In this episode, Dr. Anne Boylan, Professor Emerita of History and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Delaware, discusses the suffrage struggle at sites on the NVWT.

We talk about the events and activists in the DE voting rights campaign:

• Mabel Lloyd Ridgely employed lobbying techniques including buttonholing legislators–made easier given her Dover house was a stone’s throw from the State House.
• Florence Bayard Hilles and Mabel Vernon were members of National Woman’s Party which supported militant tactics.
• Emma Gibson Sykes publicly called out a Delaware house member for racist rhetoric in a letter to the editor to Delaware’s Sunday Morning Star.
• The Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington housed the Equal Suffrage Study Club for Black women and held collaborative meetings with white and Black suffragists.
• Munitions workers at Bethlehem Steel in Newcastle joined the National Women’s Party and made their argument for suffrage stating that their work contributed to the war effort, just as soldiers' did. 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Anne Boylan is Professor Emerita of History and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Delaware and author of  Votes for Delaware Women (2021). She is Delaware coordinator for the online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement.

Links to People, Places, Publications:

• Delaware & the 19th Amendment (here)
• Women’s Suffrage in Delaware (here)
• Visit the Delaware Women’s Suffrage memorial (here)
• Mabel Lloyd Ridgely Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Mabel Lloyd Ridgely marker (here)
• Florence Bayard Hilles Biographical Sketch (here)
• Mabel Vernon Biographical Sketch (here)
• Ethel Cuff Black Biographical Sketch (here)
• Emma Gibson Sykes Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the 1914 Suffrage parade marker (here)
• Alice Dunbar-Nelson Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Alice Dunbar-Nelson marker (here)
• Blanche Williams Stubbs Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Blanche Stubbs marker (here)
• Visit the African American Suffrage Club marker (here)
• Visit the Women Munitions Workers marker (here)

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

Do you have a question, comment, or suggestion? Get in touch! Send an e-mail to [email protected]