On Aug. 18, exactly 101 years to the day after the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote, members of the Indian River County Historical Society welcomed visitors to the Courthouse Executive Center to introduce its latest film, “Women’s Suffrage.”
Ruth Stanbridge, County Historian and IRCHS president, noted that COVID had interrupted their previous plan to premiere the video during the amendment’s centennial year.
Prior to the film, Stanbridge introduced a photographic tribute to the late Alma Lee Loy, a trailblazer in her own right and an “enthusiastic supporter of women’s rights,” noting that in 1964 Loy was appointed by the governor to serve as one of the original commissioners on the Florida Commission on the Status of Women. The moving tribute featured photos taken through the decades that highlighted just a few of Loy’s innumerable accomplishments and contributions to the community.
Sean Sexton, Indian River County Poet Laureate, read an affectionate and touching poem titled, “Dear Aunt Lee,” which he explained was addressed as if from Loy’s niece, Robyn Guy, and adding of Loy, “She’s all of our ‘Dear Aunt Lee.”
“It is hard to imagine the life that women lived 100 years ago, and even earlier than that, without the rights that we have today,” said Stanbridge in the Women’s Suffrage video, in which local women spoke about the significance of acquiring the right to vote.
Although Abigail Adams urged her husband in March 1776 to “remember the ladies,” as the Continental Congress was drafting rules for the fledgling democracy, they did not.
At the national level, the hard-fought movement by women’s rights advocates officially began in 1848 at a convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y. There, a group of women drafted a “Declaration of Sentiments” to petition for women’s legal and political rights, including the right to vote.
After decades of debate in Congress, the 19th Amendment was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920.
However, discriminatory hurdles continued to disenfranchise minority women, and men for that matter, until passage of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965.
And while many states and territories recognized women’s suffrage rights before or shortly after 1920, the State of Florida was among the last six to do so, delaying it until May 1969.
Despite that, at the local level, on June 19, 1915, Zena Dreier of Fellsmere became the first woman to cast a ballot south of the Mason-Dixon Line; doing so five years earlier than ratification.
Stanbridge commented on the influential women of the local women’s clubs in Fellsmere, Roseland and Sebastian as well as the Vero Beach Woman’s Club, which was founded in 1915.
As women were not allowed to have their own bank accounts, Stanbridge said they raised money for their building, which still exists, by selling cabbage. “So you can see that women found a way to do things even back then.”
In Fellsmere, she said Zena Dreier, a farmer’s wife, inserted one line into the city’s 1915 incorporation papers that gave women the vote.
“They didn’t read it and they didn’t realize when the governor signed it that it gave women the right to vote,” said County Commissioner Susan Adams with a chuckle. “That’s my favorite part.”
She noted that her mother, former County Commissioner Fran Adams, was the fourth and she is the eighth female county commissioner, adding, “I’m proud to say that my mom and I are the only mother/daughter county commissioners in the state.”
“Women in rural communities and small communities really are the backbone of those communities,” said Fran Adams. “I look back at those women in the early suffrage movement and I’m in awe at how far they traveled to get together to begin this journey for the right to vote. So always fight for it, fight for what’s right and be grateful for all of those who fought ahead of you; and never forget.”
First-time voters Charlotte Feagin and Kylie Oakes, who were seniors at Saint Edward’s School at the time of the taping, commented that even 100 years later, they feel that it is their duty and responsibility to voice their opinions and take a stance, just as Dreier and others like her had done.
“Voting opened up a whole trend of empowerment for women, and nowadays you see that more women are holding office and are more engaged,” said Leslie Swan, Indian River County’s supervisor of elections.
“It’s a privilege to represent women, who now vote probably 3 percent more than men do,” said Carol Jean Jordan, Indian River County’s tax collector. “We’ve never had a woman governor in the state of Florida; what a loss for us.”
Jonnie Mae Perry, executive director of the Gifford Community and Cultural Resources Center, noted that despite being awarded the right to vote, Blacks, particularly in the south, were kept from casting their ballots through other means.
“The struggle and the fight continued in the Black community, along with Civil Rights,” said Perry. “I don’t think the young people today realize the struggle, the blood, the lives that were shed in order to have opportunities to vote, particularly in the Black community. This is a challenge and a call to action. Vote.”
For more information or to view films in the video library, visit irchistorical.org.
Photos by Brenda Ahearn
