Suffragists would say: Just register

In 1848, 240 women gathered in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to talk about the legal injustices against women. Most galling of all was the fact women couldn’t vote for the leaders who passed the laws oppressing them. The 19th century newspapermen ridiculed the women’s convention, in the same tone modern media folks ridicule those who gather for Star Trek conventions. The notion that a woman might have the right to vote was as alien as the notion a woman should keep her own wages.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, mother of seven children, organized the convention. The women in attendance at the July conference wore the traditional clothes of the day – corsets, layers of petticoats and dresses fashioned from fabric as heavy as Victorian-era drapes.

The spirit of Stanton and other suffragists haunted me, in a good way, all week as I researched this column. In a cosmic coincidence, I took breaks from the research to interview candidates for public office. Some of the candidates were women. When I’d return to my office from those editorial board endorsement interviews, I thanked the suffragists for where their work ultimately led.

Susan B. Anthony, the most famous of the suffragists, spoke prophetic words a few weeks before her death in 1906. She said, “Failure is impossible.” Turns out she was right.

Hanging out with the spirits of the suffragists all week evoked appreciation – and a bit of anger. It led to this soapbox rant directed to unregistered women voters. Get off your butts, please. You owe it to the women who endured ridicule, violence and ostracism during their 70-year battle for women’s suffrage.

I’ll make it easy on you to register. Thursday is Women’s Equality Day. It commemorates the day 84 years ago when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote, was signed into law. From 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thursday, I’ll be in front of the KHQ studios in downtown Spokane, 1201 W. Sprague Ave., at our Honor-Our-Suffragists Voter Registration Booth. Elections staff, including Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton, will be there at your service.

KHQ is buying the coffee, and the morning news crew will lend encouragement, too. If you are already registered, but you know a young woman who isn’t and who will turn 18 on or before the Nov. 2 election, then nag her downtown. We’ll register that young woman right away. All she needs is a Washington state driver’s license or state ID card. If you always vote, and wish to join us in paying tribute to the suffragists, we’ll give you a cup of coffee and doughnut in gratitude.

It’s early in the morning, I know. But instead of turning off your alarm clock and choosing more sleep over registering to vote, think of Lucy Stone, who graduated from Oberlin College in 1847. According to historian Jone Johnson Lewis, Stone was asked to write the commencement speech but declined when told a man would have to deliver it for her. Stone didn’t allow this early discouragement to put her to sleep on women’s issues. She fought for suffrage until her death in 1893. Last words to her daughter: “Make the world better.”

It’s a busy time of year, I know, especially with school starting up again soon. But squeeze voter registration into your day Thursday by thinking of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns and dozens of other women who took hours out of their busy lives to picket the White House in 1917. Some were arrested and jailed. They endured abuse and forced feedings during hunger strikes. Watch HBO’s “Iron Jawed Angels” if you don’t know this chapter in the history of women’s suffrage.

My favorite suffragist was a local gal, May Arkwright Hutton, who stumped for the women’s vote in Idaho in 1896 and then in Washington in 1910. (Several states granted suffrage to women before the federal amendment.) Hutton was outspoken and blunt. I picture her listening now to excuses by modern women who are not registered to vote. She’d tell them to quit whining, and then she’d borrow a famous Star Trek phrase and say just “make it so.”

Please do. See you Thursday.