I’m spending some time looking at the women’s suffrage movement—not the big sweeping arc of the movement, the major events or the big names, but the smaller stories within the story.[1]

I’m finding some fascinating stuff. But the most unusual thing I’ve found so far is a fundraising event called the hopperie.

Mrs. Norman Whitehouse, chair of the New York State Women’s Suffrage Party, testing the hopperie

Held at Luna Park at Coney Island in June 1915, the hopperie sounds like an extreme version of hopscotch. The game was played on circular staircase with steps representing the various states, which were marked as having suffrage, partial suffrage, or no suffrage.[2] The player started at the bottom on one foot and hopped up the incline, jumping over states where women didn’t have the vote and landing on those that did. (My sources are unclear on whether or not you could land on states with near suffrage.) You weren’t allowed to change which foot you jumped on as you went. Anyone who made it to the top won a box of “suffrage caramels.”

According to the New York Sun, getting to the top “necessitated good wind and fairly muscular calves.” Personally, I think it sounds impossible. But hundreds of New Yorkers paid a nickel for the privilege of “hopping for suffrage.” How many of the “hoppers” believed in the cause and how many just wanted to play the newest game on the midway is uncertain.

Click HERE if you want to see a picture of suffragists in action on the hopperie

[1] I suppose you could consider this a hint about the book proposal I’m working on, but only in the smallest possible way.
[2] A three-dimensional interactive variation on the “suffrage map” that suffragists used as a way to show the spread of suffrage.