On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote passed its final hurdle of obtaining the agreement of three-fourths of the states as Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920. Colby was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi chapter at Williams College.
Sorority women including these highlighted below worked for the passage of the 19th Amendment.
E. Jean Nelson Penfield, (1872-1961), Kappa Kappa Gamma (DePauw University). Penfield was one of seven women who chartered the Woman’s Suffrage Party of Greater New York. She also served as Kappa Kappa Gamma’s National President.
E. Jean Nelson (Penfield) wearing her Kappa key.
Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), Pi Beta Phi (Iowa State University). Catt was President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900-04 (and 1915-20, too). She was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote.
Carrie Chapman Catt wearing her Pi Beta Phi arrow badge. In the 1880s, a standardized manner of wearing the badge had yet to be determined and it was common for members to wear it in all sorts of ways, including pointing downward..
Ada Comstock Notestein (1876-1973), Delta Gamma, University of Minnesota. Notestein served as Dean of Women at Smith College from 1921-23. Since 1975, Smith College’s Ada Comstock Scholars Program has helped hundreds of non-traditional age women to complete a Bachelor of Arts. In addition, she served as President of the American Association of University Women from 1921-23 and President of Radcliffe College from 1923-43.
Ada Louise Comstock
Alice Duer Miller (1874-1942), Kappa Kappa Gamma, Barnard College (Phi Beta Kappa, too!). Miller was an ardent suffragist. In the years when women were trying to gain the right to vote, she wrote a column, Are Women People? devoted to the cause of equal suffrage. In 1915, she penned:
“Mother, what is a feminist?”
“A feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
to think about her own affairs
As men don’t think she oughter.”
Reverend Doctor Anna Howard Shaw, (1847-1919), Kappa Alpha Theta (Wooster College) An honorary member (alumna initiate), Shaw was a suffragist, physician, first ordained female Methodist minister, and President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Frances Willard, 1839-98, Alpha Phi (Syracuse University). Willard, an honorary member (alumna initiate), served as Alpha Phi’s National President. She was a suffragist, social reformer, and an American educator. She was also instrumental in the establishment of the second chapter of Alpha Phi at Northwestern University in 1881.
Frances Willard
Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958), Kappa Alpha Theta (DePauw University). Ritter was a suffragist and a noted historian.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Ph.D., (1879-1958), Kappa Kappa Gamma (Ohio State University). Fisher was an author, educational reformer, and social activist. After World War I, she did post-war relief work in Europe, enlisting her Kappa sisters’ assistance in helping orphaned children.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Edith and Grace Abbott, both Delta Gammas (University of Nebraska). Grace (1878-1939) was the highest ranking woman in the United States government for over a decade as the head of the U.S. Children’s Bureau from 1921-34. She was the first woman to be nominated for a Presidential cabinet position—Secretary of Labor (unfortunately her nomination was not confirmed). Edith (1876-1957) was the first woman to become dean of an American graduate school, the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.
Mary Gray Peck, Gamma Phi Beta, (1867-1957). Peck was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association serving as its corresponding secretary.She was on the front lines of the women’s suffrage movement.
Mary Gray Peck
There were National Pan-Hellenic Council women involved in the fight for suffrage, but because of the age of the organizations – the oldest of the organizations was founded 12 years prior to the 19th Amendment being passed. The youngest NPHC organization did not yet exist.
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., the first NPHC sorority was founded at Howard University on January 16, 1908. Almost five years later, on January 13, 1913, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. was founded at Howard University. Its charter members had been members of Alpha Kappa Alpha. One of the first activities of the Delta Sigma Theta members was marching in the March 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. along with Mary Church Terrell, an honorary Delta Sigma Theta member.
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Alpha chapter members
Mary Church Terrell
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. was founded on January 16, 1920, at Howard University. The youngest of the NPHC sororities, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., was founded at Butler University on November 12, 1922. The NPHC groups played an integral role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. (A great resource is A Pledge with Purpose: Black Sororities and Fraternities and the Fight for Equality by Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey.)
