THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

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1 Welcome to a free reading from Washington History: Magazine of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. We hope this essay will provide food for thought and discussion as well as diversion. This year marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment s ratification granting American women the right to vote. Many of the women who fought long and hard to get suffrage went on to lead the battle for voting rights and, eventually, home rule for the District of Columbia. As historian Katharina Hering details, in the period between World War I and World War II, Washingtonians rallied to fight for a vote in national elections and the right to elected officials and home rule. Washington then was ruled by three presidentially appointed commissioners and a handful of congressional committees. The local (initially White-only) League of Women Voters led the efforts of many groups to persuade Capitol Hill. Known as The Voteless District of Columbia League of Women Voters, its members were very effective. They lobbied Congress, testified at congressional hearings, and contributed creative ideas and energy to popular campaigns. Many DC suffragists maintained connections to the National League of Women Voters that became a nationwide network of supporters. During this period the women gained an important understanding of the racism that had hindered the District s long-standing efforts to gain the vote. Though they joined forces with Black organizations to campaign, they did not integrate their own organization until after World War II. Because residents of the District of Columbia still lack full citizenship in 2020, Hering s story is especially relevant. Voice of the Voteless: the District of Columbia League of Women Voters, , first appeared in Washington History 28-1 (spring 2016), Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Access via JSTOR * to the entire run of Washington History and its predecessor, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, is a benefit of membership in the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. at the Membership Plus level. Copies of this and many other back issues of Washington History magazine are available for browsing and purchase online through the DC History Center Store: ABOUT THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON, D.C. The Historical Society of Washington, D.C., is a non-profit, 501(c)(3), community-supported educational and research organization that collects, interprets, and shares the history of our nation's capital in order to promote a sense of identity, place and pride in our city and preserve its heritage for future generations. Founded in 1894, the Historical Society serves a diverse audience through collections, public programs, exhibitions, and publications. It welcomes visitors to its new home, the DC History Center, on the second floor of the historic Carnegie Library. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the DC History Center is currently closed. The Historical Society staff is working remotely to keep you connected to DC history. We are eager to welcome you back once the danger has passed. * JSTOR is an online resource that digitizes scholarly research. Academic institutions typically provide organizational access to all of JSTOR s holdings through their libraries. The Historical Society Membership Plus conveys access to our publications only.

2 Voice of the Voteless The District of Columbia League of Women Voters, BY KATHARINA HERING ON ELECTION DAY, Nov. 8, 1938, members of the city s Voteless League of Women Voters brought ballot boxes draped in black to D.C. street corners. From its inception, the organization worked tirelessly to gain voting rights and, eventually, self-government for residents of the District of Columbia. Courtesy, Library of Congress 3

3 On April 30, 1938, John R. Mahoney voted in a referendum on whether Congress should grant suffrage and home rule to his hometown of Washington, D.C. Mahoney, who gave his age as either 91 or 92 years old, had not cast a ballot since 1868, when he voted for mayor. 1 For the organizers of the 1938 D.C. suffrage referendum, Mahoney s story illustrated a gross injustice: the residents of the national capital of the world s biggest democracy themselves lacked basic democratic rights. The referendum asked whether the District s residents should be able to elect a representative to the House of Representatives, Senate, and the Electoral College. It also asked whether residents should have the power to elect local officials to conduct city business (the city then was run by three commissioners appointed by the U.S. president and overseen by congressional committees). An overwhelming majority of the 95,538 people who participated voted in favor of national representation and home rule for the District 87,092 people (91 percent) voted in favor of national suffrage and 6,832 (7 percent) against it, while 82,977 (87 percent) voted in favor of local suffrage and 10,937 (11 percent) against it. 2 The Evening Star promoted the 1938 D.C. suffrage referendum. Courtesy, Library of Congress Though it was not legally binding, the D.C. suffrage referendum