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This project used primary historical documents from the Jessie A. Ackermann collection at ETSU's Archives of Appalachia, other books and documents from the temperance period, and recent scholarship on the subjects of temperance, suffrage, and women travelers and civilizers. As the second world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Ackermann traveled in order to establish WCT Unions and worked as a civilizer, feminist, and reporter of the conditions of women and the disadvantaged throughout the world.

This is a state-level analysis of the impact of state building on woman suffrage legislation in the United States. This study examines all states in which state legislatures were conferred the power to submit a constitutional amendment to the electorate for approval. I use a sequential random-effects logistic regression model to estimate the effects of state building on legislative outcome. Legislative outcome is measured in three stages: whether or not a bill is introduced in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session, whether or not a bill is voted on in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session, and whether or not a bill is passed in either the House or the Senate during a legislative session. The data used in this study were collected from legislative journals and other sources which represent the most comprehensive and accurate data that have been used to study woman suffrage legislation. Most studies of woman suffrage explain success by concentrating on changing gender norms. While this may have explained eventual success, it overlooks barriers that existed within state governments. Only 15 states granted full woman suffrage prior to the Nineteenth Amendment, the majority of which were in the West. I argue that understanding the structure of state governments provides insight into the success of western states and also provides insight into the timing of success. I do this by moving beyond contemporary social movement theory and by adapting aspects of institutional politics theory and organizational theory. Specifically, I examine the dynamics of partisan politics, organizational characteristics of state government, and the legislative process. I find that partisan politics and organizational dynamics impact legislative success. Specifically, legislatures are more likely to pass suffrage bills in states that are more democratized, that are characterized by reform-oriented regimes, where woman suffrage advocates have a greater political presence, where there is less structural inertia, and where a smaller constitutional majority is required.

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This research answers the question, "What impact did the 2000 election have on low-income African American voters and how will it affect turnout in future elections?" The analysis focuses on the predominantly black, low-income community of Parramore and examine issues of efficacy related to the 2000 presidential election and beyond. The analysis consists of survey distributed through various community service agencies and conducted door-to-door in Parramore. Respondents were asked a series of questions related to past voter participation, trust in government, the fairness of the 2000 election and perceived future participation. The responses of the survey were compiled into a dataset and controlled for race. These data were then compared with the 2000 National Election Studies (NES) dataset to determine whether the attitudes in Parramore reflected a national trend. The analysis showed that nationally, a majority of whites rated the 2000 election as fair and the majority of blacks called it unfair. Additionally, blacks have a much lower level of trust in the federal government than whites. Historical voting data from NES shows that blacks have lower levels of participation than whites and increases in participation have occurred only in years when the ballot featured presidential candidates who were perceived either very positively or very negatively by the black population. Through use of the NES feeling thermometer, the data show that in 2000, blacks were largely motivated by their distrust and fear of the Republican candidate, George W. Bush. The feelings of disenfranchisement resulting from the election have negatively affected feelings of efficacy among blacks, meaning they will be less apt to participate in future elections.

This thesis explores the disfranchisement of free men of color in 1835 North Carolina through the lens of antebellum citizenship and within the context of the racial turmoil of the 1830s. Citizenship and the evolution of southern racial ideology converged in the 1835 North Carolina Constitutional Convention. On the one hand, free men of color voted, a right permitted in North Carolina for all taxpaying men regardless of race and one of the most crucial components of citizenship in the early republic and Jacksonian periods. But on the other hand, some North Carolina white slaveholders saw free people of color as instigators of slave uprisings and a threat to their social order and economic system. As convention delegates debated disfranchisement, they drew on their notions of citizenship and their fear of people of color, and a majority ultimately decided that free nonwhites did not deserve a voice in the political arena. My explanation of why delegates disfranchised free men of color is twofold. First, members of the convention supported disfranchisement because of the perceived connection between free people of color and slave violence. Disfranchisement also came about because the majority of delegates determined that political citizenship was reserved exclusively for white men, and the elimination of nonwhite suffrage in North Carolina was one of the most explicit representations of the ongoing transition of citizenship based on class to a citizenship based on race in the antebellum United States. / Master of Arts

Similarities exist between the current climate change movement and the earlier suffragette movement. Both are progressive, challenge the status quo, have feminist underpinnings, and face opposition from the political right and through the media. However, the link between the similarities in argumentative opposition between the two, remains unestablished. Therefore, this study seeks to first establish the argumentative strategies developed to oppose climate activists and then place these in a historical perspective by comparing them to the opposition to women's suffrage in Sweden. Using rhetorical topoi analysis, this study examined Facebook posts to find, categorize, and analyze arguments with the help of green backlash and countermovement theory. These findings were then compared with pre-established arguments against women's suffrage in Sweden. The study finds that the argumentative strategies deployed against Swedish climate activists are characterized by climate denial, hostility, and mockery, which are used as tactics to discredit, undermine, and oppose them. The analysis also shows a historical resemblance between the opposition to climate activists and the suffragettes, highlighting the recurring resistance to socially progressive pro-women movements.

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Right and good : Argumentation and Discourse of Czech Activists for Women's Suffrage Jitka Gelnarová Abstract The dissertation deals with the concept of suffrage within the discourse of Czech women's suffrage activists between 1897 and 1914. The aim is to define how the concept of suffrage was constructed by Czech suffragists within the context they lived in, how their notion of the suffrage was influenced by the fact that different women were positioned differently within the system of hierarchies based on gender, class and nation. The dissertation focuses on the hierarchies present in the discourse; the relation of "public" and private" in the discourse; the notion of "political representation" in the discourse; positions the suffragists spoke from and their representation of the enemy ("us/them"); the functions the concept of "Czechness" fulfilled in relation to the demand of female suffrage in the discourse; and the relation of "universality" and "particularity" to the demand of female suffrage in the discourse.