History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 6/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
FLORIDA.[1]
With the removal from the State of Mrs. Ella C. Chamberlain in 1897 and no one found to take the leadership, the cause of woman suffrage, which was represented only by the one society at her home in Tampa, languished for years. In 1907 John Schnarr, a prominent business man of Orlando, circulated a petition to Congress for a Federal Suffrage Amendment which was sent down by the National Association and obtained numerous signatures. It is interesting to note that, from the beginning of the suffrage movement in Florida, men as well as women have been its active supporters.
As the years passed and the movement waxed strong throughout the country and important victories were won, the women of Florida imbibed the spirit of their day and generation. It became a frequent topic of discussion and women in various places began to realize the need of organization. On June 15, 1912, the Equal Franchise League was organized at Jacksonville in the home of Mrs. Herbert Anderson by herself and Mrs. Katherine Livingstone Eagan, with about thirty ladies present. Monthly meetings were held in a room in a large new office building given them for headquarters by the owners and forty-five members were enrolled. Mrs. Eagan, the president, soon went to Paris and her duties fell upon the vice-president, Mrs. Roselle C. Cooley; the secretary, Miss Frances Anderson, and the other officers. In the autumn two leading suffragists, who were attending the National Child Labor Convention, were invited to address the League, but neither the Board of Trade nor the Woman's Club would rent its auditorium for a suffrage meeting, so they had to open a door between their headquarters and an adjoining room and a large audience was present. The league affiliated with the National American Suffrage Association, which the next year sent a field worker to help in legislative work. In 1914 it published a special edition of The State, which was put into the hands of all the Florida members of Congress and the Legislature. Mrs. Medill McCormick, chairman of the National Congressional Committee, sent one of the national workers, Miss Lavinia Engle, to assist. This year Mr. Heard, president of the Heard National Bank, gave the league the use of a large front room on its first office floor.
On Feb. 13, 1913, the Political Equality Club of Lake Helen was formed with Mrs. S. A. Armstrong president and Mrs. Irene Adams secretary. On the 27th the Equal Suffrage League of Orlando was organized with the Rev. Mary A. Safford president, and in October the first demand for suffrage was made here. The Mayor issued a notice that all freeholders must register for the sewerage bond election by the 9th, and a few suffragists saw their opportunity. Very secretly and hurriedly, before the Mayor could get word of it and give notice that the election was meant for men only, Miss Emma Hainer and Mrs. Helen Starbuck gathered together several women who owned valuable property and they went to the city clerk's office and announced that they had come in response to the Mayor's call to register for the coming election. He referred them to the Mayor, who referred them to the Council, which referred them to the city attorney. He told them that the law did not permit women to register. This they knew, but their action caused a discussion of the question and disclosed a widespread belief that women should have the right to vote.
At a meeting of the executive board of the Orlando league in the home of Mrs. J. C. Patterson April 21 the question of forming a State Association was earnestly considered and Miss Safford was requested to prepare a "call" for this purpose. Soon afterwards she and Mrs. Starbuck were sent to Tallahassee by the league to aid the suffrage work being done in the Legislature. Here the great need of a State organization was very apparent, as legislators constantly asked, 'Where are the suffragists from my district?"
During the summer through conversation with interested suffragists and correspondence with Mrs. Cooley, president of the Jacksonville league, arrangements were made for calling a convention to organize a State association at Orlando at the time of the meeting of the State Federation of Women's Clubs. This took place Nov. 4, 1913, Miss Safford was chairman, Mrs. Isabel Stanley secretary of the convention and addresses were made by women from half a dozen towns. A committee was appointed to draft a constitution and by-laws which reported at an adjourned meeting on the 6th, when they were adopted and the following officers for the State Equal Suffrage Association were elected: President, Miss Safford, Orlando; first vice-president, Mrs. C. J. Huber, Webster; second, Mrs. Ella Chamberlain, Tampa; third, Miss Caroline Brevard, Tallahassee; corresponding secretary, Miss Elizabeth Askew, Tampa; recording secretary, Miss Frances B. Anderson, Jacksonville; treasurer, Mrs. John Schnarr, Orlando; auditors, Mrs. Anna Andrus, Miami, and Mrs. J. M. Thayer, Orlando.
In 1914 Miss Safford published a bulletin, showing that the State Association had auxiliaries in Jacksonville, Lake Helen, Orlando, Zellwood, Pine Castle, Winter Park, Pensacola, Milton, Miami, Tampa, and a Men's Equal Suffrage League in Orlando with Mayor E. F. Sperry as president and Justin Van Buskirk as secretary. Miss Kate M. Gordon, president of the Southern Woman's Suffrage Conference, had held a successful meeting in Jacksonville. The Orlando League had had a float in the trades' parade of the midwinter fair and a booth at the fair where the names of voters in favor of submitting a State suffrage amendment were obtained. It had had "teas" for replenishing the treasury and closed the year with a banquet complimentary to the Men's League. A committee was preparing a program on the laws of the State for the next year's work. The Pensacola league was arranging to issue a special edition of the Journal and have a booth at the tri-county fair. Most of the leagues had formed classes to study history and the duties of citizenship and had distributed literature and some of them had held a celebration on May 2, as the National Association had requested.
