(Click on image to enlarge)
The first woman to vote in Illinois lived in Lombard.
The leader of a pioneering 1910 auto tour across northern Illinois to stump for suffrage lived in Oak Park.
The architect of the law that let Illinois women vote for municipal and presidential elections after 1913 hailed from Evanston. So did the longtime president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a group that led a major push for the suffrage cause.
The suburbs were fertile ground for the decadeslong movement that eventually allowed women the vote nationwide 100 years ago with the ratification on Aug. 26, 1920, of the 19th Amendment.
Nearby in Chicago, women like Ida B. Wells and Jane Addams also pushed the needle forward by forming a suffrage club among African American women and taking a leadership role in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. With these efforts, adding in the actions of women across the suburbs, historical experts say, the region took on a strong importance in the push to secure “Votes for Women,” as suffragists’ campaign signs often read.
“It’s the whole Chicago area that is influencing the movement,” said Lori Osborne, director of the Evanston Women’s History Project.
Read more of the Daily Herald article here.
Further references cited in this article can be found at Evanston Women’s History Project, Lombard Historical Society, DuPage County Historical Museum, Illinois Humanities Road Scholar and the Naper Settlement.
Leave a Reply