Thanks for sending this excellent piece, Sylvia. The 50th anniversary convention of NAWSA was held in St Louis, March 1919. The delegates voted to have a subset of those states with full suffrage form a League of Women Voters. After the Senate approved the 19th on June 4, Carrie Chapman Catt vowed to expand the League's mission to educating women throughout the country about the way government works. On February 14, it was formally established but the fight waa tense all of the way to August 18, when Tennessee became the final state necessary for ratification. The very tense final months are beautifully explained in the Women's Hour by Elaine Weiss. Yes, we're still a long way from equity.

Meredith Machen

mermachen@cybermesa.com

505 577 6337

Begin forwarded message:

From: SM Ramos <smrcmd@hotmail.com>
Date: March 12, 2020 at 10:20:16 PM CDT
To: SM Ramos <smrcmd@hotmail.com>
Subject: My talk at the Special Collections Library has been postponed

Hello, everyone.

All Albuquerque Public Library programming has been postponed beginning tomorrow. Therefore, my talk will be rescheduled to some time after the emergency is lifted. I will let you know the new date then.

Thank for your interest in learning more about suffrage and suffragists in New Mexico. It is a fascinating story that has lessons for us today when, 100 years after women won the vote, we still have no woman president.

I will leave you with these questions from a story in the 1919 Roswell Daily Record titled,

Women to Form League Voters. It reported on the National American Woman Suffrage Convention where delegates from 50 states hoped to form New National Voters League.

(By 1919 women in many states had been able to vote in state and national elections for a few years. In NM they voted only in school board elections.)

The article in 1919 asked questions still pertinent to us today. (My comments/answers are in red.)

-Why does the US lag behind other nations in extending votes (equal rights) to its women? (Entrenched patriarchy is part of it. But why has 51% of the population not torn it down?)

-Are women voters treated with the dignity and the respect they merit at the hands of political parties? (I think not---getting better but far to go)

-Have women voters accomplished the best results with their franchise? (No)

-Can women voters work for good causes most effectively as an independent, non-partisan group outside the party, or as partisans within the party? (Probably outside. The National Woman’s Party of Alice Paul was non-partisan and worked on behalf of issues affecting women. It still exists. I am a member.)

Be well.

Regards.

Sylvia

Sylvia Ramos Cruz

Sylvia M. Ramos, M.D.

PO Box 7398

Albuquerque, NM 87194

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Equal Rights Amendment written by Alice Paul in 1923. Ratified by the necessary 38 states in 2020, Centennial of Woman Suffrage.

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