Maud Younger (1870-1936)
Officer and Organizer for Woman Suffrage


Maud Younger was among the NWP leaders who came from upper-class circumstances but identified with working-class life. She was an independently wealthy socialite in San Francisco when, at age 30, she witnessed effective settlement house work in New York City and became a convert to the power of grassroots reform. She also worked briefly in New York as a waitress to acquire personal experience in the service sector. Younger returned to California, where she organized San Francisco's first waitress union (1908) and was instrumental in the passage of the state's eight-hour-day work law.

Since Younger viewed working and voting rights as closely related issues, she helped found the Wage Earners' Equal Suffrage League for Working Women, spoke on the vote in union halls around the state, and encouraged men to support the women's cause. A master of showmanship, she created publicity for state suffrage with a Wage Earner's Equal Suffrage League float in the 1911 Labor Day parade in San Francisco. In that year she helped lobby for passage of a woman suffrage amendment to the California constitution.

In 1913 Younger brought her considerable organizing experience to the Congressional Union of Woman Suffrage (CU) and later the National Woman's Party (NWP). Working closely with Alice Paul, she soon emerged as one of the NWP's most effective orators and was a leading presence at several major NWP events. She was a keynote speaker at the NWP's founding convention in Chicago in June 1916, and later that year spoke at the memorial service for Inez Milholland. In 1917 Younger traveled throughout the nation to speak about the NWP's picketing of the White House and the arrest and imprisonment of demonstrators. She chaired the NWP's lobbying committee (1917-19) and legislative committee (1919), and described her experiences in a 1919 McCall's Magazine article “Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist.” After 1920 Younger worked with the Women's Trade Union League and then focused her activism on the NWP campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment . She served as congressional chairman of the NWP from 1921 until her death.

Century of Struggle
Century of Struggle
The Womans Rights Movement

Young suffragists who helped forge the last links in that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended. It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean to women

Women of the American Suffrage Movement
Womens Suffrage Timeline
American Civil War Women
Womens Civil War Reading Titles
American Civil War Recipes
Civil War Exhibits

American Civil War Book Titles
We Are Your Sisters
We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

A remarkable documentary and the first in-depth record of many black women, slave and free."--Dorothy B. Porter, curator emeritus, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Alice Paul
Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign
An analysis of Paul's nonviolent and visual rhetorical strategies, Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign narrates the remarkable story of the first person to picket the White House, the first to attempt a national political boycott, the first to burn the president in effigy, and the first to lead a successful campaign of nonviolence
Mary Terrel
A Colored Woman In A White World

In this autobiography, originally published in 1940, Terrell describes the important events and people in her life. With a new introduction by Debra Newman Ham, professor of history at Morgan State University, this new edition of Mary Church Terrell's autobiography will be of interest to students and scholars of both women's studies and African American history.
Fight On
Fight On!: Mary Church Terrell's Battle for Integration

The acclaimed civil rights leader Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) is brought vividly to life in this well researched and compelling biography. The daughter of an ex-slave, Terrell was considered the best-educated black woman of her time. She was the first African American member of the Washington, D.C., Board of Education
       
DVDs
One Woman One Vote
One Woman One Vote
This program documents the struggle which culminated in the passing of the 19th Amendment in the U.S. Senate by one vote. Witness the 70-year struggle for women's suffrage. Discover why the crusaders faced entrenched opposition from men and women who feared the women's vote would ignite a social revolution. DVD
Stanton and Anthony
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
Together they fought for women everywhere, and their strong willpower and sheer determination still ripples through contemporary society. Here lies the story of two of our century's most celebrated pioneers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. DVD
Fathers House
Out of Our Fathers House
Broadway Theatre Archive

This play presents the true stories of women who sought independence at any cost. The compelling text is taken entirely from the diaries, journals and letters of the characters portrayed.

Sources:
U.S. Library of Congress
Federal Citizen