proved to be the high point of a broad, dynamic, and popular movement in Washington that had coalesced during the previous two decades. These interwar campaigns can be seen as part of a distinct phase in the ongoing struggle for democracy in the District of Columbia. In the 1920s and 1930s, activists built on the recent success of the women s suffrage movement and the patriotic rhetoric of World War I to win national support. While a broad range of groups and people promoted D.C. suffrage, national representation, and home rule African American and white civic groups and leaders, women s organizations, organized labor, social and urban reformers, Democrats and Republicans one of the driving forces was the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. Known as The Voteless District of Columbia League of Women Voters, its average membership of 350 women during this period was small, but the organization had wide reach and made a major impact. Representatives of the Voteless League lobbied Congress, testified at numerous hearings in the House and Senate, and contributed creative ideas and energy to the popular cam- paigns. Many of the D.C. suffragists had started as advocates for the right of women to vote nationally, and their connections to the National League of Women Voters helped the Voteless League develop a nationwide network of support for the local cause. Though their efforts were not immediately successful, the women of the Voteless League made an important contribution to the city s efforts to win its basic democratic rights. The District of Columbia League of Women Voters was organized on May 26, 1921, as a branch of the National League of Women Voters, with identical objectives. The National League had been established by the National American Woman Suffrage Association under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt one year after the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Its purpose was largely educational: to teach the newly enfranchised women the lessons of citizenship and bring home to them their responsibilities as citizens; and most important of all, to teach them how to inform themselves on public questions. The League aimed to help women develop an intelligent understanding of the problems of our country and an earnest desire to find the right solution. The National League was headquartered in Washington, D.C., with many regional offices located throughout the country. Members studied legislation and developed educational materials and campaigns with a particular interest in public health and children s welfare. 3 Compared to the states, of course, D.C. s political status was unique. City residents were not fullfledged citizens, in that they do not enjoy the franchise, wrote suffragist Marion Wade Doyle. Since 1874 D.C. residents had been ruled by three presidentially appointed commissioners, with oversight from congressional committees. No residents of any gender or race could vote in local or federal elections. To emphasize this deplorable condition, the local chapter in 1926 changed its official name to The Voteless District of Columbia League of Women Voters, a name it had used unofficially since The task before members of the D.C. chapter was profound: not just educating women on voting and civic responsibility, but working as well to gain that vote and access to civic life. Many of the founding members of the D.C. chapter had been members of the National American Woman s Suffrage Association, which was founded in 1890, and its D.C. affiliate, the District Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, right, poses with the board of the newly formed National League of Women Voters in Courtesy, Library of Congress of Columbia Equal Suffrage Association. After the passage of the 19th Amendment these women shifted their focus to suffrage in D.C. Their particular empathy with D.C. residents, they said, was based on their own long and recent experience of disfranchisement. Their experiences in the suffrage movement had taught the members that the vote was only one part of a broader movement for social and political reform. The Voteless League continued this tradition and, like its sister organizations, advocated on a broad range of issues and causes, especially child welfare, public health, and education. The D.C. chapter s membership grew steadily, reaching 321 in 1930 and rising to 448 in The Voteless League was one of many women s organizations that supported suffrage and national representation in the 1920s. The District of Columbia Equal Suffrage Association in 1920 called for D.C. residents to obtain, by constitutional amendment, representation in Congress and electoral college. The Susan B. Anthony League and the Twentieth Century Club, then the most prominent women s club in the District, also supported the campaign. The Federation of Women s Clubs, an umbrella organization that represented 30 women s clubs and 10,000 women by 1921, issued a resolution in 1920 that the present autocratic government, national and municipal of the District of Columbia is contrary to the spirit of Amer- 4 WASHINGTON HISTORY Spring 2016 Voice of the Voteless 5

