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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, Illinois is a proud leader in the story of women's
3suffrage in the United States of America; and
 
4    WHEREAS, The efforts of millions of American women,
5starting in the nineteenth century, played a decisive role in
6winning the right to vote; many of these women lived and fought
7for suffrage in Illinois, making the Prairie State a nationwide
8leader in the successful effort; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Illinois women's rights advocates included Jane
10Addams, Frances Willard, and Ruth Hanna McCormick; and
 
11    WHEREAS, Jane Addams's fight for the rights of all people
12helped her win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931; and
 
13    WHEREAS, After founding the Women's Christian Temperance
14Union (WCTU), Frances Willard was honored by her fellow
15Illinoisans and by members of Congress by having a statue
16placed in the national Statuary Hall in the United States
17Capitol in Washington, D.C.; when the statue was erected in
181905, it made her the first woman honored among America's
19greatest individuals; and
 
20    WHEREAS, After fighting successfully for women's suffrage

 

 

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1in Illinois and nationwide, Ruth Hanna McCormick herself ran
2for an at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and,
3in 1928, became a Republican congresswoman from Illinois,
4before becoming the first woman nominated by a major party for
5the U.S. Senate in 1930; and
 
6    WHEREAS, Women like Addams, Willard, and McCormick faced
7many opponents but fought hard and recruited other fighters to
8help carry the torch, and, in 1913, Illinois became the first
9state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote;
10and
 
11    WHEREAS, Starting in 1914, Illinois women were extended the
12right to vote for local and countywide offices, creating a
13strange halfway point as Prairie State election officials
14handed short-sheet ballots to female voters that only listed
15the races for which they were allowed to vote; and
 
16    WHEREAS, Organizations led by the Illinois Equal Suffrage
17Association, headed by Chicago's Grace Wilbur Trout, demanded
18an equal ballot for women; and
 
19    WHEREAS, With the entry of the United States into World War
20I, women workers became an essential part of the war effort,
21and many men in Illinois and nationwide recognized there was
22not a moral case for denying women the right to an equal vote;

 

 

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1and
 
2    WHEREAS, In May 1919, Illinois Republican Congressman
3James Mann sponsored the Nineteenth Amendment to the
4Constitution of the United States, the Woman's Suffrage
5Amendment, and persuaded his colleagues in the U.S. House and
6Senate to send it to the states for ratification; and
 
7    WHEREAS, Outsider-activists, such as Grace Wilbur Trout,
8and political insiders, such as Ruth Hanna McCormick, had
9already prepared the Illinois General Assembly for receipt of
10this pioneering constitutional document; and
 
11    WHEREAS, On June 10, 1919, Illinois lawmakers in
12Springfield made the Land of Lincoln the first state in the
13nation to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S.
14Constitution, the constitutional amendment that granted the
15right to vote to women in all elections nationwide, including
16federal elections for offices such as U.S. President; and
 
17    WHEREAS, With the help of political efforts and publicity
18organized in press centers, such as Chicago, by activists, such
19as Addams and Trout, and political figures, such as McCormick,
20the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified nationwide in less than
21eighteen months; this made it possible for American women to
22vote for President in the election of 1920 and, again, in every

 

 

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1election since; and
 
2    WHEREAS, Illinois remembers the work carried out by
3fighters for women's votes one hundred years ago; therefore, be
4it
 
5    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE
6HUNDRED FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
7we commemorate the approaching l00th anniversary on June 10,
82019, of the ratification by the State of Illinois of the
9Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States;
10and be it further
 
11    RESOLVED, That we remember in this commemoration the hopes
12and dreams of the hundreds of thousands of Illinois women of
13all political parties who organized themselves, from the 1870s
14into the 1910s, into the half-century-long effort to win the
15right to vote in America; and be it further
 
16    RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be presented to
17the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago, to the Frances
18Willard House Museum and Archives in Evanston, and to the
19Robert R. McCormick Foundation/Cantigny Park in Wheaton in
20commemoration and observance of the differences between, and
21the united desires of, the pioneer fighters for women's
22suffrage in Illinois.