The first annual convention, held at Pensacola, Dec. 8-10, 1914, stressed the pledging of candidates for Congress and Legislature and securing signatures to petitions. The second, at Orlando, Feb. 3, 1915, formed congressional districts, according to the plan of the National Association. The third, at Miami, March 15-16, 1916, arranged for suffrage schools and planned to assist work outside the State. The fourth, at Tampa, Nov. 20, 1917, found the members busy with war work. The fifth, at Daytona, Nov. 19, 1918, planned to introduce a bill for Primary suffrage in the Legislature and co-operate with the Federation of Women's Clubs to secure it. The sixth, at Tampa, Oct. 30-31, 1919, was devoted to plans for ratification of the Federal Suffrage Amendment and citizenship.
While the State association could show no definite accomplishment, its work had been largely educational and a considerable public sentiment in favor of woman suffrage had been created. Its organization and growth center about the name of the Rev. Mary Augusta Safford, a pioneer worker in the suffrage cause in several States. She came in 1905 to make Florida her home from Des Moines, Iowa, where she had been pastor of the Unitarian church for eleven years. Her energy, enthusiasm and devotion carried all before her and but for her organization might have been delayed for years. For four years she was the untiring State president, then Mrs. Frank Stranahan served in 1917, Miss Safford again in 1918. The following, in addition to those elsewhere mentioned, are among those prominent in the suffrage work in the State: Mrs. A. E. McDavid, Miss Minnie Kehoe, Pensacola; Mrs. Susan B. Dyer, Winter Park; Mrs. H. W. Thompson, Miss C. H. Day, Milton; Mrs. S. V. Moore, Cocoanut Grove; Mrs. Kate C. Havens, Miami; Miss Pleasaunce Baker, Zellwood; Mrs. Grace Hanchett, Orlando.
From its beginning the association worked for the Federal Suffrage Amendment, although it tried also to obtain from the Legislature the submission of a State amendment to the voters. In 1915 Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the national president, assisted Miss Safford and the other workers in holding conventions in several congressional districts. Many local meetings were held, much literature distributed, resolutions secured and legislators interviewed. The Federation of Women's Clubs, the largest organization of women in the State, endorsed the movement. In 1916 Miss Safford went for a month to assist the campaign in Iowa, to which the association sent $100, and the vice-president, Mrs. Frank Tracy, directed the State work. New leagues were formed, delegates to the national presidential conventions were interviewed and Florida women attended those in Chicago and St. Louis. Dr. Shaw was present at the State convention where 550 members were reported and the distribution of 750 packages of literature. A series of meetings was held in cooperation with the Congressional Committee of the National Association and work in the Legislature was done.
By 1918 a number of counties had been organized and the State convention, encouraged by the granting of Primary suffrage to women in Arkansas and Texas, decided to make this its legislative work for 1919, and plans were made to raise $5,000 through local conferences. A State organizer was put into the field and the National Association sent its recording secretary, Mrs. Halsey W. Wilson, a trained worker, to assist the State organization. In January, 1919, Dr. Shaw attended a conference at Orlando and $1,000 were raised; later at a conference in Tampa, $198 and at one in Miami and West Palm Beach $260. Miss Elizabeth Skinner was appointed State organizer and the National Association sent one of its most capable organizers, Mrs. Maria McMahon. The 38 county chairmen had obtained nearly 2,500 signatures to petitions to the Legislature and ar active campaign was undertaken for Primary suffrage.
In January, 1919, the National Association's Congressional Committee sent its secretary, Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham of Arkansas, and its press secretary, Miss Marjorie Shuler of New York, to spend several weeks in a quiet campaign to influence U. S. Senator Park Trammell to cast his vote for the Federal Suffrage Amendment, this being considered useless in the case of Senator Duncan U. Fletcher. They secured newspaper comment in favor, interviews with prominent people and resolutions from conventions, but these had no effect. At the annual convention in October the following officers were elected: President, Mrs. John T. Fuller, Orlando; first vice-president, Mrs. Edgar A. Lewis, Fort Pierce; second, Miss Elizabeth Skinner, Dunedin; third, Dr. Minerva B. Cushman, St. Petersburg; corresponding secretary, Mrs. W. R. O'Neal, Orlando; recording secretary, Mrs. C. E. Hawkins, Brooksville; treasurer, Mrs. Clara B. Worthington, Tampa; auditors, Mrs. J. W. McCollum, Mrs. J. D. Stringfellow, Gainesville; Legislative Committee, Mrs. Amos Norris, chairman, Tampa. A memorial meeting was held for Dr. Shaw, who had died July 2.
