Caroline Lexow Babcock: All Men Are Created Equal

CAROLINE LEXOW BABCOCK: THE UNSUNG HERO

In the perambulatory clause of the United States Constitution it states that “All men are created equal”, however this statement is extremely false. Up until the election of 1920, national Woman’s suffrage was not found in the United Sates. Many women across the country fought for this cause of equality; such as Caroline Lexow Babcock, a Nyack suffragist. Babcock fought in the name of Suffrage for nearly a decade. Although she did not succeed in gaining suffrage for woman in the 1915 New York State referendum her actions were not in vein. By fighting for woman’s right to vote, through The Women’s Political Union (of which she was the field secretary) she paved the way for woman’s suffragists to
Babcock was born on February 5th, 1882 in Nyack, New York, to Katherine and Clarence Lexow. “Katharine Morton Ferris, was an energetic woman with a questing mind and sharp sense of justice who regularly challenged the serenity of the local women’s clubs with discussions of independence for women as envisioned by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or civil disobedience as practiced by Mahatma Gandhi. Clarence Lexow, Caroline’s Father, was a New York attorney who served as a state senator from 1894 to 1898 and became chairman of the Tammany-smashing Lexow Commission. (One result of the Commission’s disclosures was to project Theodore Roosevelt to national attention, first as a courageous police commissioner and later as governor of New York.)”[1] Having her Father be such an important man, Babcock was always exposed to the political atmosphere that surrounded her childhood and adolescence. However she never understood why although her mother was just as educated on current issues as her father why her mother could not vote. “It struck me, very young, that it was extraordinary my father could vote and my mother could not. I thought it was an indignity. I couldn’t endure the thought that she was denied such a basic right of citizenship”1. When lexow was old enough to make a platform for her own opinions they seemed to contradict her fathers, he being very
Although she was attending collage her father had one condition; that she must come home for all of his political events; so even when she was away at collage, politics were still a main part of her life. This did not help her relationship with Clarence. As she progressed in school Babcock formed more of her own opinions that were more and more in opposition to her father’s. “While in school Caroline’s interest in suffrage was starting to peek due to influences that surrounded her. Babcock sighed up for an economics class through Columbia. The coerce was taught by future President Woodrow Wilson. After attending the first two classes Babcock was in for a sexist roadblock, as she went to attend her 3rd class, and a sign was there to meet her reading “NO WOMEN ALOUD” ” 2. This incident was one of Babcock’s first encounters with true sexism facing woman of that time period; and peeked her interest in the cause of woman’s rights in America. Being such an educated woman in ways of Politics, Babcock knew the way of the game. This was a tremendous advantage when she started her work in suffrage. “In 1908, she was invited by Miss M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr, to become executive secretary of the National College Equal Suffrage League of which Miss Thomas was