“Universal Suffrage”
On this day, November 13, 1889, fifteen-year old Lou Henry wrote this essay arguing for Universal Suffrage. It would take 31 more years until women were granted to right to vote in 1920.
Lou Henry Hoover was 46 when Congress passed the 19th Amendment. By then, she had:
- become the first women to graduate with a geology degree from Stanford
- lived in China where she learned to speak and write Chinese fluently
- translated a 1565 manual on mining and metallurgy from Latin into English that is still used today
- worked on WWI food relief programs
Lou spoke at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania a few months after Congress passed the 19th Amendment, before it was ratified and had gone into effect. She told the students at the all-women’s college:
“That we have the vote means nothing. That we use it in the right way means everything. Our political work has only begun when we have the ballot.”
Images from the Hoover Library:
Portrait of Lou Henry in ice skates, 1884.
Schoolgirl essay of Lou Hoover, November 13, 1889.