Wisconsin Hometown Stories

>> In 1871, Oshkosh landed the bid to build one of Wisconsin's eight teachers colleges, which would help cope with a flood of immigrant children into area schools. >> The country was growing rapidly. The birth rate was high, a lot of immigrants coming from around the world. There was a huge need for public school teachers. >> With the goal of establishing statewide teaching standards, then called "Norms", these colleges were first called "Normal Schools. >> Their function and their mission, that whole movement nationally, was to teach teachers for the public schools. >> The interesting thing too, historically, is because there weren't a lot of avenues for women who were exceptionally bright and talented, most or many of them ended up going and being schoolteachers. The Normal Schools were wonderfully successful. They gave some exceptionally talented women from working class and middle class families, a good career, and helped a lot of immigrants acculturate or assimilate into our State here. >> In addition to the Normal School bringing new opportunities for women, Oshkosh's 20th Century Club became a place where prominent women not only studied literature and the arts, but engaged in public service. A charter member of the Club, Jessie Jack Hooper, would go on to achieve national recognition for her work for women's rights and world peace. >> She was born in 1864 in Northeastern Iowa. A lumber salesman from Oshkosh married her sister. On one of her trips visiting, Jessie met Ben Hooper. They liked each other and got married in 1888. Shortly after Ben and Jessie got married, Ben brought up the idea that he was willing to share his vote with her. That he thought the two of them were equally interested in politics and knowledgeable about it. He didn't think it was fair that he was the only one who could vote. So, in alternate elections, she would give him her ticket of how she wanted him to vote, and he would vote it. >> I think that she understood that her privilege of having the vote depended on her husband's benevolence. It didn't acknowledge her real right to have a vote. Over the years, while she appreciated it, it just wasn't enough. I started to talk to women's clubs as Jessie, explaining that I had somehow come back to see what was going on with the

causes that I was interested in

Women's rights and world peace. I thought, "Well, this is one way to bring her message to people who wouldn't otherwise have known about her. I think that women, as the people who bring all the people into the world, have a unique voice and perspective that the world needs to hear and that needs to be part of our government. >> Hooper went public with her frustration with politics, as many of her efforts to improve Oshkosh's schools and public health failed." >> I noticed that when we would go to Madison to talk to Legislators about making changes, they would listen to the men in our group much more that they would listen to me and the other women. I realized that those men could vote. We women were trying to dig a hole with a teaspoon, when what we needed was a steam shovel. We needed the vote. >> The Wisconsin Legislature passed a Bill in 1911 calling for a referendum to be held in Wisconsin where all the men voters of Wisconsin would get to vote on the question of whether women should be allowed the vote. >> Oshkosh activists joined a new organization, called the Political Equality League, and took to the streets, in what was then an astonishing manner-- boldly asking men to share power, and give them the right to vote. >> Jessie was one of a number of Oshkosh of women who went down to Milwaukee to organize the Political Equality League. Sophie Gudden went down to Milwaukee. She was an immigrant from Germany who had been very highly educated in Germany and was a very forceful speaker. Rose Swart was another pro- suffrage person who was very active. She was a faculty member at the Normal School. Sarah James had taught at the high school. She really devoted her life to the suffrage cause. So there were several people who were strong and well-connected in Oshkosh. They were very prominent in that Referendum campaign. >> The Oshkosh women organized parades. They embarked on speaking tours up and down the Wolf River. But the opposition also campaigned, persuading men to vote "No" on the suffrage ballot, which was to be printed on pink paper. >> The vote was almost two-to-one against women's suffrage. But the women were not demoralized. They were sad and frustrated, but they felt that they needed to keep on. >> Carrie Chapman Catt, who headed up a national suffrage organization, called on Mrs. Hooper to come to Washington and lobby Congress to pass an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. >> Jessie was known as a very tactful person. She had good social skills. She had good argumentative skills. She could frame an argument in a way that made it convincing to the person she was talking to. She had a sense of humor. That always helps. She could really deliver a speech because she always made it speaking from the heart. She spoke about what she believed in, and had very good success. Two votes shy of passage in the House, Hooper returned to Wisconsin to lobby the prominent men in her area. >> Speaking to lawyers, speaking to storekeepers, and begging them to send telegrams. We got those two votes. The House, for the first time, on January 1918 actually voted in favor of women's suffrage. >> When the Amendment passed Congress, Hooper convinced the Wisconsin Legislature to quickly approve it. And Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to ratify the women's suffrage Amendment. Jessie Jack Hooper went on to become the first president of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, and in 1922, she became the first woman in Wisconsin to run for U.S. Senate. >> Jessie was really rooted in her community. I think that she was more typical of the kind of local leader whose foundation of her political strength is in her family and in her town, her city and her community. I think that's an important perspective because those grassroots women were the ones who got the Suffrage Amendment ratified.