Global InformationAlpha Suffrage Club information
The Alpha Suffrage Club was the first and most important black female suffrage club in Chicago and one of the most important in Illinois.[1] It was founded on January 30, 1913,[2][3] by Ida B. Wells with the help of her white colleagues Belle Squire and Virginia Brooks. The Club aimed to give a voice to African American women who had been excluded from national suffrage organizations such as the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA).[4] Its stated purpose was to inform black women of their civic responsibility and to organize them to help elect candidates who would best serve the interests of African Americans in Chicago.
The club was formed after women in Chicago were granted the right to vote in the year 1910. It fought against the white Chicago women who were trying to ban African Americans from voting altogether. They also wanted to promote the election of African Americans to public office.[5] As Wells stated in her autobiography, "we (women) could use our vote for the advantage of ourselves and our race."[6] Quoted in the Chicago Defender, a local black newspaper, she was more specific, stating that the object of the Alpha Suffrage Club was to make women "strong enough to help elect some conscientious race man as alderman."[7] Besides focusing on women's newly gained civil duty to vote, Wells also encouraged these women to ensure that their husbands were taking seriously their responsibility to vote as well, recognizing the "sacredness" of the vote to both sexes.[8]
At the first anniversary of the club's founding, Kentucky-born poet Bettiola Heloise Fortson, vice-president of the club, read her poem "Brothers" which told the story of two men who had been lynched by a mob for their attempt to save their sister from her imprisonment by a farmer in Alabama as a slave.[9]
In October 2021, a historic marker for the Alpha Suffrage Club on the National Votes for Women Trail was placed at its former site at the corner of 31st and State Street in Chicago.
- ^ Wheeler, Marjorie (1995). One Woman, One Vote. Troutdale, Oregon: New Sage Press. p. 271. ISBN 0-939165-26-0.
- ^ Wells, Ida B. (1970). Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Chicago, Illinois. pp. xxviii. ISBN 9780226189185. OCLC 874178362.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ "The Alpha Suffrage Club" (PDF). The Alpha Suffrage Record. March 18, 1914. Retrieved 10 April 2019 – via Living History of Illinois.
- ^ "Vade-Walpole, Henry Spencer, (10 March 1837–1 March 1913)", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 2007-12-01, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u191769
- ^ Neale, R. S. (1967). "Working-Class Women and Women's Suffrage". Labour History (12): 16–34. doi:10.2307/27507859. ISSN 0023-6942. JSTOR 27507859.
- ^ Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1970). Duster, Alfreda (ed.). Crusade for justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226893421. OCLC 140965.
- ^ Waldrep, Christopher (July 2009). "Lynching and Ida B. Wells - Paula J. Giddings / Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching". The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 8 (3): 455–457. doi:10.1017/s1537781400001377. ISBN 9780060519216. ISSN 1537-7814. S2CID 162657913.
- ^ Cahill, Bernadette (2015). "The Woman's Chronicle, 122 West Second Street". Arkansas Women and the Right to Vote: The Little Rock Campaigns: 1868-1920. Butler Center for Arkansas Studies. pp. 58–61. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1ffjqhn.12. ISBN 9781935106838.
- ^ Hollingsworth, Randolph (April 8, 2017). "Bettiola Heloise Fortson, Poet and suffragist from Hopkinson". H-Kentucky. H-Net.org.