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These remarks from W. D. Lewis of Texas were printed in the Alden Advance in June of 1915: “There has been much freakish legislation enacted during the past decade that no doubt appeals to woman’s love for the ridiculous, but to undertake to unsex the human race by law is the height of legislative folly and a tragedy to mankind.

“We are opposed to the equal rights of woman — we want her ever to remain our superior. We consider woman’s desire to seek man’s level the yellow peril of Twentieth Century civilization.”

I wish I could ask my grandmothers how they felt about having the right to vote. My maternal grandmother died young so she may have voted only once or twice. My paternal grandmother was widowed when my father was 6 weeks old. She worked long hours to support her three children and died before I was born. In my imagination she made sure she got to the polls. Voting was not only the responsibility of the citizens of a democracy, but a joyful privilege.

I feel badly when I hear women (or men) say that politics has nothing to do with them, that they just aren’t interested or that they don’t know enough about the candidates. It makes me sad when someone says they aren’t going to vote. The stories of the suffragettes inspire me not to take this privilege for granted.

The June 19, 1919, issue of the Advance reported that “Torrents of rain had absolutely no dampening effect on the enthusiasm of the fifteen hundred or more suffragists and their friends who gathered Monday night, June 9, in the State Capitol, St. Paul, to celebrate the passage of the Federal Woman Suffrage Amendment after 50 years of back-breaking struggles on the part of the women of the country for political enfranchisement.” It wasn’t until Sept. 8 that Minnesota Legislature met in special session to ratify the 19th Amendment and until 1920 when Tennessee became the last of the 36 states required to make the 19th Amendment of the Constitution law.

Cara Finton, Alden League of Women Voters, wrote, “The 18th day of August should hereafter be printed in the largest and reddest of numbers on every calendar issued in the United States, for on that day the necessary 36th state voted to ratify the amendment to the Constitution of the U.S., thereby enfranchising 17,000,000 women. What a wonderful day for America. What a wonderful day for the world.”

Now, in 2024, let’s not take our right to vote for granted. Let’s vote with the same gratitude and joy our grandmothers felt when they first stepped into the polls.

Carolyn Smith
Albert Lea