One hundred years ago, on Valentine’s Day, a group of women led by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt gathered in the Gold Room of Chicago’s Congress Hotel and formed the League of Women Voters.
Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States. William Hale Thompson was mayor of Chicago. Champagne was likely not popped, since prohibition had gone into effect the previous month.
The 19th Amendment was six months away from being ratified, but this group, born of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, launched a “mighty political experiment” to help 20 million women carry out their soon-to-be right to vote.
“It’s a special occasion to commemorate,” Audra Wilson, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, told me. “But the work of the league is evolution, and it’s important to also acknowledge some of the league’s challenges.”
On Friday morning, Wilson and her group are hosting a giant, free, open-to-the-public birthday party in the very room where it happened. From 10 to 11:15 a.m., they will gather to celebrate with league members, supporters and elected officials. U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth are both invited; Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton are expected to attend.
There will be speeches. There will be birthday cake from Brown Sugar Bakery and singing from G3 Gospel Choir.
It will be, in every way, a more diverse and representative gathering than the one that took place in 1920.
“A lot of voices were excluded,” Wilson said. “Some very, very important people to the suffrage movement — Mary Church Terrell and, here in Illinois, Ida B. Wells, who started the very first Alpha Suffrage Club in the United States — were marginalized and excluded from participating in the league, even though they were integral to the movement.”
The Alpha Suffrage Club, founded in 1913, was an organization for black women to advocate for voting rights.
“A lot of discrimination and Hobbesian choices happened along the way,” Allyson Haut, board president of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, told me. “Which is ironic, because at the original women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, Frederick Douglass was one of the people there supporting women in their efforts.”
In an effort to win support for the 19th Amendment in the South, Catt once said, “White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage.”
Her defenders say she was a product of her time, and a strategically-minded one at that. It’s still an ugly history.
Wilson, a public interest attorney who served as deputy press and policy director on Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, said the league doesn’t shy away from addressing its past head-on.
“We have to deal with our legacy of racial subjugation and discrimination,” she said. “And we’re also proud to talk about how we’ve evolved as an organization.”
The league actively combats voter suppression and has spearheaded numerous efforts to ease access to both registering to vote and voting itself. In 2002, the league worked closely with a coalition of civil rights organizations to draft and pass the Help America Vote Act, establishing provisional balloting, requirements for updating voting systems and an election assistance commission. In 2019, the group initiated a national effort called People Powered Fair Maps to eliminate racial gerrymandering.
And Friday’s anniversary is also about looking ahead.
“While we’re excited we’re still here, it’s a little bittersweet,” Wilson said. “Because we shouldn’t still be here after 100 years having the same sorts of discussions we’re having — talking about infringement on people’s right to vote, talking about having to protect that very hallowed right to vote, for which many people fought and died. The occasion is not just commemorative and celebratory. It’s also meant to be reflective and deliberate, so we can think about what’s next and what’s on the horizon and why this fight continues.”
The league serves two primary functions. First: Defending people’s right and access to vote.
“Not only for women,” Wilson said. “Our name is an homage to our origins, but our organization is meant to empower and defend the right to vote for all individuals: male and female, irrespective of political ideology, race, color or creed.
Second: Educating voters about how to vote. The group hosts nonpartisan candidate forums, panels and other informational events and releases position papers to guide voters.
“We are nonpartisan,” Wilson said. “That doesn’t mean we are nonopinion.”
The group weighs in on environmental policy, gun violence prevention, redistricting and other issues and policies that are of local or national interest.
On Saturday, League of Women Voters of Illinois will host a daylong policy conference at Northeastern Illinois University, where voters can discuss concerns and policy questions with legislators and community activists.
“We want people to have access to whatever information they need to make informed choices,” Haut said. “We’re not interested in what their choice is, we’re interested in them being able to access the information to make that choice in their language, in a way that accommodates a challenge they may have, in a way that continues to support and educate people to be active participants in their own government.”
Haut said the league is exploring partnerships with local high schools and with the Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana to engage young people and get them excited about voting, reading, canvassing and otherwise participating in the democracy they’re part of.
One hundred years later, their mission and work feels as essential as ever. Cheers to the past, and a better, brighter, more inclusive future.
The League of Women Voters 100 year anniversary party is from 10-11:15 a.m. in the Gold Room of the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan Ave. More information at lwvil.org/100thcelebration.html.
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