Women’s History: Famous Suffragettes

Question: Martha Washington foreshadowed woman suffrage when she famously asked her husband in 1776 to ”remember the ladies” in making a new code of laws.

Answer: It was Abigail Adams who encouraged her husband, John Adams, to do so.

Question: British activist Emily Davison became a martyr to the cause of woman suffrage at the 1913 Epsom Derby.

Answer: She stepped in front of King George V’s horse, who hit her at full gallop. She died of her injuries four days later.

Question: When Elizabeth Cady married lawyer Henry Brewster Stanton, she removed the word obey from her wedding vows.

Answer: She retained love and honor, however, and produced seven children with him.

Question: In 1848 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the Seneca Falls Convention.

Answer: It was Lucretia Coffin Mott who worked with Stanton in Seneca Falls.

Question: Suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and Christabel Pankhurst were sisters.

Answer: Emmeline was Christabel’s mother.

Question: Alice Paul led the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913, mounted on a white horse.

Answer: The woman on the dramatic white horse was labor lawyer Inez Milholland.

Question: Feminist and suffragist M. Carey Thomas, the second president of Bryn Mawr College, received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Zürich.

Answer: She graduated summa cum laude in 1882.

Question: Like many other noted suffragists, Susan B. Anthony was influenced by Quakerism.

Answer: Others who came from the Quaker tradition include Alice Paul, M. Carey Thomas, and Lucretia Mott.

Question: African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth’s first language was Yoruba.

Answer: Her first language was Dutch.

Question: In addition to starting a dress-reform movement, activist Amelia Bloomer founded and edited a newspaper for women.

Answer: Her paper, founded 1849, was called The Lily: A Ladies Journal Devoted to Temperance and Literature.