“Crowned with the Wreath of Citizenship”: Race, Regionalism and the Suffrage Movement in Maryland

Abstract

The state of Maryland proved to be a complicated battleground for the suffrage movement. The regional differences in border states forced suffragists to adapt their campaigns and confront a broad range of issues like race, immigration and labor. This thesis focuses on three specific regions in Maryland; the three western counties which were isolated from the rest of the state by the Appalachian Mountains, the Eastern Shore, and Baltimore.

The first chapter addresses the suffrage tactics employed by suffragists in coal towns in Western Maryland. Here, suffragists tackled labor conditions and paranoia over immigrant laborers to argue their case. The second chapter demonstrates how suffragists appealed to the southern culture evident on the Eastern Shore, where race and the traditional roles of women were at the heart of suffrage opposition. Chapter three explores the diversity of the movement in the city of Baltimore. Parades in the city exposed the full range of participants including working class women and the educated upper crust of society. Finally, the fourth chapter covers the work of suffragists in Maryland after the passage of the 19th Amendment. Despite the amendment to the constitution, there were still those who fought hard against it. Suffragists not only had to reckon with backlash to the amendment, but they worked overtime to ensure that the women of their state learned how to exercise the right to vote.

The research conducted for this thesis has been primarily drawn from newspapers at the local level. In particular, the Maryland Suffrage News reported on the grassroots organizing from suffragists in each county throughout the state. The Baltimore Afro-American was crucial to understanding the role of black women in suffrage organizations in the state. In the decades after the movement, the Baltimore Sun gave suffragists a unique opportunity to reflect on their activism.