Of equal importance with the women’s suffrage movement was the extension of the franchise. Not surprisingly, until the dawn of the twentieth century, most men were ineligible to vote in Britain’s general and bye-elections, and of those who could vote but were of little power, their votes were frequently directed towards candidates backed by peers or other influential men. The Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 were not enough; ridding the land of “rotten boroughs” or permitting male landowners or householders to vote still left a very large percentage of English men absent from the voting polls. Couple this with the fight for secret ballots in the 1870s and plural voting (not actually abolished until 1948), and the typical General or By-election of the Edwardian era was a circus.

The history of the franchise reform bills in England during the 19th century represented the struggle for democracy in the country. Because the class system was so entrenched in society, most–especially politicians–believed that only certain classes had the right to vote, and the fight for enfranchisement was a bitter one until the Representation of the People Act 1918. Until then, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act (1883), the Third Reform Act (1884), and an Act of 1885, held many suffragists at bay. The first act criminalized bribing and intimidation of voters and standardized the amount of money a politician could spend on their campaign, the second extended the same voting qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, and the third redistributed parliamentary seats and made every constituency of uniform importance. The voting population was now at 5.5 million, though 40% of males remained disenfranchised and only a fraction of the other 60% actually could vote, due to existing property legislation. These reforms were put to the test in the General Election of 1885, where the Liberals won a slim majority, but the agitation for Home Rule split the party, which led to another General Election in 1886.

World War One put an end to the restrictions on voting (with the exception of women younger than 30) when politicians pushed through the Representation of the People Act 1918 when they realized it was unconscionable to deny the right to vote to the millions of men who fought for the country:

1. All adult males gain the vote, as long as they are over 21 years old and are resident householders
2. Women over 30 years old receive the vote but they have to be either a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register
3. Some seats redistributed to industrial towns
4. Elections to be held on a decided day each year

This Act tripled the number of eligible voters from 7.7 million in 1912 to 21.4 million by the end of 1918, and women now accounted for about 43% of the electorate. The Equal Suffrage Act was passed ten years later, by which women were given equal voting rights with men.

The militant suffrage movement in Great Britain began as a Pankhurst family enterprise that, from 1903 to 1905 remained focused around Manchester, until the general election of 1905 brought matters to a head. Prior to the Pankhursts, the fight for women’s suffrage in Britain was a relatively tame one. In the mid 1860s, a group of women, all pursuing a career in either medicine or education, formed a discussion group dubbed the “Kensington Society”. Their initial reasons for forming the group had little to do with suffrage; the seven founding ladies merely wished for a society of like-minded women of independent means and an interest in fields not normally associated with the female sex. It wasn’t until the topic of suffrage was raised that the Kensington Society discovered their mutual dismay. In reaction, they drafted a petition asking parliament to extend to vote to women. Presenting the petition to Henry Fawcett and John Stuart Mill, a pair of MPs known for their sympathy towards women’s suffrage, the Kensington Society saw their petition almost immediately shot down in Parliament. Vastly disappointed with the action, they formed the London Society for Women’s Suffrage. Soon thereafter, many cities in Britain found themselves hosts to similar societies.In 1887, seventeen of these groups formed the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, or NUWSS. Under the presidencies of Lydia Becker and Millicent Fawcett, the society raised awareness of the cause by holding meetings, holding marches, printing pamphlets and newsletters, and writing politicians and petitions. NUWSS also lent support to Josephine Butler’s campaign against white slavery as well as Clementia Black’s attempts to force the government to protect low-paid women workers. Inoffensive, efficient and ladylike, NUWSS attracted support from all walks of like—including a good number of men.The cause chugged along in this manner until the Manchester group splintered, and the women, led by Christabel Pankhurst, grew fed up with the constitutional methods NUWSS favored.

The Women’s Social & Political Union (WSPU) was born.

A far cry from the genteel group from whence they came, the WSPU immediately showed its difference in the fact that it attracted women from the working and middle-classes—women who were less inhibited by the traditional trappings of “ladyhood”. Though at first fearing the stance the WSPU took would harm the cause, the NUWSS admired their courage and refused to speak out against them.

By 1905 public interest in women’s suffrage had waned, and the WSPU made a decision that would forever change the face of the suffragist movement. Traveling to London to hear a speech by Sir Edward Grey, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenny threw down the gauntlet by interrupting Sir Edward’s speech with the cry of “Will the Liberal Government give votes to women?“.

The women were soon after charged with assault and arrested. Christabel and Annie then proceeded to shock the world when, after refusing to pay the five shilling fine, they were thrown in jail. Never before had English suffragists resorted to violence to support the cause and newspapers were quick to pounce on this new movement, nicknaming the followers of militancy “suffragettes“. Far from decrying this derogatory term, the WSPU adopted it with pleasure, the term separating them from the civil actions of the NUWSS.

