FELLSMERE — More than a dozen women gathered in Fellsmere Saturday to recognize those who paved the way for women’s equality – the right to vote. Members of the Indian River and Brevard chapters of NOW visited the site in Fellsmere where women were first allowed to vote south of the Mason Dixon Line.
“Fellsmere was an exceptional city to begin with,” said Indian River County National Organization for Women member Mary Nation, retelling the tale of how Fellsmere came to be the first municipality in the south to allow women to vote.
She spoke during the chapters’ luncheon recognizing Women’s Equality Day, which was Aug. 26 – the day in 1920 the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was approved, granting women the right to vote.
Nation told her fellow members that the city’s founder, Nelson Fell, wanted more opportunities for his daughters – and needed a political organization to run the city. So, when the city’s leaders sat down to write the charter, they worked in women’s right to vote.
“It was a very liberal charter,” Nation said.
The city sent the charter to the state near the end of the legislative session. The legislators rushed through the document – which was in a stack of many more documents – and approved it without seeing the provision.
“It passed,” she said.
Nation and others worked to get a historical marker placed on N. Broadway to commemorate the site where women were able to cast their first ballots.
According to Fellsmere historian Rich Votapka, on the day the women were allowed to go and vote, the men of the town stayed away so as to not intimidate them from voting. The men voted later, after the women.
“It’s part of the fabric of the city’s history,” said Indian River NOW member Nancy Offutt.
Those who could remember, recalled their first time voting.
“I remember feeling the importance of walking into the room,” past-president Gloria Wood said, adding that she does not like absentee voting because you don’t get that sense of importance.
When she went to cast her vote, the poll worker asked if she knew how to write – she had recently earned her degree at a university, part of the 15 percent of women at the time who went to college.
“I was so annoyed and angry I couldn’t get over it,” Wood said.
Before voting, she had to register and went to the local Democratic Party office to do just that – but she got heckled by the people there. They thought because she was a white woman, she was supposed to register Republican, Wood recalled.
“I could have killed her,” Wood said of the woman at the desk who heckled her. “If I hadn’t been so stubborn, I would have walked out.”
The members of NOW said it is important for younger generations of women to understand their history and fight it took to gain a measure of equality.
“It’s just so important we have this privilege,” said member Juanita Baker, who told the group she had traveled to Pakistan where there are coups instead of elections and women’s rights are barely existent.
“I don’t think people know what they could lose,” Cecily Delafield said, adding that is the reason she is a member of NOW – to work to keep what her parents have fought for.
Wood said before the meeting that she could remember a time when the banquet room at Marsh Landing in Fellsmere would overflow into the main dining room when NOW would have its luncheons. On Saturday, just over a dozen women attended.
“People have lost their zest,” she said, noting membership started to decline after the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes. “We all need the companionship and these little get-togethers more than ever.”
Anyone interested in joining the Indian River County chapter of NOW can click HERE to fill out a form requesting information.