On Nov. 6, 1917, women won the right to vote in New York State. This occurred nearly seventy years after women organized to demand their right to vote at the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848.
Women organized into conventions, parades, and marches and drew attention to their cause with posters, pamphlets, buttons, signs, postcards, and songs. Many women throughout New York State sought their rights in a wide variety of ways, privately and publicly, by attempting to vote and staging protests over the decades.
There were many obstacles that women faced in their struggle for the right to vote. The prevailing opinion until the early 20th century was that women belonged in the domestic sphere, not the public sphere and opposition to suffrage came from both men and women.
Disagreements on strategies within the suffrage movement impeded progress, as well as strong anti-suffrage sentiments from opposing groups of men and women. However, World War I would have a massive impact on suffrage as women held jobs at home vacated by men fighting in the war, working in munitions factories and farming land, among other occupations.
They also served overseas as nurses and in military support roles. With women taking on such a large public role in the war effort, it was difficult to justify not allowing women to participate in society as full citizens.
Visit the Main Library’s lower-level gallery through the month of November for this five-panel traveling exhibit provided by the Long Island Library Resources Council.
The exhibition was curated by Julia Corrice, Susan Goodier, and Sally Roesch Wagner of the South-Central Regional Library Council, in partnership with the Empire State Library Network and New York Heritage Digital Collections, with funding from Humanities New York. Learn more at https://nyheritage.org/exhibits/recognizing-womens-right-vote-new-york-state
The Art Exhibition is from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30Â at Great Neck Main Library at 159 Bayview Ave. in Great Neck. For more information, please contact the Great Neck Library at (516) 466-8055 or email adultprogramming@greatnecklibrary.org.
