The Carbon County Commissioners’ meeting room has a framed row of portraits of former Commissioners. No female commissioners appear in the entire lineup. The three recently-elected commissioners are also male.
Perhaps we should not be surprised. In 1915 a referendum on women’s suffrage failed in Carbon County by a vote of 3034 against and 2685 for. Amazingly, every county in the “northern tier” favored women’s suffrage, as did most of the western part of the state. The Pennsylvania Dutch counties–Lancaster, Berks, Lehigh, Lebanon, York, Northampton–all were opposed to the right of women to vote.
Incidentally, the Republican anti-choice candidate for the Supreme Court also won Carbon this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment