Suffrage Tea at Wilson Presidential Library Offers a Taste of History and Ingenuity

Tea was considered a high-society event, Emily Kilgore, director of education and engagement at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, told the Daily Progress. Women were allowed to leave their children and leave the house to have tea. You can talk politics and you won’t get in trouble because you went to tea.

The connections between women’s gatherings and women’s rights will be explored at the Suffragette Tea, which will take place at 3 p.m. on Aug. 24 at the Presidential Library at 20 N. Coalter St. in Staunton. The event will honor a tea hosted by hostess Jane Hunt on July 9, 1848, in Waterloo, New York, and attended by prominent suffragists Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Mary Ann McClintock and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

These five early members of the national women's suffrage movement got together in a room and said, 'We're going to have this conversation,'” Kilgore said. And that's how the Seneca Falls Convention was born. They had tea and said, 'How can we make this happen for everybody? How can we make this a federal issue?'

The Seneca Falls Convention, held in July of that year, is considered the first women's rights convention in the United States.

At the Staunton event, visitors will meet costumed characters from the suffrage era, courtesy of the performers of the Medieval Fantasies Company. A tea and refreshments will trace the era back to the special tea blend. Yes, there were indeed suffrage tea brands, including Equality Tea, Votes for Women Tea and other blends.

“I love talking about the history of tea and food,” Kilgore said. Restaurants and cafes that supported the movement began selling this tea. It’s a great way to sell propaganda, for lack of a better word, for women’s suffrage.

There are many stories to tell. Women who wanted to talk or learn more about the national effort to win American women’s suffrage found ways to gather in arenas where they were allowed to operate without judgment or gossip. Wealthy women could regularly escape the running of their homes to join their friends at ladies’ tea rooms, and the menu often included more than cakes and scones.

By 1807, all states had denied women the right to vote in elections. At the Seneca Falls Convention, delegates adopted the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for the right to vote and other expressions of gender equality.

Kilgore said the women's suffrage movement put its own spin on the tradition of community cookbook fundraising. Women would gather for cooking classes and watch dishes prepared from cookbook recipes that raised money for women's suffrage efforts. At a time when many housewives still couldn't read and thus couldn't follow newspaper articles about the suffrage struggle, women would go out to do laundry and talk to their wives about the suffrage movement, Kilgore said.

These women knew the only way to reach women was to talk about it, Kilgore said.

Wilson was in the White House during World War I, when suffragists were drawing attention to the fact that American soldiers were fighting overseas for democratic rights that were being denied to their mothers and wives at home. In 1918, Wilson announced his support for what became known as the Voting Rights Amendment. His presidential museum sells replicas of the Votes for Women teapots, cups, and saucers that Alva Vanderbilt Belmont placed before guests at Marble House, her Rhode Island cottage, during the teas she frequently hosted to support the suffragists' quest.

The Staunton Voting Rights Tea is timed to coincide with National Women's Equality Day, which honors the day the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was officially certified by Congress on August 26, 1920, granting women the right to vote.

Remember to make your reservations before August 1st and remember to wear suffrage-themed or suffrage-era clothing.