历史大事件:纽约女性投票100年
Suffrage at 100:A Visual History
On May 18, 1915, crowds streamed into the Polo Grounds in Manhattan to watch the New
York Giants take on the Chicago Cubs. But beyond the diamond, a bigger contest was
brewing.
The state of New York was gearing up to hold a referendum, putting the question of
women’s suffrage to its (allmale) electorate. Supporters of the cause organized
a “suffrage day” game, luring potential voters with the offer of a piece of chocolate cake
with every ticket purchased at their headquarters. They festooned the stadium with yellow banners and printed baseballthemed fliers, with exhortations like “Fans, Fair Play” and “Make a Home Run for Suffrage.”
Everybody, The New York Times noted, “had a ‘lovely’ time.” But the festive mood would
fizzle out come November: The men of New York rejected the suffrage measure, and its women would have to work another two years for the right to vote.
Votes for women was a demand that was both radical and allAmerican. And the nearly
centurylong history of how women won that right is as colorful and kaleidoscopic as it is
complicated and almost impossible to sum up.
Those who fought for it were heroes, but not always moral paragons. The suffrage
movement, like other social movements before and after, often reflected the racism,
nativism and other prejudices that pervaded America as a whole.
At the heart of the suffrage battle was a conundrum: Women gaining the vote required
persuading men to share it with them. And there were many who dismissed the cause as
ridiculous, if not downright dangerous.
“The benefits of woman suffrage are almost wholly imaginary,” The Times declared in 1913,
in one of a long string of anti-suffrage editorials. “Its penalties will be real and hard to bear.”
To combat such attitudes, suffragists used every weapon in the arsenal, from petitions and
speeches to pins, parades and attention-grabbing stunts. The rise of the movement coincided with the birth of photography, and the suffragists deployed the medium to put human faces on their struggle. “They knew how to build a visual identity,” the historian Susan Ware said, “and use it for a political purpose.”
The fight for the vote was the fight for democracy. No history can sum it all up. But these
images help bring into focus how the largest enfranchisement in American history came to pass, and the generations of women who made it happen.
1915 年 5 月 18 日,人群涌入曼哈顿的马球场,观看纽纽约巨人队对阵芝加哥小熊队的比赛。但在球场之外,一场更大的较量正在酝酿之中。正在酝酿之中。
纽约州正准备举行一次全民公决,将妇女选举权的问题提交给它的妇女选举权的问题。支持者们组织了 支持者们组织了一场 "选举日 "游戏,以在他们的总部每购买一张门票就能得到一块巧克力蛋糕的优惠条件吸引潜在选民吸引潜在选民。他们在球场上张贴黄色横幅,印制以棒球为主题的传单,上面写着 "球迷,公平竞赛 "和 "为选举权打出本垒打 "等劝诫语。
纽约时报》指出,每个人都 "度过了一段'美好'的时光"。但这种欢庆的气氛到了 11 月就烟消云散了: 纽约的男人们否决了选举权措施,纽约的妇女们还得再努力两年才能获得投票权。
妇女投票是一项既激进又全美国的要求。近一个世纪以来长达近一个世纪的历史中,妇女是如何赢得这一权利的?复杂,几乎无法概括。
为之奋斗的人是英雄,但并不总是道德楷模。选举权运动像之前和之后的其他社会运动一样选举权运动往往反映了种族主义、本土主义和其他偏见、本土主义和其他偏见充斥着整个美国。选举权斗争的核心是一个难题:妇女要获得选举权,就必须说服男性与她们分享投票权。而许多人却对这一问题不屑一顾。
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