4 Members of the District s Federation of Women s Clubs prepare to visit the White House in The group helped to organize a D.C. suffrage committee in Courtesy, Library of Congress ican liberty, institution, justice and fair play. To coordinate the activities of women s organizations and to reach out to all the large women s organizations of the country, a women s committee for District of Columbia suffrage was organized in Voteless League member Nettie Ottenberg typified the white, middle-class women who campaigned together for D.C. rights. Ottenberg was born Nettie Podell in Odessa, Russia, about 1886, and grew up in New York City, where she became a social worker. As a suffragist, she campaigned all over New York State. In 1912 she married attorney and welfare worker Louis Ottenberg of D.C. s Ottenberg Bakery family, and moved to Washington just in time to join the suffragist pageant in front of the White House in Ottenberg was one of the founding members of the Voteless League and was elected its president in She testified on behalf of the league and as an individ- ual at numerous congressional hearings on D.C. suffrage, national representation, and home rule. Ottenberg worked with a number of charities and was particularly concerned with child welfare, equal pay for women, day care, and reform of women s prisons and the juvenile court. Her husband Louis was also active in the local suffrage movement. 7 One of the League s most prominent and well-connected members was Mary O Toole, who had been appointed by President Harding as the city s first female D.C. Municipal Court judge in (She was also one of the nation s first female judges.) O Toole had emigrated from Ireland to New York City at the age of 16 and worked as a stenographer and court reporter before attending law school. She practiced law in San Francisco, then moved in 1913 to Washington, where she served as the president of the D.C. chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and traveled around southern Maryland in a prairie schooner campaigning for women s suffrage. O Toole was active in a number of clubs and organizations, including the Women s City Club, the Women s Bar Association of D.C., and the Citizens Joint Committee on National Representation for the District of Columbia. She testified on behalf of D.C. suffrage at congressional hearings in 1921 and 1926, and participated in several campaigns of the Voteless League in the 1920s. Like O Toole, many members of the Voteless League were active in several of the city s women s organizations. 8 Other active members included Isabelle Cromwell Snell, who had labored in the city s women s suffrage movement, and who was also known as a patron of poetry in the city; Edna Johnston, longtime chair of the League s Department of Efficiency in Government committee; and Ruth McKelway, who was elected the League s president in McKelway was the mother of Evening Star Managing Editor (and later Editor) Benjamin M. McKelway. McKelway s wife Margaret was also a member and served as the League s newsletter editor. For many years Virginia Ross Weston was the chair of the League s Government and Operations Committee. The Voteless League did not have any African American members during its first two decades. The group s segregation was typical for the National League s chapters. A few local leagues, such as the Alameda County League in California, had started separate African American chapters in the 1920s. The St. Louis League was the first chap- When Nettie Ottenberg rode in a carriage to campaign for home rule in 1964, she was nearly 80 years old and had spent more than four decades fighting for D.C. voting rights and social needs. Courtesy, Washington Star collection, DC Public Library, Washington Post ter to send an African American delegate to the National Convention, but its black members were organized in a separate structure that cooperated closely with the white group. The league remained segregated during this period and made little effort to join forces with African American women s organizations to address discrimination against black citizens. 9 The Voteless League joined a growing early 20th-century movement for expanded D.C. voting rights. The engine of this movement was the Citizens Joint Committee on National Representation for the District of Columbia, established in 1917 as an umbrella organization. Theodore Noyes, the editor of the Evening Star and a tireless advocate of D.C. suffrage since the 1880s, served as chair. The committee included representatives of the Washington Board of Trade, the city s most influential business organization; the Federation of Citizens Associations, which represented white neighborhood associations across the city; and the Chamber of Commerce. Like the Voteless League, the committee was racially exclusive; no African American political or social groups were invited to participate. 10 Noyes regularly used his newspaper s influential editorial page to promote the cause of voting rights. The Citizens Joint Committee considered itself a pragmatic association dedicated to securing what its members viewed as the least difficult prize: national representation, i.e., voting representatives in the House, Senate, and Electoral College. 6 WASHINGTON HISTORY Spring 2016 Voice of the Voteless 7

