The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V

by Unknown

CHAPTER III.

THE NATIONAL AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1903.

In 1903 the National American Suffrage Association for the second time took its annual convention to a southern State and held it in New Orleans, March 15-25, in Athenaeum Hall.[23] The Woman's Journal said: "To the northern delegates there was something almost magical in the sudden change from snowdrifts and nipping winds to balmy air and a temperature like June. The delicious climate of Louisiana in spring has not been exaggerated and it seems wonderful to find roses in bloom in March, the wistaria vines in a cloud of purple blossom and the grass an emerald green.... The delegates were enthusiastic over the quaint houses surrounded by palms, bananas and great live oaks, a pleasing novelty to most of them."

The hostess of the convention was the Era Club, the largest organization of women in the city, its title—era—cleverly concealing Equal Rights Association. It was founded in 1896; Miss Kate Gordon, the present secretary of the National Association, was formerly its president and her sister, Miss Jean M. Gordon, now filled that office. On the first afternoon the spacious and beautiful home of Mrs. Reuben Bush, prominent in club and civic work, was opened for the club to entertain the officers, delegates and a large number of invited guests. Sunday evening all were received informally in the charming home of Misses Kate, Fanny and Jean Gordon.

The excellent convention program was prepared by Miss Kate Gordon. The first evening session was opened with prayer by the Right Reverend Davis Sessums, Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, who said in the course of it: "Prosper, we beseech thee, the deliberations of this association whose representatives are here assembled and direct and rule their judgment and actions in all things to the furtherance of truth and justice, so that their work may be an abiding work and contribute to the growth of true religion and civilization, to the happiness of homes and to the advancement of Thy Kingdom."

The Picayune thus described the occasion: "In the presence of a magnificent audience that packed the Athenæum to its utmost capacity, the thirty-fifth annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was formally opened last night, with the president, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in the chair. Seldom perhaps in its history has the association received such a greeting, for the audience was not only deeply interested and sympathetic but it was representative of the finest culture in the city and State. Distinguished jurists, physicians and teachers, staid men of business and leaders in many lines united with women of the highest social standing in giving the convention a hearty and earnest welcome. Many were no doubt attracted by the memory of the former visits of Miss Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt and the remarkable personality of the pioneer suffrage workers, but whether they came from pure interest in these famous leaders or deep sympathy with the cause, all were generous in giving to both the credit and applause they justly deserved....

Mayor Paul Capdeville, who was to welcome the convention, was ill and this was very acceptably done by "Tom" Richardson, secretary of the Progressive Union, an important commercial body of 1,600 members that had joined in the invitation for it to come to New Orleans and contributed the rent of the Athenæum. He expressed his pleasure at being associated with the suffragists of the city, "who had never neglected any opportunity to promote its best interests," and said: "No other class of our citizens have done it so much good." He was followed by the Hon. Edgar H. Farrar, an eminent lawyer, author of the Drainage and Sewerage plan, who told of the valuable assistance of women in the strenuous fight against the State lottery ten years before and described the splendid work of the women since the constitutional convention of 1898 had given them taxpayers' suffrage. Miss Gordon read a poem of welcome by Mrs. Grace G. Watts and gave the Era Club's welcome and then Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, who was presiding, introduced Miss Anthony to respond. The Picayune said in its report:

Seated upon the platform was Miss Susan B. Anthony, the woman who for two-score years stood the brunt of ridicule, sarcasm and cartooning and never once was deterred from the course that she fully believed to be the just and true one. Of the great leaders in this movement she alone remains.... Spanning a distance of forty years stood at her side Mrs. Catt, the younger woman who has taken up the battle, and grouped around were earnest young girls and middle-aged women fired with her enthusiasm and looking up to her with a reverence that was very beautiful and a most gracious tribute from youth to old age. When Miss Jean Gordon advanced to present her with a great cluster of Maréchal Neil roses and took her so sweetly by the hand and in the name of the young women of today and of the Era Club thanked her for the battles she had fought, the scene was most touching, representing as it did the two extremes of the suffrage workers, those of half-a-century ago and those of today.

There was another there, a woman who has been very near to the hearts of New Orleans people, who has never been aggressive in her advocacy of the cause but whose quiet approval, whose earnest sympathy, whose expenditure of time and money and whose high social standing gave to it a strength even in those early days that one of less ability and social position and more pronounced opposition could not have secured. Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick, the pioneer suffragist of Louisiana and the lifelong friend of Miss Anthony, came in for her share of the honors of the evening. With equal grace and tenderness Miss Gordon advanced to her and offered her too the fragrant expressions of more youthful workers. For a moment Miss Anthony and Mrs. Merrick stood together, and the audience, rising to its feet in a great wave of enthusiasm, waved handkerchiefs and fans in greeting. Perhaps that precious hour of triumph, away down here in this old southern State, as she stands nearing the border land of another world, recompensed the great pioneer for much that she had borne when life was young and audiences, as she said, less sympathetic. Mrs. Merrick's remarks, also, touched a deep chord and roused the audience to a state of earnest sympathy.