Happy National Pennsylvania Day! Today we spotlight and celebrate multiple Pennsylvania women who contributed significantly to earning women the right to vote!
- Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia, PA, was an early abolitionist and suffragist who was one of the prime organizers of the first women’s rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. She dedicated her life to advancing women’s suffrage and an end to slavery and racial injustice.
- Charlotte Forten and her daughters Margaretta and Harriet, of Philadelphia, PA, were African-American abolitionist and suffragist leaders who took part in founding at least six abolitionist organizations and were key organizers in the fight for universal suffrage.
- Elizabeth McShane of Fayette County, PA, and Dora Kelly Lewis of Philadelphia, PA, were jailed multiple times as a result of their fight for women’s suffrage, and were subject to deplorable conditions, violent beatings, and force feedings in prison.
- Daisy Lampkin of Pittsburgh, PA was a suffragist and civil rights leader who was elected president of Pittsburgh-based Lucy Stone Woman Suffrage League advocating for suffrage for Black women, and went on to become a national and state leader in the fight for civil rights and universal suffrage.
- Katherine Wentworth Ruschenberger of Chester County, PA, was an active suffragist who was the brainchild for and commissioned at her own expense the “Justice Bell,” a bronze replica of the Liberty Bell. The clapper was chained to symbolize women’s muted political voice, not to be rung until women gained the right to vote.
We celebrate National PA Day by remembering these women for their perseverance and determination to attain the fundamental right of a citizen in a democracy: the right to vote and have one’s voice heard.
As another remarkable Pennsylvania suffragist-abolitionist-poet wrote “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.” – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