5 Evening Star editor Theodore Noyes, photographed in 1915, campaigned tirelessly for the right of D.C. citizens to vote in national elections, but vehemently opposed lifting Congress s control of city affairs. He frequently reprinted his Americanization Catechism calling for voting rights and opposing home rule. Courtesy, Library of Congress The committee specifically and pointedly stayed away from promoting the racially divisive cause of home rule. Thus it pushed only for a constitutional amendment to give D.C. residents voting representation at the federal level. Noyes and company in fact openly preferred that Congress retain its control over the city. Their proposal to give this national representation to the Washingtonians, they wrote, works no change in the local government or in the financial relation of nation to capital. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the committee insisted on keeping the issues of national representation and municipal self-government separate. Some member groups, such as the powerful and influential Board of Trade and the Federation of Citizens Associations, also explicitly opposed home rule and instead called to give all efforts to representation. 11 The movement for D.C. suffrage received a patriotic boost in 1917 with the U.S. entry into World War I. For Noyes, D.C. suffrage and national representation became more than an injustice; now they were a necessary means to Americanize Washingtonians, to prepare them for war, and to justify American power abroad. Through the Evening Star, he publicized the Washingtonian Americanization Catechism, questions and answers that laid out why national representation and suffrage were vital needs for District residents. 12 Beginning in 1918, the catechism was regularly updated and reprinted on election days and national holidays. Noyes argued that it was un-american and un-patriotic that soldiers from Washington were fighting for the United States and yet were unable to vote when they returned home. In a 1918 special report on the status of Washingtonians, the Board of Trade argued, Americanizing of the political aliens of the District of Columbia is particularly opportune in this war for world democracy and as a wise measure of war preparedness. The following year, the chairman of the Federation of Citizens Associations Committee on Suffrage for the District pointed out that 15,000 soldiers from the District of Columbia had fought in the war, more participants than in seven other states. 12 By 1920 the coalition in support of suffrage and national representation comprised a few national organizations in addition to the local groups. The national League of Republican State Clubs, for example, adopted a resolution expressing hearty sympathy with the movement to obtain right of suffrage in the District. Organized labor was an early supporter of the campaign, and in 1920 American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers pledged the union s support for a constitutional amendment to secure national representation. The A.F. of L. remained a cooperating organization of the Citizens Joint Committee, and the Washington Central Labor Union also sent delegates to the Joint Committee. 13 To remind Americans that there was still taxation without representation in the United States, the Voteless League planned creative protests on Election Day, Independence Day, and the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. On Election Day in November 1924 suffragists labeled it humiliation day members arranged for the display of sealed ballot boxes that read, All citizens of the United States are voting today except citizens of the District of Columbia. Ballot boxes closed. The display of closed ballot boxes on election days became a Washington ritual during the 1920s and 1930s. On Election Day in 1928, the League was a critical part of the Joint Committee s plan to have a decorated float parade around the White House and the city, reminding the nation of the disfranchisement of D.C. s citizens. A padlocked ballot box was mounted at the center of the float, underneath a banner that read 500,000 Americans Voteless Today. Airplanes dropped balloons with the slogan Give Washington National Representation on the city. Anyone who found one of these balloons could turn it in to the Voteless League s headquarters to receive a chrysanthemum from a well-known musical comedy star. 14 The Voteless League pursued a variety of strategies to publicize the plight of Washingtonians to a national audience and spur women in other states to encourage their respective representatives to support enfranchising D.C. residents. Members of the Voteless League, including Mary O Toole, participated in nationwide radio broadcasts about Washingtonians lack of voting rights. They organized a doll exhibit to advertise our voteless condition ; the toys represented the status of D.C. residents as dolls of Congress. They also emphasized the effect of disfranchisement on civic education. How could children growing up in Washington learn about their civic duties if they could not look forward to voting? If you gentlemen have ever talked to any of your children, you will find that they have a very hazy idea really of constitutional government or what it means to vote under our constitution, O Toole told Congress in They do not apply it at all practically. They do not apply what they read in our books. 