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Lila Meade Valentine
Call number: 2013.1.3

The Virginia General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, but it did honor Lila Meade Valentine as a “leader in Virginia for the enfranchisement of women.” Nancy Astor spoke at the ceremonies for the unveiling of the memorial tablet at the state capital on October 20, 1936. Valentine was the first woman so honored.

Valentine never had the opportunity to vote because Virginia, like several other southern states, was slow to implement the Nineteenth Amendment. Valentine, too ill to go to the polls in 1920, died in July 1921, never having cast a ballot. View enlarged image

Votes for Women a Success
Call number: Broadside 1914:6

The ESL had been active for several years when this broadside was issued in 1914 by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The suffrage movement was sweeping the west, and by 1896, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho had all adopted amendments to their state constitutions granting women the right to vote. As this map demonstrates, many southern states were opposed to suffrage, and seven of them rejected the amendment (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia). View enlarged image

Twelve Reasons Why Mothers Should Have the Vote
Call number: Broadside 1916:2

The ESL tried different tactics to convince the public to endorse suffrage. One of the fliers they distributed targeted mothers and pointed out that states that had passed suffrage had equal educational opportunities for girls and protective child labor laws. It concludes “It is just, it is expedient, and has proven a good governmental policy for mothers to have a voice in the laws which control themselves and their children.”

Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and deciding state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment when one of the delegates followed his mother’s advice “to do the right thing” and switched his vote to yes.
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