Committee on Committees, Rules, and Ethics
SUBSTITUTE RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, On June 11, 1913, the Illinois legislature adopted the Illinois Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill; and
WHEREAS, On June 26, 1913, Governor Dunne signed the bill authorizing woman suffrage for all elections not established in the state constitution, thus making Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote for President; and
WHEREAS, The women's suffrage movement had strong roots in Chicago and Illinois; and
WHEREAS, In 1912, Grace Wilbur Trout, then head of the Chicago Political Equality League and president of the state organization, organized programs to increase membership and lobby public officials to support a woman's right to vote; and
WHEREAS, Jane Addams and Elizabeth Burke of the University of Chicago served as delegates to the Women's Suffrage Legislature in 1911; and
WHEREAS, Ida B. Wells-Barnett organized the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913 and successfully integrated the U.S. suffrage movement when she refused to walk at the rear of a 1913 Washington, D.C. parade and instead walked alongside her white Illinois peers; and
WHEREAS, In 1915, Wells-Barnett helped elect Oscar Stanton De Priest as Alderman of the 2nd Ward and Chicago's first African American Alderman; and
WHEREAS, On July 26, 1913, Gertrude B. Blackwelder, former president of the Chicago Woman's Club, became the first woman to vote in Cook County after casting a ballot in Morgan Park at an election to vote upon a proposed bond issue for a $45,000 high school; and
WHEREAS, Women in Chicago had their first opportunity to exercise their right of suffrage during the 1914 aldermanic primary elections; and
WHEREAS, Women voted for the first time in a Chicago mayoral election in the spring of 1915, using ballots that were kept separate from the men's; and
WHEREAS, The League of Women Voters was founded by the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Chicago in 1920 and remains active in promoting voting rights and civic education programs throughout the country; and
WHEREAS, With the encouragement of the 1913 victory in Illinois, women of Chicago, along with women of other cities across the nation, organized parades to heighten public support for total suffrage throughout a constitutional amendment; and
WHEREAS, An estimated 5,000 people marched down Michigan Avenue during the 1916 Republican National Convention to pressure Republican support for such an amendment, and such demonstrations were largely responsible for passage of a women's suffrage amendment; and
WHEREAS, In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, granting women full suffrage; now therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, That a subcommittee of the Committee on Committees, Rules, and Ethics is hereby created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Chicago.
Edward M. Burke, Alderman, 14 Ward
Carrie M. Austin, Alderman, 34l Ward
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