15 The movement for expanded political rights gained popularity during the 1920s, but it faced divisions over its strategies and ultimate goals. Home rule, in particular, was controversial. The desire for local self-government in D.C. dated to the early Republic, but it was promoted and refined by the progressive urban reform movement, which emphasized the right of local residents to elect their local officials and form a representative municipal government. The progressive urban reformer Frederic Howe of Cleveland had characterized the movement for home rule as a struggle for liberty, and a demand on the part of the people to be trusted, and to be endowed with the privileges of which they have been dispossessed. 16 Yet the leaders of the D.C. suffrage movement, including Noyes, the Citizens Joint Committee, and the Board of Trade, opposed home rule and the abolition of the commissioner system of local government. They preferred an amendment giving D.C. residents representation within Congress; Mary O Toole, the city s first female municipal judge, spoke to radio audiences and took on members of Congress in the battle for suffrage. Courtesy, Library of Congress 8 WASHINGTON HISTORY Spring 2016 Voice of the Voteless 9

6 Republican Rep. Leonidas Dyer of Missouri had sponsored such an amendment in The Citizens Joint Committee made its position clear in the 1930 Yearbook of the Voteless League: The constitutional amendment which we urge empowers Congress to correct this inequity without disturbing in the slightest national control of the Capital or the present form of municipal government. 17 Like the Joint Committee, the Voteless League also did not support home rule Walter A. Pinchback of the until the mid-1930s and focused its efforts Bloomingdale Civic Association instead on winning the right to vote for was one of many African national representatives, not local officials. Americans urging Congress to Noyes argued that home rule would give the District home rule in distract from the constitutional amendment for national representation as the Courtesy, Scurlock Studio Collection, Archives Center, primary goal of the movement. Much of National Museum of American the opposition among white suffrage supporters, however, was rooted in fears History, Smithsonian Institution about the potential power of the city s African American residents, who constituted more than a quarter of the city s population in At times the debates over D.C. suffrage following World War I seemed like flashbacks from Reconstruction, when white male voters in the District overwhelmingly opposed granting African Americans there the right to vote. In the 1920s and 1930s, many white residents expressed concern that the colored vote would impair the good government of the District of Columbia, arguing that the experiment with inclusive male suffrage during Reconstruction had led the city into chaos. At a 1922 congressional hearing on D.C. suffrage, George Ayers of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association dismissed black people as not fit for the right of suffrage. Such white opponents argued that home rule would put the city under the control of a united black voting bloc. As Admiral W.L. Rodgers testified in 1938: It is apparent that if suffrage was granted, the number of voters would be much more nearly equally divided among the races, and the political control of the District would in great measure fall to colored people. Given the potential for Negro domination, declared Dr. John P. Turner from the Sixteenth Street Highlands Citizens Association in 1928, national representation is the safest course to pursue with the mixed population in the District. 18 Though segregated from the white citizens coalition, representatives of D.C. s African American organizations persistently advocated for suffrage and national representation. But they also insisted on home rule for the District of Columbia, and occasionally made it their first priority. African American civic leaders such as Reverend Milton Waldron and Howard University sociologist Kelly Miller testified at several hearings in support of home rule as an essential part of a broader social reform effort in the city. At congressional hearings on D.C. suffrage in 1938, Walter A. Pinchback, representing the Bloomingdale Civic Association and the executive committee of the Federation of Civic of Associations, acknowledged that every fairminded citizen of the District would like to have the privilege of national representation. However, he continued, would it not be better for Congress to establish some form of local government, whereby the citizens could choose their own officials who would be directly responsible to them? 19 White supporters of suffrage recognized that racism among the nation s legislators hindered their cause. At the 1928 congressional hearings, Noyes observed, We have had a hard time getting this Congress to discriminate between national representation and the Negro dominating in local suffrage. Paul Lesh, a member of the City Club who represented the Joint Committee at the 1928 hearings, sought to allay such concerns by emphasizing that the committee sought federal suffrage and national representation and that these goals would not threaten white control over the elected officials. It always seemed to me that the people who fear Negro domination in the District of Columbia, where the white people outnumber them three to one, are very timid people. Taking the point of view of the white people, now, it is not likely that a colored man is going to be put up for office that is, either for President or Vice President, or for Representative in Congress. 