Moving their headquarters from Manchester to London, by 1908 the suffragettes had launched an all-out war for the cause, targeting those MPs notoriously anti-suffrage like Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and Winston Churchill. The suffragettes marched through London, interrupted speeches, assaulted policemen attempting to arrest them, chained themselves to fences, sent letter bombs and damaged property–the most infamous being their destruction of the windows of department stores and shops in Bond Street. Viewed as unfeminine due to many of the women being unmarried and involved in careers instead of housework, the Establishment were at a loss as to how to deal with suffragettes. They baffled the common perceptions of Victorian womanhood and once released from jail, merely went out and repeated the same misdemeanors. Using this loophole in the justice system, the suffragettes increased their militant campaigns, including a devastating arson campaign during which attempts were made to burn the houses of anti-suffrage MPs, railway stations, golf courses, cricket fields and racecourse stands.

When the jailed suffragettes went on hunger-strikes while incarcerated, the government passed the “Cat and Mouse Act”: if a suffragette went on a hunger strike, once ill she would be released from prison and re-arrested when well again. However, by the summer of 1914, the militant campaign was exhausted by the imprisonment, exile or poor health of the WSPU’s leading members (Christabel had fled to Paris in 1912 to escape arrest) and the number of active members able to continue the violence was now very small. Naturally, WWI put a damper on the suffrage campaign, and both the WSPU and NUWSS focused their energies on the war effort, using their platforms to drum up support for the troops. But ever antagonistic to the end, the WSPU took patriotism to their breast as much as they did suffrage, using their newspaper to attack those in power they saw as pacifists or communists.

In then end, all women over the age of 30 were granted the vote in 1918, and ten years later the vote was given on equal terms as men (age 21).

Further Reading:
Caffrey, Kate. 1900s Lady
Crow, Duncan. The Edwardian Woman
Mackenzie, Madge. Shoulder to shoulder : a documentary
Nowell-Smith, Simon. Edwardian England, 1901-1914
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The suffragette : the history of the women’s militant suffrage movement, 1905-1910
Shaw, Frederick John. The Case for Women’s Suffrage

No two men of equal stature could have come from different places than Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. One was born during slavery and worked menial jobs to obtain his education, while the other was raised amongst a relatively well-to-do family with roots in one of New England’s most beautiful towns. Nonetheless, both Washington and Du Bois found their life’s callings in the uplift and advancement of the race, though their differing ideologies regarding the uplift and advancement of African-Americans led to a very bitter rift between their rival factions.

Booker T. Washington made his mark with the infamous “Atlanta Compromise” speech, in which he entreated black Southerners to “cast down their bucket where [they were]” and accommodate white Southerners in hope of obtaining equality through humility and diligence. This ideology of accommodation characterized Washington’s entire career as a “race man,” and laid the foundation for the establishment of Tuskegee Institute, in which he emphasized obtaining a useful trade and equipping students to become teachers of these trades (farming, cookery, etc). He also attracted the attention of America’s leading politicians and philanthropists, who viewed him as the leading voice for African-Americans, and donated enormous sums to his educational and social programs. Because of the swiftness of Washington’s rise to prominence and the influence he had over the powerful in the land, he was called–derisively by his critics and proudly by his supporters–the “Wizard of Tuskegee.” But there was a dark side of his politics: Washington was caught in his own ideology as America reached the nadir of race relations, a time where streets ran red with the blood of victims of brutal and senseless lynchings , and ruthless race riots damaged what little reconciliation established between blacks and whites during Reconstruction.

It was during this time that W. E. B. Du Bois launched his attack on Washington’s platform and established himself as a militant and passionate proponent of integration. Du Bois was gifted and relatively privileged from birth, and his early scholastic achievements led him to believe that reason and education were key to overcoming racism. His viewpoint was solidified by his well-rounded education: he attended Fisk University, a top historically black college, obtained his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and studied in Berlin. From his extensive scholastic career Du Bois dedicated himself to the painstaking task of putting the black experience into words. His most lasting and lauded achievements were the publication of his Ph.D dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America: 1638–1870 (1896), The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and The Souls of Black Folk (1903), the last of which imprinted the phrase “double consciousness” forever into vocabulary of the black intelligentsia.

By the 1900s, Washington and Du Bois placed themselves on opposite ends of the anti-racism spectrum. As a result, much of their similarities were obscured, and posterity has passed down the belief that Booker T. Washington was passive and desired blacks to remain content as maids and Pullman porters, and that W. E. B. Du Bois desired only for the uplift of light-skinned, college-educated blacks over their darker, less-educated brethren. In both cases, I feel the scope of their writings demanded the inclusion of African-American narratives into the greater American narrative, while acknowledging the multiple threads from which the African-American experience derived.

Further Reading:
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
The Negro Problem, by Booker T. Washington,W. E. B. Du Bois, et al
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements ed by Booker T. Washington
Of the Training of Black Men by W. E. B. Du Bois