Portland Women Celebrate Federal Amendment Victory, August 28, 1920
Oregon women celebrated the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which states that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,” at a luncheon at the Benson Hotel in Portland on August 28, 1920.
“Suffragists Here Celebrate Victory,” Oregonian, August 29, 1920, 20.
August 28, 1920 Oregon Women Celebrate the Achievement of National Woman Suffrage
Some 230 women gathered at the Benson Hotel in Portland on Saturday, August 28, 1920 to celebrate the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which made woman suffrage the law of the United States. Oregon women had had full voting rights for almost eight years. Both houses of the Oregon legislature had voted to adopt House Joint Resolution 1, introduced by Representative Sylvia Thompson, on January 12, 1920, making Oregon the twenty-fifth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Tennessee was the last of the thirty-six states to ratify the amendment and it became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920.
Mayor George Baker issued a proclamation asking all Portlanders to participate in a demonstration for noon on Saturday August 28 to recognize the event. Supporters urged mills, factories and churches across the state to ring bells and blow whistles to commemorate the day. At the Benson Hotel women “stood at attention around their tables” at noon for the ringing of the bells as the start of the victory luncheon.
The event commemorated the work of early leader Abigail Scott Duniway, who had died in 1915, and members of “the younger generation” who had been active in the successful 1912 campaign. And those present looked to the future as the Oregon Equal Suffrage Alliance became the League of Women Voters of Oregon with Effie Comstock Simmons as president.
—Kimberly Jensen
Further reading:
“Senate Gives Way for Mrs. Thompson,” Oregonian, January 14, 1920, 6
“Oregon Women Joyous Because Suffrage Wins in Tennessee,” Oregon Journal, August 18, 1920, 1.
“Women of Portland to Celebrate Saturday,” Oregonian, August 26, 1920, 1.
“Suffragists Here Celebrate Victory,” Oregonian, August 29, 1920, 20.
Jean H. Baker, ed., Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Sara Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)
One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, prod. Ruth Pollack, 1996, DVD, 146 minutes.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/OneWomanOneVote/introduction
League of Women Voters of Oregon www.lwvor.org
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July 1912 Portlanders Screen the film Votes for Women starring Anna Howard Shaw and Jane Addams
“Motion Pictures Plea for Equal Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, July 17, 1912, 5.
July 17-19, 1912 Suffrage Film Votes for Women at the Star Theater in Portland
By July 1912 workers across Oregon were active in the final campaign for woman suffrage that would result in victory in the November election. Oregon suffragists were building their campaign by using mass media and advertising techniques to get their message across to voters in early twentieth-century consumer culture.
The Portland Equal Suffrage League sponsored a three-day engagement for the film Votes for Women at the Star Theater in Portland. The film featured the story of a fiancée of a state senator opposed to the movement “whose signature alone is needed to put through equal suffrage legislation.” She “becomes an ardent suffragist” and, along with suffrage workers, convinces the senator to vote for the bill. Filmmakers blended this fictional account with appearances by national suffrage leaders Anna Howard Shaw and Jane Addams, real-life “equal suffrage slogans and banners” and footage of a New York City suffrage parade.
The use of films like Votes for Women helped to create the modern suffrage movement and brought success to campaigns in states like Oregon that used mass media to put their message across.
—Kimberly Jensen
Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)
Kimberly Jensen, “‘Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign’: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 108:3 (Fall 2007): 350-383.
Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004)
“Motion Pictures Plea for Equal Suffrage,” Oregon Journal, July 17, 1912, 5.
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