20 Lesh, while not questioning the right to vote, nonetheless accommodated the racist argument by implying that if the constitutional amendment were successful, the white population would still be able to retain political control over the elected government offices. Home rule had some early supporters. The National Federation of Federal Employees, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor, passed a resolution at its 1921 convention urging Congress to give the disfranchised people of the National Capital a Delegate in Congress and control by ballot of the selection of their local officials. Samuel Gompers and the A.F. of L. supported the campaign for a constitutional voting rights amendment, but argued that the ultimate goal should be to turn the District into a state and thereby obtain self-government. Aaron Bradshaw, chairman of the Republican Central Committee of the District of Columbia, also testified on behalf of the right accorded to every American citizen, the right of managing their own affairs. 21 The Voteless League reassessed its opposition to home rule in the 1930s in response to serious problems in the city government. As part of the 1878 deal that made the three-commissioner form of local government permanent, Congress pledged to pay 50 percent of the District s annual budget. After World War I, Congress lowered the percentage formula and soon abandoned it entirely. By 1939 that payment was down to 11 percent, making it difficult for the local government to provide basic services. The lack of funding was compounded by a confusing, ineffective system of municipal government. Even Congress noted that the city government was inefficient. Between 1934 and 1941, special congressional study commissions undertook 30 investigations into local problems and discussed about a dozen reorganization plans for the city government. 22 As part of the Voteless League s mission to educate the public about the political process, members studied the District budget and developed Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? pamphlets with charts explaining the local government s spending. They studied legislation, charted the paths of decision making, and suggested reforms. They commissioned experts in taxation and municipal administration to study and make recommendations on the best approaches to dealing with the city s problems. J.L. Jacobs and James Martin, members of President Roosevelt s Committee on Fiscal Relations between the United States and the District of Columbia, told the Voteless League that legislation that allowed the people of the District control over their local affairs and freedom from the congressional spoils problems with which they are now pestered was not only sensible, but also more realistic than achieving a constitutional amendment granting national representation for the District. 23 In response to such recommendations and driven by its commitment to social welfare reforms and effective government, by the end of the 1930s the Voteless League began calling explicitly for local self-government. Calling the federally controlled city government slow, indirect and irresponsible, it issued a leaflet with this sharp description: The District of Columbia is a headless This 1935 Voteless League pamphlet explained how D.C. suffered from taxation without representation because Congress controlled how the city s tax dollars were spent. Courtesy, Library of Congress government with many hands, but without a central nervous system to coordinate its movements: no single governing agency can be held responsible, congressional authority is too broad, there is no leadership in District affairs. In 1937 Virginia Ross Weston, the chair of the Voteless League s Department of Government and Operation, wrote, We used to say federal suffrage or national representation when we talked about votes for the District of Columbia. We now talk in broader terms and say Suffrage for the District of Columbia. Briefly, this means that we now support both federal suffrage (or national representation) and local suffrage. The National League of Women Voters supported this development and endorsed the principle of full suffrage for the District of Columbia at its 1938 convention in St. Louis. 24 While advocating for home rule, however, the historically segregated Voteless League sought to downplay racial concerns. In a flyer advocating suffrage and home rule for D.C. residents, the league addressed them head on: AND IF YOU 10 WASHINGTON HISTORY Spring 2016 Voice of the Voteless 11

