From Women’s Suffrage to Organized Crime, political education of women and immigrants has always been a keystone of Women of Minnesota Exciting Networks. (W.O.M.E.N.)
Suffrage
Concerned Women at School Board meetings is nothing new in Minnesota.
Long before the 19th Amendment allowed women the unconditional right to vote, Minnesotan men and women alike played a significant role in passing legislation and activism.
In 1875, the Minnesota Legislature granted women the right to vote in school board elections.
In 1884, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) held their first ever national convention in Washington DC. The Minnesota Women’s Suffrage Association (MWSA) sent a delegation.
In 1885, the first annual convention was held in Minneapolis.
Source: Minnesota Historical Society
The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Minnesota was composed mostly of wealthy white women, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. These women were “joiners” who could afford to belong to multiple groups and political movements.
Many of these clubs restricted membership based on race, class or ethnicity.
There were several Anti-Suffrage women’s groups opposed to suffrage for a variety of reasons, including the draft registration which is still required in order for men to vote.
In 1918, the MWSA was not able to have their annual meeting due to a flu pandemic but worked tirelessly to harvest a record 90,000 mail-in signatures to support their cause.
Women on both sides of the Suffrage position belonged on other committees and activist and issue groups, including Prohibition.
Prohibition
In 1919, women from several temperance organizations worked with Andrew Volstead, a Republican Congressman, to pass the Volstead Act creating Prohibition of alcohol.
Volstead was not elected to an 11th term in 1922, but was hired as legal adviser to the chief of the National Prohibition Enforcement Bureau.
Educating immigrant children was critically important for the Temperance women to teach German and Scandinavian school children.
One such moral crusader, Clara Ueland taught kindergarten in her 16-room home in the affluent Lake of the Isles/Uptown neighborhood on the South Shore of Lake Calhoun. (Prince famously referred to this as “Lake Minnetonka” in his movie Purple Rain and Women and Marxist Children now refer to it as Bde Maka Ska) .
This is coincidentally the same area of Minneapolis that spawned the Dworkin Mackinnon Anti Civil Rights Bill, the Anti Racist Action Terror Network, and where Justine Damond was gunned down while running up to a squad car in the dark.
Ueland became the first appointed president of the (NONPARTISAN) Minnesota League of Women Voters.
In the early years, the League’s objective was the “political education” of the newly enfranchised female voters. That political education quickly expanded, according to the Minnesota Historical Society:
“Soon, however, the groups broadened their scope to include voter education in general, study of legislation, determining individual legislators’ positions on issues, and communication of that information to the local leagues. Among the many areas of interest were social welfare measures, natural resources, pure food and drug measures, disarmament, trade, foreign policy, civil service, the World Court, the United Nations, government organizations, education, public finance, control of atomic energy, and civil rights.”
Minnesota was the 15th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, on September 8, 1919. Celebrations broke out statewide. Suffragists led a parade to the State Capitol, followed by a banquet at the Saint Paul Hotel.
By this time, the hotel was the prominent home of bootlegger, Leon Gleckman, known as the “Al Capone of St. Paul,” who orchestrated the election of mob-police-chief “Big Tom Brown” with the help of the newly educated women voters.
Police Chief Big Tom Brown
Brown, 6”5”, had promised to crack down on organized crime. He successfully cracked down on the organized crime that didn’t pay him protection money, sold alcohol seized by the “Purity Squad,” and profited from kidnappings with the “Kidnapping Squad”.
Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association president Clara Ueland said, “Today is the commencement rather than the end of our work.” She knew — as we know today — that having the right to vote does not guarantee the means to exercise that right. Women faced barriers at the polls in 1920. Despite these advances, many voters still encounter barriers when they go to the polls.
The work never ends.
