Voting Against Women's Suffrage in North Carolina, 1919

“Weaver Only In Favor Suffrage….Nine of North Carolina’s Delegation Vote Against Submitting Amendment….Small and Kitchen Protest….Mr. Mann Chaffed and Congratulated on His Changed Attitude on the ‘Votes for Women’ Question,” from the Rockingham Post-Dispatch, May 29, 1919

Washington (Special)—North Carolina congressmen stood out against woman’s suffrage. 

Representative Weaver of the Asheville district voted for the resolution to submit the constitutional amendment. Representatives Small, Kitchin, Brinson, Pou, Stedman, Godwin, Robson, Dougherty and Webb voted against it.

Messrs. Small and Kitchen lifted their voices in protest. Mr. Weaver was the only member who voted for suffrage before.

“The Republican party,” said Mr. Kitchen, “was in control of all branches of the government for years, and yet they never allowed the Susan B. Anthony amendment, which has been before Congress for 60 years, a chance to get a hearing. The women found that they could not get the Republicans to submit the proposition even to a committee. It remained for a Democratic house and a Democratic rules committee to give it to them.

“I want to congratulate Mr. Mann on the change of attitude he has assumed,” concluded Mr. Kitchen. He was referring to the good-natured gaffing that the opposition turned at the former Republican leader because in a house debate in 1913, following alleged insults to a young lady in a parade on Pennsylvania avenue, he had said she ought to have been at home.

Mr. Small said he was not altogether opposed to woman suffrage and had no objection to any citizen advocating it in any state. “I had the honor,” he said, “of writing to a member of the legislature of my state recently urging that a limited degree of suffrage be adopted there as an experiment.”