7 HAVE HEARD that the vote would mean that the Negroes would control the city. Well the right to vote is the right of all good citizens, regardless of race. Citizens of other cities with large groups of Negroes are not deprived of suffrage. In none of these cities do the Negroes control the city government. 25 While the league acknowledged the implication of its demands for home rule, it would not yet endorse equality in the city s race relations. Suffrage and home rule ultimately would increase the chances of the African American population to attain leadership roles, both elected and appointed, in the city government, but the Voteless League assured its readers that their support of universal suffrage and home rule would not lead to the end of white control. By the late 1930s, other white or integrated civic groups began embracing home rule. The League s increasing support for home rule thus reflected the evolution of the D.C. democracy movement as a whole. Two new organizations emerged, representing the next generation of advocates for D.C. voting rights: the Citizen s Committee for Progressive Action, which appealed primarily to younger voters, and the integrated District Suffrage Association. 26 The District Suffrage NOTES 1. Resident, Aged 91, Casts Ballot Second Time in Seventy Years," Evening Star, Apr. 30, U.S. Cong., House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Report by Walter H. Mondell, chairman, Special Elections Committee, Citizens Committee on District Suffrage, Hearings on National Representation and Suffrage for the District of Columbia, 75th Cong., 3d sess., May 18, 19, 20, 1938, H.J. Res. 232 and H.J. Res. 564 (Washington: GPO, 1938), Marion Wade Doyle, Foreword, The Voteless League of District of Columbia Women Voters Yearbook 1930, 1. See also Louise M. Young (with the assistance of Ralph A. Young, Jr.), In the Public Interest: The League of Women Voters (New York and Westport: Greenwood Press, 1989), Doyle, Foreword, D.C. Representation in Congress Favored, Evening Star, Feb. 8, 1920; Yearbook 1930 and Report of the District of Columbia League annual meeting, May 28, 1940, in D.C. League of Women Voters, biennial series , series II, box 438, League of Women Voter Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. 6. D.C. Representation in Congress Favored, Evening Star, Feb. 8, 1920; Women Discuss Aiding Vote in D.C., Evening Star, Jan. 27, 1920; Organize to Work for D.C. Suffrage, Association would organize the plebiscite for D.C. voting rights in 1938 in which John R. Mahoney, the nonagenarian mentioned at the beginning of this essay, cast his ballot. The League was part of the broad coalition of 271 civic groups that had planned the referendum. In the short run, the Voteless League s campaigns for suffrage, national representation, and (eventually) home rule between 1917 and 1941 failed to achieve any of their objectives. As D.C. residents prepared for World War II, they still did not have the right to vote in any local or federal elections. After the war, however, demands for home rule and civil rights became part of the same struggle. The Voteless League integrated its membership and became one of the stalwart advocates for home rule, civil rights, and civil liberties in the city. By 1950 the D.C. chapter of the League of Women Voters made home rule the chief item of its program, and committed itself to promoting an integrated community life. 27 Katharina Hering, an archivist for the National Equal Justice Library, Georgetown Law Library, is an independent historian. Evening Star, Jan. 9, 1920; Women Discuss Plan for D.C. Vote Drive, Evening Star, Jan. 15, D.C. Representation in Congress Favored, Evening Star, Feb. 8, Mrs. Hendley Spoke for Washington at Women s Convention, Evening Star, Feb. 29, 1920 and Anthony League to Campaign for D.C. Suffrage, Evening Star, Oct. 7, 1920; D.C. Suffrage Favored, Evening Star, Feb. 12, See Barbara Stuhler, For the Public Record: A Documentary History of the League of Women Voters (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2000); Nettie Ottenberg obituary, Washington Post, May 12, 1982; Mrs. Ottenberg Leads Drive in District for Vote, Washington Post, July 8, Woman Immigrant Became a Judge, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 17, 1931, 14; Ida Husted Harper, ed., The History of Woman Suffrage, vol. VI: (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922), , Gutenberg ebook, gutenberg.org/files/30051/30051-h/ h.htm. 9. [B.F. Bowles], The Colored Committee of the League of Women Voters of St. Louis: The First Nine Years, attached to Ruth Siemer, executive secretary of the League of Women Voters of St. Louis, to Gladys Harrison, executive secretary, National League, Oct. 11, 1929, Committee on Interracial Problems , series II, box 99, LWV Records, LC; Priscilla A. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011), ; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, In Politics to Stay: Black Women Leaders and Party Politics in the 1920s, in Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gulin, eds., Women, Politics and Change (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), 215; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), ; Kate Masur, An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), Theodore Noyes, Our National Capital and Its Un-Americanized Washingtonians (Washington: [1951]), 54 64; Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Capital City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 186; U.S. Cong., Senate, Committee on the District of Columbia, Hearings on Suffrage in the District of Columbia, 67th