back to home

Recalling the Women's Suffrage Struggle in Vt.
By DEBORAH P. CLIFFORD

Even a spring deluge could not deter the 400 woman suffragists who gathered in Montpelier on April 21, 1920, in support of the Nineteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. To mark the gravity of the occasion they had marched silently down State Street and into the State House where a large room had been set aside for their meeting with the governor.

As the women stood together, the rain dripping from their soaked clothes, one by one 14 speakers went forward and urged Gov. Percival Clement to call a special session of the Vermont Legislature to ratify the woman suffrage amendment. Thirty-five state legislatures had already voted in favor of it. Only one more was needed to make the ratification process complete. "Make Vermont the perfect 36" read the slogan, which had been scattered on cards and posters throughout the state in recent days.

Despite the pressure from these women and from important institutions like the state Supreme Court and the national Republican Party, as well as from such prominent figures as ex-President Taft and presidential candidate Warren G. Harding, Clement refused to call the special session. He labeled the amendment an infringement on the rights guaranteed by the state Constitution. But there were rumors that Clement had refused because of pressure from the liquor interests in Vermont and elsewhere to deny women the vote. In any case, in the end it was Tennessee, not Vermont that became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

Not until February 1921 did the Vermont Legislature finally endorse the woman suffrage amendment. By that time the women of the Green Mountain State had already cast their ballots in a presidential election and helped send to the State House James Hartness, a man who, had he been governor in 1920, would surely have done all he could to aid the suffrage cause.

Back in 1917, if you had asked Vermonters to name the most famous woman in the state, they might have answered "Annette Parmalee." Known as "the Suffragette Hornet," for her noisy persistence in agitating for woman suffrage, Parmalee had entertained the Vermont Legislature for nearly a decade with her witty and convincing legal arguments in support of the question. That year her efforts finally succeeded as the legislators passed a law giving women the right to vote in municipal elections. Full suffrage for Vermont women would not come for another three years, but Parmalee had brought this conservative state a long way.

A native of Enosburg Falls, Parmalee joined the woman suffrage crusade in 1907. She began by doing press work for the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association, and in 1908 she added lobbying the Legislature to her extensive list of suffrage activities. A strong believer in equal justice, Parmalee also knew that it would take time to convince Vermonters that women needed the vote to achieve such justice for themselves. She spent as much time persuading farmers and their wives to support the cause as she did the state legislators.

Parmalee had little patience with the ladylike reform efforts of her fellow suffragists in Vermont. She accused them of giving too many "pink tea" parties and writing too many "mild essays." In her own speeches and newspaper articles she always went right to the point. For example, when countering the argument that woman's place was in the home not in the voting booth, she declared that "men have written many learned articles on woman's sphere. Some have placed us as fit to occupy a pedestal in some man's parlor, while others say our place is rocking the cradle in some man's kitchen. If every woman's place is 'in the home' why have not all women been given decent homes and decent husbands?"

Deborah P. Clifford is a writer and historian who has written extensively on the suffrage movement. Part of this material is published with permission of the Center for Research of Vermont at the University of Vermont from "Lake Champlain: Reflections on Our Past," edited by Jennie G. Versteeg.