LET US PUT WOMEN, IN FACT, ON A LEVEL WITH MEN

JFK+50:  Volume 7, No. 2426

T.R. MOST EMPHATICALLY FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Oyster Bay, New York (JFK+50) One hundred years ago this afternoon, September 8, 1917, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, spoke to 500 suffragists at his home at Sagamore Hill here in Oyster Bay*.

Colonel Roosevelt declared himself  "most emphatically in favor of woman suffrage."  He said...

"The citizen...I...pay the greatest deference as doing the most indispensable of all duties, is the mother.  To deny (her) the vote seems to me something so preposterous that our descendants will fail to understand how we could call ourselves self-governing and democratic and yet deny it."

The former president continued...

"Let us take the lead.  Let the United States, as a matter of right and justice...put the women in fact on a level with the men."


*Oyster Bay is a hamlet on the north shore within the town of Oyster Bay, NY.  Nearby, in the village of Cove Neck, is Sagamore Hill, the former residence of Theodore Roosevelt and his summer White House.

SOURCE

"T.R. IS FIRM FOR WOMEN'S BALLOT AS THEIR RIGHT", Chicago Sunday Tribune, September 9, 1917.

Sagamore Hill

Home of Theodore Roosevelt

Oyster Bay, New York