • During the Pandemic
    • Historic Preservation Grant
    • Constitution Week 2020
    • The Wayside
    • Remember August 26, 1920
Published as a courtesy

A8   Thursday, August 13, 2020  The CONCORD JOURNAL  With news from Lincoln

PERSPECTIVES
___________________________________________________________________________________
DAR Corner – Old Concord Chapter
Remember August 26, 2020


   The Old Concord Chapter National Society Daughters of the American Revolution would like to call to your attention the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment’s certification on August 26, 1920 by the U.S. Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, making the amendment part of the Constitution. 
   The 19th Amendment gives women the right to vote.  On Aug. 18, 1920 the state of Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment creating the three-quarters of the states’ ratification requirement for constitutional certification.  Tennessee had a tie vote in their house broken by the twenty-four-year-old representative, Harry Burn, whose mother had instructed him in a note to vote for women suffrage and “to be a good boy”.   Previously Harry Burn had been anti-suffrage and gave a speech the next day stating “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow”.
   The League of Women Voters was founded on February 14, 1920 approximately seven months after the 19th amendment had been passed by both the House and Senate on June 4, 1919.   The League was founded by the National Council of Women and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) members coming together as a nonpartisan organization to help women be informed voters.
   The town of Concord’s Louisa May Alcott voted for the first time in 1880 at a town meeting when the school committee vote came up.  The only thing women were allowed to vote on at the time were school committee related items.  Louisa May Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott, suggested the women vote first and they did.  After the women voted the town moderator closed the voting.  (Men did not get to vote.)
   In Massachusetts women started being allowed to vote on school committee related matters starting in 1879.  Several women in 1873 had run for the Boston School Committee.  Those that won were refused their seat by a majority of the existing all male school committee members until the Massachusetts state legislature created an act to open the school committee membership to the women.  In 1879, a year before Louisa May Alcott voted for the first time, the Massachusetts state legislature passed a bill allowing women to vote in school committee elections (and nothing else).  
   The DAR has an online exhibit at www.dar.org/archives/suffrage-march-centennial-anniversary-online-exhibition.

Location 

Quick Links

​About DAR
Membership Inquiries
National Society Daughters of the American Revolution

​The content contained herein does not necessarily represent the position of the NSDAR. Hyperlinks to other sites are not the responsibility of the NSDAR, the state organizations, or individual DAR chapters. For questions or concerns on this website please contact the webmaster.

Contact Us

See our Contact Us page.
  • Welcome
  • About Us
  • What we do
  • Our Patriots
  • Concord on April 19, 1775
  • Commerative Revolutionary War Events
  • Contact Us
  • In The Concord Jounal
    • During the Pandemic
    • Historic Preservation Grant
    • Constitution Week 2020
    • The Wayside
    • Remember August 26, 1920