Cong. 1st and 2d sess., Nov. 8, 14, 18, 21, Dec. 13, 1921, Jan , 1922, S. 14, S. 417, and S.J. Res. 133 (Washington: GPO, 1922), 50; see also: Eli Zigas, DC Vote, Left with Few Rights: Unequal Democracy in the District of Columbia, dcvote.org/sites/ default/files/documents/articles/zigas_left_with_few_rights_0. pdf, Theodore Noyes, Americanize the Washingtonians, Evening Star, Feb. 16, 1918; Program Outlined for D.C. Suffrage, Evening Star, Jan. 12, 1918; Outlines Details of Securing D.C. Vote, Evening Star, Jan. 26, 1918; Noyes, Our National Capital, 165 and The Washington Americanization Catechism, Evening Star, Jan. 2 5, 1918; Joint Resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States giving to Congress the power to extend the right of suffrage to the residents of the District of Columbia, H.J. Res. 73, 65th Cong. 1st sess., in Evening Star, Feb. 16, 1918; Citizens to Work for District Vote, Evening Star, Jan. 23, West End Citizens Resolved for Vote, Evening Star, Jan. 30, 1918; Washingtonian Americanization Catechism, Evening Star; Fight For Others, Lack Rights Here, Evening Star, Nov. 18, 1918; Plans Hard Drive for District Suffrage, Evening Star, Feb. 16, Expresses Sympathy in D.C. Suffrage Movement, Evening Star, Jan. 11, 1918; see Suffrage League Is Organized Here at Big Meeting, Evening Star, Mar. 17, 1920; U.S. Cong., House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings on National Representation for the Residents of the District of Columbia, 69th Cong., 1st sess., Apr. 20, 21, 28, H.J. Res. 208 (Washington: GPO, 1926), 69 71; Citizens Joint Committee, Evening Star, Feb. 16, 1918; Labor to Get Vote in the District, Evening Star, Nov. 19, 1918; Labor Organizes Fight for D.C. Vote, Evening Star, Feb. 12, Padlocked Ballot Boxes Drive Home Voteless Status of D.C., Evening Star, Nov. 4, 1924 and Ballot Boxes Closed Here, Evening Star, Nov. 8, 1932; Humiliation Day Protest is Voiced by Voteless D.C., Evening Star, Nov. 6, Edna Johnston, Efficiency in Government, Monthly Bulletin, Voteless District of Columbia League of Women Voters, May 29, 1929; Voteless District to Be Radio Topic on Anniversary, Evening Star, Dec. 16, 1929; Testimony by Mary O'Toole, Hearings on National Representation for the Residents of the District of Columbia, 1926, 75; see also: Citizens Duty to Vote Stumps D.C. Schools as Education Topic, Evening Star, Dec. 5, Frederic Howe, The City: Hope for Democracy (New York: C. Scribner, 1905), U.S. Cong., House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Hearings on National Representation for the Residents of the District of Columbia, 70th Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 24, Feb. 2 and 16, Mar. 8 and 15, 1928, H.J. Res. 18 (Washington: GPO, 1928); There Is Still Taxation Without Representation in the United States of America, The Voteless League of District of Columbia Women Voters Yearbook 1930, Masur, An Example for All the Land, ; Hearings on Suffrage in the District of Columbia, 1922, 149; Statement by Admiral Rodgers, Hearings on National Representation and Suffrage, 1938, 83 84; Hearings on National Representation, 1928, 202; Statement of Walter A. Pinchback, Hearings on National Representation and Suffrage, 1938, 142. Statement of Kelly Miller, Hearings on Suffrage in the District of Columbia, 1922, Statement of Paul Lesh, Hearings on National Representation, 1928, Statements of Joseph Gurley, Aaron Bradshaw, Hearings on Suffrage in the District of Columbia, 1922, Steven J. Diner, The City under the Hill, Washington History 8 1 (spring/summer 1996), 55, and Statehood and the Governance of the District of Columbia: An Historical Analysis of Policy Issues, Journal of Policy History 4 4 (1992), ; George McAneny, Jacob Lewis Jacobs, James Martin, Fiscal Relations between the United States and the District of Columbia (Washington: GPO, 1937). 23. Commissioner of Revenue (Frankfort, KY) James Martin to League of Women Voters, Dec. 16, 1938, Government and its Operations, series II, box 420, LWV Records, LC. 24. Washington: Our National Home Town leaflet, Sept. 1942, D.C. Suffrage History, biennial series, , series II, box 464, LWV Records, LC; Mrs. Charles Weston, Chairman, Report of the Department of Government and Operation, in Proposed Program of Work , series II, box 153, LWV Records, LC; Harriet J. Eliel, Secretary to Hon. Hatton W. Sumners, The National League of Women Voters assembled in convention in St. Louis endorses the principle of full suffrage for the District of Columbia, Apr. 28, 1938, Government and Its Operations, biennial series, , series II, box 370, LWV Records, LC. 25. Citizens Without Votes leaflet, May 1941, D.C. Suffrage History, biennial series, , series II, box 464, LWV Records, LC. 26. Miss Wells to Miss Knapp re: District Suffrage meeting on July 23, 1937, July 26, 1937, Government and its Operations, series II, box 371, LWV Records, LC; Speakers Uphold Suffrage Cause, Evening Star, July 30, Home Rule 1st on Agenda of Voters League, Washington Post, May 17, Washington History welcomes submissions of articles on all aspects of D.C. history as well as notices of relevant new books, films, and exhibits. For complete information, including submission guidelines, please visit 12 WASHINGTON HISTORY Spring 2016 Voice of the Voteless 13