Lessons in Failure from the Suffs

How did they keep their spirits up and finish the fight after so many defeats?

I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write this post, but here we are. I am heartbroken for the promise of America and for all the people who are going to needlessly suffer in the coming years. I am especially devastated for women, our hard-won rights and our daughters. 

Let me tell you a story. 

In 1915, the Suffs fought a big, pivotal race for suffrage in New York state. The stakes were high. At this point, the fight for woman’s suffrage had been going on for decades. They had already won the vote for women in the western states and having New York on board meant the Suffs would have enough representation in Congress to get a federal amendment passed.

The Suffs went all out for this campaign: they had canvassing squads for every district, parades with banners and music, a publicity council that put out literature in 26 languages. There were theater nights, themed days (factory workers/barbers/ditch diggers for women’s suffrage!), hikes and automobile tours. Women wore sandwich boards on the subway. This isn’t even the half of it. Carrie Chapman Catt, the leader of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association at this time, has three pages detailing all their activities, which all built upon prior campaigns. She wrote of a man who watched one of their grand processions and then went suffrage headquarters with tears in his eyes saying, “I came to help in a campaign, but it is a crusade. I understand now.”

And they lost. 

She wrote of younger workers weeping as the returns came in and the elders saying, “Don’t give up, forward march.” By midnight, a group of Suffs took to the streets and announced a new campaign. Three nights later they held a rally, raised a hundred thousand dollars and got back to work. In the next election, two years later, they won New York state and finally had the representative force they needed to get the federal amendment passed and ratified, which happened in 1920. 

Carrie Chapman Catt gives an idea of what it took to get the 19^th amendment and I am exhausted just typing it:

…they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; forty-seven campaigns to get state constitutional conventions to write women suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get state party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; thirty campaigns to get presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage planks in party platforms, and nineteen campaigns with nineteen successive Congresses. Millions of dollars were raised, mainly in small sums…hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime. 

When suffrage did manage to make it on the ballot, it often lost—sometimes due to bribery or outright fraud. These campaigns were organized by local women, with the help of seasoned activists and headquarters. It should be noted that these women had zero political power, little money to spend on their cause, a small number of true believers, they could barely get attention in the press, and they had to convince men to overcome their great fear of watching their own children or doing their own dishes and vote for women. They had to do all this while Church, State and Status Quo told them that women were too frail and foolish to do anything outside of the home.

Even after getting the 19^th amendment giving women the right to vote, it took the Civil Rights movement decades later to ensure Black women could freely exercise their constitutional right to vote. 

All of which is to say, no one is better suited than the Suffs to give lessons in resilience. Their ability to pivot from despair to determination again and again so they could keep up the fight over decades is remarkable. The question I have right now and maybe you do too: how did they keep their spirits up after so many failures? 

The celebrated the progress of their failures.

Upon losing some state referendum for the second or third time, Susan B. Anthony would say, “But we lost by less this time! More people voted for our cause—without the backing of the party machine!” (this is a paraphrase, I am too distraught to get up off the couch to find the exact quote). We lost, but many, many of us rallied around a Black, South-Asian woman for president. There was a time not long ago when women couldn’t even get a plank in a party platform about a woman’s right to vote and now we have had a woman running for president with the backing of a major political party and millions of American’s proudly voted for her. For the second time in recent memory! 

In down ballot races there were many women and people of color winning, and we elected the first transgender congress member. Many people did vote for abortion protections in their state constitutions. New York State ratified an Equal Rights Amendment. We are still making progress.

The other thing to remember: the Suffs did not do this alone. The movement was born in conversations among like-minded women over tea, or in the kitchen, or wherever they could gather to freely envision a new future for women. This was a revolution powered by their friendship and the strength and courage they gave each other. We can still do that.

There is still an army of women and men, causes worth fighting for and so many good reasons to do so. Why did did the Suffs get up and keep working after so many failures? In their words: “Is not for ourselves alone, but us and our daughters forever.”

Let’s keep marching.