Women overcame influenza, social distancing, and political bias to win the right to vote.
“These are sad times for the whole world, grown unexpectedly sadder by the sudden and sweeping epidemic of influenza,” wrote Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in a letter to supporters in 1918.
The first wave of the flu coursed through the country in the spring of 1918, ebbing by summertime. During that period, the Senate, dominated by southern Democrats determined to stop the enfranchisement of African-American women, was refusing to pass the bill to send the suffrage amendment to the states for ratification. Votes were announced twice, then canceled. By early fall, suffragists could see that they were two votes short of the necessary two-thirds for passage.
In Congress, Champ Clark, the powerful Speaker of the House, caught the flu. In the Senate, where the suffrage bill languished, the galleries from which suffragists kept an eye on proceedings were closed. Then the U.S. Public Health Service issued a nationwide advisory to local health departments to prohibit large meetings and gatherings.
'Not politically safe' More than anything, though, it was the extensive grassroots organizing suffragists had perfected that carried them through. They’d been laying the basis for their campaigns long before the influenza barreled in. Cities and towns in each state had their own organizations, linked to national strategy. Local women had developed sophisticated political skills.
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