Search All Items
- Filters:
- Language
- English 4767
- Spanish 11
- ENGLISH 2
- English 1
- census_013 1
- contra_costa_schedule_1_volume_1 1
- Type
- Image 3783
- Still Image 592
- Text 377
- Text 22
- Textual 2
- Image of the California Census from the records of the office of the California Secretary of State 1
Search Results 751 to 760 of 4830
-
A Transcript of Appeal is the official written record of a trial, used by a higher court to review the lower court's proceedings. Ellen Van Valkenburg began an important legal battle for women’s enfranchisement in California on July 21, 1871, when she requested that Santa Cruz County Clerk Albert Brown enter her name in the Great Register of voters. After Brown (a willing accomplice in helping her bring the case to court) refused to register her, Van Valkenburg and her lawyer, Santa Cruz Judge Albert Hagan, began legal proceedings by requesting a writ of mandamus, a judicial remedy used to compel agencies to perform ministerial acts, such as registering voters. Van Valkenburg and Hagan argued her case by citing the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The new amendment, ratified 3 years earlier in 1868, defined all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. as citizens protected by civil rights. Van Valkenburg and Hagan asserted that American women were considered citizens under this amendment, and that citizenship automatically granted absolute rights, including the right to vote. The case first went to California’s Third District Court. Many of America’s most prominent suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, were with Van Valkenburg in Santa Cruz when the lower court ruled against her on August 16, 1871. Van Valkenburg and Hagan swiftly appealed this decision through the Supreme Court of California. In the end, the Supreme Court of California upheld the lower court’s verdict under the reasoning that as a white American woman, Van Valkenburg already had citizenship and civil rights prior to the passage of the 14th amendment, and that the 14th amendment did not provide her with any additional political rights, such as the right to vote. While Van Valkenburg lost her case, and subsequent lawsuits failed to secure women's suffrage nationwide, the case stands as a critical early example of legal advocacy for women's political rights in California.
Date: September 23, 1871
-
The California Equal Suffrage Association was founded in 1870 and incorporated as a state-registered organization in 1904. When the organization was founded, it was originally named the California Woman Suffrage Association. In 1896, the organization rebranded as the California Equal Suffrage Association. The name change was an effort to use more inclusive language in the hopes that it would encourage men to join the organization. The group rallied for women’s suffrage by distributing literature and through events they held. The endurance of the California Equal Suffrage Association demonstrates that many Californians remained deeply committed to women’s political rights decades before legal enfranchisement.
Date: June 3, 1904
