In May 1914, students at the Pennsylvania College for Women, now Chatham College, joined in a parade to support a controversial cause -- women's right to vote.

By Marylynne Pitz
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Images leave deep impressions in the memory banks of Robert Cooney Jr., founder of a California graphics company. As the author researched American women's battle for voting rights, he prized pictures of brave young suffragettes.

		Related story Group targets young single women to get out the vote

For 12 years, he sat on hard library chairs, unpacking more boxes than a supermarket stock boy. One day, in the Huntington Library in California, a staff member watched him unfold a deteriorating poster.

In a detailed red and gold illustration, a British suffragette blew a bugle to announce a meeting at London's Albert Hall in 1908. Behind her rose the sun, a symbol of enlightenment.

"This is gorgeous," Mr. Cooney exclaimed. Then, "The librarian says to me, 'Do you think this is something we should preserve?' And I said, absolutely!"

Mr. Cooney, who speaks tonight at Chatham College, has preserved much more than a crumbling poster. He is the author of "Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement."

	This poster is from a 1917 suffrage campaign in New York. Women won the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment. Click photo for larger image.

With 960 photos, cartoons and illustrations, this book serves as a deeply affectionate history of the intense, well-organized women whose long skirts and determined faces filled this country's streets and beaches for 72 years.

The author found plenty of photos of devoted leaders, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucy Stone.

But, he added, "My goal was to get the suffragists as young women."

Women who wanted the right to vote marched and paraded more often than a high school drum and bugle corps team. Usually, that was the fun part.

But some processions, including one in the nation's capital, erupted into near riots. Women were beaten and spat on. Leaders such as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were even force-fed when they waged hunger strikes in jail.

In 1915, Jennie Bradley Roessing advocated for women's right to vote while driving a specially reinforced car through all of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The car carried a life-size replica of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Click photo for larger image.

"They waged a powerful, courageous revolution, and they didn't kill anybody, and they won," Mr. Cooney said.

Suffragettes also were ridiculed.

"I think men would rather go to war than be ridiculed. They took it. They said, 'I'm right and you can do what you want, but I'm going to continue to fight for my own rights.' " Mr. Cooney said.

The revolution for women's voting rights started in 1848 with an initial convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and ended with a parade in 1920, the year the 19th Amendment passed.

Like the women who paved their path to enfranchisement, "I didn't know what I was getting into in terms of the complexity of the story," the author said. "I tried to get some of the scholars to write it but they're all busy."

The drive for women's voting rights is rooted in the 1830s and 1840s, when many American women, entirely focused on their homes and families, spoke in public for the first time to denounce slavery. Those experiences made many women realize that they themselves would remain enslaved, in a different way, until they had a voice in electing public leaders.

Suffragists encountered no shortage of criticism. At an 1851 women's rights convention in Akron, a clergyman heckled and interrupted participants. But Sojourner Truth, a freed slave, silenced him with her famous "Ain't I a Woman" speech.

Ms. Truth's eloquence was just one of numerous instances in which Mr. Cooney was struck by "the boldness of women going against the established tradition. She stood up as a black woman to answer a white preacher. Even white women didn't want a black woman standing up."

Women seeking the right to vote confronted strong economic forces that opposed change.

"The liquor industry was one of the largest organized groups that funded the anti-suffragists. They feared that if women voted, there would be Prohibition and they would be out of business. As it turned out, men passed Prohibition. Former suffragists helped them repeal it because they had so much experience in political organizing," Mr. Cooney said.

In some parts of the country, women voted before the 20th century arrived.

"Women were voting in Wyoming in 1869. That was the first territory that passed equal rights. When they came in the Union, they came in as the equality state," he said.

Before 1900, women in Colorado, Utah and Idaho could vote, too.

Anti-suffragists claimed that giving women the right to vote would cause them to abandon their homes and children.

As in all political battles, strategy was key.

"Suffragists were very sophisticated politically. They said, 'We'll take presidential suffrage even if we can't get full suffrage,' " Mr. Cooney said.

Nationwide, suffragists fought their battle state by state, all the while lobbying Congress.

"They needed a constitutional amendment for all the women in the country. One way to build support in Congress was to build support in individual states," the author said.

Many suffragists wore down their leather shoes and heels.

"They would go to the voters and talk about their cause. They would speak at meetings and in parks and go door to door," Mr. Cooney said.

Other women who embraced the cause had a flair for drama.

A memorable suffrage parade was staged in the nation's capital in March 1913, the same day as Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Leading the charge, quite literally, was Inez Milholland Boissevain, a New York lawyer. Dressed as a herald in a white suit, blue cape and astride a white horse, she epitomized a renewal of the movement's momentum with her youth and beauty.

"These were really women on white horses, standing up for democracy, standing up for their own civil rights. I love the imagery," Mr. Cooney said.

In 1915, during a statewide campaign in Pennsylvania, Jennie Bradley Roessing of Pittsburgh traveled to all 67 counties, riding in a specially reinforced truck that carried the Women's Liberty Bell, a life-size replica of the one in Philadelphia. As Mrs. Roessing spoke beside the powerful symbol, she attracted many voters to her side.

Gradually, women raised money and won support among the media and in Congress. During World War I, suffragists "got the signatures of 1 million women who said they wanted to vote. They did that first to counter the anti-suffragists who said most women don't want to vote," the author said.

After mounting all those signatures on poster boards, suffragists marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City in what was called the parade of the petitions.

Suffragists grieved when Ms. Boissevain died of pernicious anemia at the age of 30 in 1916. Her last public words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?"

Weeks after her memorial service was held under the dome of the nation's Capitol, women began picketing the White House.

While the movement's mainstream leaders sought President Woodrow Wilson's support, Alice Paul, leader of the more radical National Woman's Party, called for a boycott of Democratic candidates, including Wilson.

Though barred from the voting booth, suffragists still exercised political power.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton worked to organize men to vote against politicians who did not support suffrage. Another suffragist, Carrie Chapman Catt, also received accolades for her work to achieve voting rights. But the movement's darling was Paul.

"Alice Paul is more glamorous because she went to jail and was force-fed," Mr. Cooney said. "She was younger and more dynamic. She had single-mindedness."

The author, a board member of the National Women's History Project, hopes his book will inspire a new generation of women to cherish and exercise their right to vote.

He confessed no surprise that 20 million single American women chose not to vote in the 2004 presidential election

"I don't think a lot's changed in terms of embracing women and women's issues. I don't see the parties out there leading the way with progressive, humanitarian legislation."

Robert P.J. Cooney Jr. speaks at 6:15 tonight at Chatham College's Beckwith Lecture Hall. The lecture is free and open to the public. A wine and hors d'oeuvres reception begins at 5:45 p.m. A $5 donation is suggested.