The Charlie Clark Center for Local History (CCCLH) sat down with Nancy Tate to talk about the origins of the women's suffrage movement and the historical marker for Arlington suffragist Mary Morris Lockwood (1871–1936).
Tate is a longtime member of the League of Women Voters of Arlington and Alexandria City and has served as the executive director of the League of Women Voters of the United States.
The marker is located next to the Arlington Science Focus Elementary School, at 1501 North Lincoln Street, across from Hayes Park, in Arlington, Virginia 22201.
This interview was recorded on May 30, 2025, at the Charlie Clark Center for Local History and is part of the VA voting rights exhibition "From Barriers to Ballots." You can read the transcript of the interview below or stream it online.
The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Mary Morris Lockwood, Silent Sentinel
Mary Morris Lockwood lived in Arlington, VA, and was actively involved in the civic life of her community. She was also engaged in civic reforms. For instance, she helped found the library system of Arlington, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church and the Federation of Women's Clubs. She is particularly known as a very active suffragist.
Suffragists were women and men who worked very hard over a 72-year period to ensure equal voting rights for women.
And she did that living right here in Arlington. Both by setting up chapters of some of the suffrage groups in the state, raising money, lobbying her federal legislators from this district and marching in parades.
Parades were a common tactic to draw attention to the suffrage movement. Lockwood marched, for instance, in the very well-known 1913 march down Pennsylvania Avenue when thousands of women from around the country came to DC to show support for women’s right to vote.
She's particularly significant because she was one of the so-called Silent Sentinels, the women who stood in front of the White House every day for a year in 1917, holding banners saying: "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?"
A Letter from Mother
They were trying of course to influence President Woodrow Wilson to support a constitutional amendment to provide voting rights to women. It took him a while, but he ultimately urged Congress to pass it. And in 1919 Congress finally did that, sending it on to the state legislatures to ratify.
The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1920, guaranteeing that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex. **
But it was a hard-fought fight right to the end, because the amendment only passed by one vote in the legislature of the last state, Tennessee. And that only happened when one young male legislator flipped his vote after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to do that.
You can't get better drama than this story of women finally getting into the Constitution!
It Took Many People
As a side note to that, these roadside markers are meant to honor and commemorate the many, many people who worked for over 72 years for women’s suffrage. Mary Lockwood was only one of the many who had become invisible over the years. As part of the 2020 centennial of the 19th Amendment, a wide range of efforts were undertaken to highlight the work of these suffragists.
And it's significant to know that there were active suffragists in Virginia, because the Virginia General Assembly was completely against women voting. They fought it to the very end.
Women like Mary Lockwood, who were going around the state and trying to educate people and get support, may be even more heroic than other suffragists around the country because they were facing so much hostility.
Organizing for Women’s Suffrage
The organized efforts to get the vote started in 1848. It took until the late 1800s, when some of the state legislatures, particularly in the Western states, began to allow women to vote. How they did that varied. Some of them allowed women to vote on every race up to president. Some said only the school board race, some said everything except the school board race. I guess in the West it was easier to see the equal contributions that women were making.
Regardless of the differences between states, it took multiple suffrage campaigns in every state to achieve voting rights for women. It took petitions. It took marches. Sometimes it was legal action. Sometimes women such as Susan B. Anthony went to vote, knowing it was illegal, just to highlight the injustice of being arrested or fined for exercising their voice as citizens.
By the 1900s, More Momentum Was Building for the Women’s Vote
The women's rights movement started as part of the abolitionist movement. Over the years different groups evolved, and the movement splintered somewhat. There's a lot of complexity to this story, which we don't have time to go into here.
By the time you get into the 1910s, momentum was building. By 1918, women were already voting for president in a number of states. Senators and congressmen who had been elected from those states started making Congress more receptive to the suffrage arguments.
And during World War I, when so many women were doing so such much to support the war, it became harder, even for President Wilson, to ignore their exclusion from the body politic. In fact, he used this rationale in urging Congress to pass the amendment.
Virginia Did Not Change its Own Constitution Until 1952
** It needs to be noted that the 19th Amendment did not enfranchise U.S. women who continued to be excluded from voting for reasons other than their sex. That included those who were not considered citizens (such as members of tribal organizations), those who were prevented by state Jim Crow laws, and those who lived in the District of Columbia.
About Nancy Tate
Nancy Tate is a longtime member of the Arlington League of Women Voters, now the League of Women Voters of Arlington and Alexandria City (LWV-AAC). She has served as president of the LWV-AAC and currently serves as chair of the history committee.
From 2000-2015, Tate served as the executive director of the National League of Women Voters, known as the League of Women Voters of the United States.
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization working to protect and expand voting rights. It operates at all levels—federal, state and local—to ensure everyone is represented in our democracy.