page_title: Lillie Devereux Blake
section_title: Suffrage
hierarchical_section_title: Lillie Devereux Blake / Career / Suffrage
caption_attribution_description: English: Lillie Devereux Blake
context_page_description: Lillie Devereux Blake was an American woman suffragist, reformer, and writer, born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and educated in New Haven, Connecticut.
  In her early years, Blake wrote several novels and for the press. In 1869, she became actively interested in the woman suffrage movement and devoted herself to pushing the reform, arranging conventions, getting up public meetings, writing articles and occasionally making lecture tours. A woman of strong affections and marked domestic tastes, she did not allow her public work to interfere with her home duties, and her speaking outside of New York City was almost wholly done in the summer, when her family was naturally scattered. In 1872, she published a novel called Fettered for Life, designed to show the many disadvantages under which women labor. In 1873, she made an application for the opening of Columbia College to young women as well as young men, presenting a class of girl students qualified to enter the university. The agitation then begun led to the establishment of Barnard College.
  In 1879 she was unanimously elected president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association, an office which she held for eleven years.
context_section_description: In 1866, she married Grinfill Blake, a wealthy New York merchant, and since that time, made her home in that city.
  Blake testified before the New York Constitutional Commission of 1873 in support for women's suffrage. Along with Matilda Joslyn Gage, she signed the 1876 Centennial Women's Rights Declaration. She was president of the New York State Woman's Suffrage Association from 1879 to 1890 and of the New York City Woman's Suffrage League from 1886 to 1900. Blake was also the chair of the National American Women's Suffrage Association's Committee on legislative Advice from 1895, when it was founded, until 1899, when it was effectively dissolved by Susan B. Anthony. 
  Finally, Blake completely broke ties with the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1900 when Susan B. Anthony, who was retiring as the leader of the organization, selected Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard to succeed her. Blake had withdrawn her candidacy in the interests of harmony.  Indeed, Blake and Anthony had for years disagreed on the basic purpose of the women's movement. Anthony wanted to focus solely on suffrage; Blake wanted to pursue a broader course of reform. This split in strategy was caused by a deeper theoretical divide.  Blake developed a theory of gender that was radical for her time.  She argued that gender roles are learned behaviors, and that women and men shared a common nature.  Therefore, women should have the same rights as men in all areas.  Anthony and her followers instead emphasized the unique nature of women, their separate sphere, and innate moral authority as justification for their right to suffrage.  This conflict, among others that Blake took part in, helps to explain the way she is remembered, or not remembered, in the context of the woman's movement.
caption: Lillie Devereux Blake (1894)
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