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Introduction The fight for suffrage in the United States hit its crescendo just as mov- ies became the newest leisure-time occupation. Naturally, then, many silent films used suffragettes as characters, sometimes mocking them in comedies, sometimes criticizing them in dramas, and sometimes supporting their cause. None then—or yet—went backward in history to cover the begin- nings of women’s suffrage, which date to the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1789. That document granted states the power of setting voting requirement, and most only offered the elective franchise to property- owning or tax-paying white males, but New Jersey offered voting rights to unmarried or widowed women who held property, regardless of their color. That lasted until 1807, when due to political machinations and recognition that no other state had followed suit, New Jersey ended the right. The largest early gathering to acknowledge a need for women to own the right to vote came in 1848, when five prominent female abolitionists thought it time to discuss giving women more political autonomy. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary M’Clintock, Martha Coffin Wright, and Jane Hunt put out a call and eventually three hundred women—and men, including famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass—met in the Wesleyan Cha- pel in Seneca Falls, New York. From July 19 to 20, 1848, they debated and then created a Declaration of Sentiments patterned after the Declaration of Independence. It opened with a similar phrase and one small, yet also large, word change: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.” The document included nineteen grievances and eleven resolutions, among them the right to vote, which remained so controversial in that era that many women left the movement before it officially began. Those who