The annual meeting in 1920 took place in Orlando. Mrs. Fuller was re-elected and plans for extensive work were made but the association was not quite ready to merge into a League of Women Voters. This was done April 1, 1921, and Mrs. J. B. O'Hara was elected chairman.
Legislative Action. Before the State Association was organized the Equal Franchise League of Jacksonville decided to ask the Legislature, which met in April, 1913, to submit to the voters a woman suffrage amendment to the State constitution. A bill was prepared and an appeal for assistance made to the National American Association. In response it sent its very capable field worker, Miss Jeannette Rankin, who went with the executive officers of the league to Tallahassee. Its president, Mrs. Roselle C. Cooley, said in her report: "The House of Representatives decided to hear us in a Committee of the Whole, at an evening session. In this case it meant the whole House, the whole Senate and the whole town. Seats, aisles, the steps of the Speaker's rostrum were filled, windows had people sitting in them and in the hall as far as one could see people were standing on chairs to hear the first call for the rights of women ever uttered in the Capitol of Florida. Four women and three men spoke, the vote of the committee was publicly called at the close of the speaking and the bill passed into the House of Representatives without recommendation. Weary days and weeks of waiting, time wasted on petty legislation, members going home for week-ends and not returning for Monday work kept us still anxious. At length the bill was called and the vote was 26 ayes to 38 noes.
"As we were leaving for our homes on Saturday evening a Senator said: 'If you will come into the Senate we will show those men how to treat ladies.' So we went back on Monday and were fortunate in having for our sponsor Senator Cone of Columbia county, the leader of the Senate. He took up our bill, placed it on the special calendar and advised us in our procedure, the bill having come into the Senate with favorable recommendation from the committee. Again the weary waiting, the petty legislation, the filibustering of the 'corporation' members and the whisky men, and at last a motion to postpone indefinitely was carried by one majority, 15 to 16, the sixteenth man being one who had been with us from the first until this moment."
The Legislature meets every two years and in 1915 the State association, which had now sixteen well organized branches, was sponsor for the bill, or resolution, and a large number of legislators had promised their support. Hearings were granted by both Houses, but it was defeated.
In 1917 strenuous efforts were again made in behalf of a State constitutional amendment. Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, who now had a winter home in Florida, was among those who addressed the Legislature in favor of it, and on April 23 the resolution to submit the amendment passed the Senate by 23 to 7. The struggle was then begun in the House but the corporate and liquor interests combined with the non-progressive character of many of the members accomplished its defeat.
In April, 1919, the State Federation of Women's Clubs, which now had a suffrage chairman, co-operated with the State Equal Suffrage Association in the effort to obtain a Primary Suffrage Bill, such as had been passed by the Legislatures of Arkansas and Texas. Mrs. McMahon, a national organizer, and Miss Skinner did organizing and legislative work from March 6 to April 22. The former was sent to work for Presidential suffrage, but the State Board believed that Primary suffrage had a better chance. This, however, met with so much opposition that it was never brought up. The moment the Federal Amendment was submitted by Congress a delegation of women—Mrs. Frank Stranahan, chairman of the Legislative Committee; Dr. Safford, Mrs. W. S. Jennings, Mrs. Edgar A. Lewis—went to Tallahassee to try to have the Legislature ratify it, arriving one day before adjournment. They quickly canvassed the members and found a small majority willing to vote for it but there was no time. Governor Sidney J. Catts could have called a special session for the next day but insisted that there was no assurance of ratification, as some of the men listed as favorable were in the habit of changing their vote, and he did not want to put the members on record. Some of them who were alleged to be supporters declared that they would not stay over even for one day. It was impossible to persuade the Governor to call a special session at any time afterwards, but in 1920 Florida women were enfranchised by this amendment.
Suffrage. By special acts of the Legislature, charters were granted to various cities giving Municipal suffrage to women and the voters accepted them. Sixteen towns had such a charter: Felsmere, Aurantia, Cocoa, Orange City, Deland, West Palm Beach, Delray, Florence Villa (where Dr. Anna Howard Shaw had a winter home for a number of years), Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Moore Haven, Orlando, Clearwater, Dunedin, St. Petersburg, Tarpon Springs. Felsmere was the pioneer, receiving its charter in 1915.
- ↑ The History it indebted for this chapter to Alice G. (Mm. George) Kollock, prominent in the work for woman suffrage in Florida, with thanks to others who assisted.