I recently came across an issue of a magazine for which I wrote an article on a suffragist who was a sorority woman. In the heading was the word “suffragette.” I had not noticed that when the article was published, but I know I did not include the word in my original copy. I suspect the editorial board made that change. Being incensed a few years after the fact does no good. But it does give this post a title, so something good has come of it.
To explain the difference, I offer these two explanations from the interwebs:
Some of the 26 NPC groups have more suffragists than others. One needs to look at numbers to explain this. Alpha Delta Pi and Phi Mu have founding dates in the 1850s, but did not expand beyond the Wesleyan campus until the 1900s. The groups founded between the 1860s and 1880s tend to have suffragists among their number. One part of the reason for this is the type of woman who attended college at a time when few of her contemporaries even contemplated that notion. It took a special type of woman to face the obstacles those early female students faced. Some were likely the type to question the status quo and work for change.
The other part is the number of chapters that were established and the number of members. Chapters in pre-1900 might have had a dozen or maybe two dozen women as active members. The number of women under discussion – suffragists who were sorority women – is not a very large pool because there weren’t that many woman who were sorority women as opposed to the female population. But having even a small amount of members gives an opportunity to have at least some representation.
As new sororities were formed in the 1890s and into the early 1900s, more sorority women were added to the total of women supporting suffrage.
I wrote this a few years ago, but it is timely now. If offers a first hand account of the Suffrage Parade and how some women were targeted.
I have several posts about suffragists planned for my #WHW2020 posts when I spotlight an alumna from each of the 26 NPC and 4 NPHC groups. Subscribe for updates to have these posts delivered to you. I have also written several posts about suffragists. This site is searchable I wrote this last month for Alpha Kappa Alpha’s Founders’ Day, but it, too, is timely in this post.
And this was in the Mount Holyoke Alumnae magazine that arrived yesterday. I love the illustration.
