Pro and con articles appeared in many newspapers. It’s been reported that in 1913 the Dayton Daily News allowed members of the Dayton Women’s Suffrage Association to edit a page of the newspaper in order to present their views, and in the same edition extended the use of another page to the Anti-Suffrage group.
Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the cause until Aug. 26, 1920, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, after a battle of nearly 100 years. It enfranchised all American women, declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserved all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
The long campaign that began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War wasn’t easy, and many women suffered in the fight — some thrown in jail. “It seems a lot of young women in particular, don’t value the right to vote. They may not realize that for everyone in the country who can vote today, somebody fought for that right,” said Wilson.
A retired consultant in business records management, she has taught at Wright State University and at branches of the University of Cincinnati and Miami University. Interested in family history, Wilson is the current president of the Greene County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogy Society and enjoys activities with indoor and garden railroads.
While it doesn’t seem any suffrage activities happened in the quiet farm communities around Dayton, the spirit of women striving to reach beyond themselves to benefit their friends and neighbors is evident in Centerville history. We’ll tell you about one such story in another column.
The next program of the Centerville-Washington Twp. Historical Society will be held Jan. 18 at the Hithergreen Center, 5900 Hithergreen Drive. John Callander will speak about the Wright Brothers. The meeting will begin with a reception at 6:30 p.m. and program at 7. For more information, call (937) 433-0123.
Anita Richwine is a board member of the Centerville-Washington Township Twp. Historical Society. Contact her at anita824@aol.com.
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