Anna Howard Shaw
Anna Howard Shaw was ordained a Methodist Protestant minister in 1880, qualified in medicine in 1886, served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1904 to 1915, and made her living and her name on the lecture platform.
She lived from 1847 to 1919. Her reputation rests almost entirely on speech rather than on organization, which is why her presidency is judged harshly and her lecture tours are not.
What Shaw did before the suffrage campaign
Before the suffrage campaign Shaw built two careers that no American woman was supposed to have. She was born in England and brought to the United States as a child, and the family settled on the Michigan frontier, where she taught school. She began preaching on a license, and when she asked for ordination the Methodist Episcopal Church refused her. The Methodist Protestant Church ordained her in 1880, and she is usually recorded as the first woman that body ordained.
She took a degree at the Boston University School of Theology and then a medical degree at the same university, qualifying in 1886, and did her clinical work in the poorest districts of Boston while holding a pulpit. She then lectured for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, running its franchise department, which is where suffrage became her subject rather than one of several. Susan B. Anthony met her on that circuit and drew her into the suffrage association full time, and the two of them toured together for years.
Why she is called Dr. Anna Howard Shaw
She is called Dr. Anna Howard Shaw because she held a medical degree, and the title is accurate, but it describes a qualification rather than a practice. She qualified in 1886 and never built a medical career; the degree was taken alongside her preaching and her work in the Boston slums, and by the time she was a national figure she lived by the lecture platform. The combination is what made her useful to the campaign. A woman who was both an ordained minister and a physician could not be dismissed as unqualified to reason in public, which was the standard charge against suffrage speakers.
What Shaw did as president of the association from 1904 to 1915
As president from 1904 to 1915 Shaw kept the National American Woman Suffrage Association in front of the public and did not manage it well, and both halves are in the record. She spoke constantly, in every part of the country, and was the association's principal draw at conventions and hearings. The organization behind her did not keep pace: the national office ran loosely, state work went uncoordinated, and Shaw quarreled with her own officers repeatedly.
The most consequential quarrel produced a rival organization. The congressional committee working under her presidency, led by Alice Paul, staged the Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington on 3 March 1913, the day before Wilson's inauguration, then separated to form the Congressional Union in 1913, which became the National Woman's Party in 1916. Shaw resigned in 1915 and Carrie Chapman Catt took the office. The Winning Plan Catt presented in 1916 answered exactly the weakness that had opened under Shaw: no schedule, no central direction, and no way to tell a state association what to do.
The Fundamental Principle of a Republic, Ogdensburg, 1915
The fundamental principle of a republic, in the address Shaw gave at Ogdensburg, New York, in 1915, is government by the consent of the governed, and her whole case is that a republic which governs half its people without asking them is using a word it has not earned. She delivered it during a state campaign in New York, to an audience that included opponents, and it is the text meant when a transcript of Shaw is asked for.
Her method in it is worth more than the conclusion. Shaw took the standard arguments against woman suffrage one at a time and answered each on its own terms. Those arguments, as they were made in that period, ran roughly as follows.
- Women are already represented by the men of their own households, so a separate vote adds nothing.
- Women do not want the vote, and the ones demanding it speak for nobody.
- Doubling the electorate would change no result and would only double the cost of elections.
- Politics would coarsen women, who stand above it and should be kept there.
- Government rests finally on force, and voters who cannot be made to bear arms cannot be allowed to decide.
- The question belongs to the states one by one and has no business in the federal Constitution.
Shaw's replies turned each argument against the person making it: representation by household would mean unmarried men are unrepresented too; the force argument would disqualify most of the men in the hall; and the claim that women are too good for politics is a compliment paid in place of a right. She used ridicule heavily, against arguments rather than people, which is why the address reads better than most surviving suffrage oratory. What was actually said on those platforms, rather than what was written about it later, is where her reputation can be checked.
What Anna Howard Shaw Day is, and what actually carries her name
Anna Howard Shaw Day is not a public holiday, a federal observance or a state one. The name reaches most people from television: an episode of the NBC comedy 30 Rock is titled Anna Howard Shaw Day, and in it the lead character renames Valentine's Day after Shaw. Nothing of that name exists on any calendar.
What does carry her name is the Anna Howard Shaw Center at the Boston University School of Theology, where she took both of her degrees. Her other formal recognition came from the war: she chaired the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, received the Distinguished Service Medal, and is recorded as the first woman awarded it. She was afterward touring for the League of Nations covenant with the League to Enforce Peace when she fell ill, and she died in 1919.
What Shaw is wrongly credited with
- Leading the association to the Nineteenth Amendment. She left the presidency in 1915; Congress passed the amendment on 4 June 1919 and Tennessee completed ratification on 18 August 1920, under Catt.
- Practicing medicine. She qualified in 1886 and made her living from the pulpit and the platform.
- Organizing the 1913 procession. Alice Paul organized it, as a committee working under Shaw's presidency, and the two of them fell out over exactly that.
- Speaking for a movement that had never had a great speaker before. The platform tradition ran back through the antebellum conventions to speakers such as Sojourner Truth, who spoke at Akron, Ohio, on 29 May 1851.
- Living to see the result. She died in 1919, the year Congress passed the amendment and the year before ratification was completed.