Last updated: February 10, 2022
Person
Ethel C. Mackenzie
Public domain.
Quick Facts
Significance:
Suffragist who fought for women's citizenship rights
Place of Birth:
Woodside, CA
Date of Birth:
March 12, 1885
Place of Death:
Palo Alto, CA
Date of Death:
April 4, 1959
Ethel C. Mackenzie was a white suffragist from California who married a Scottish national. When she tried to register to vote, officials turned her away. Under a 1907 law called the Expatriation Act, American women lost their own citizenship if they married men who were not U.S. citizens. In 1915, Mackenzie's challenge to the law went to the Supreme Court.
What does it mean to belong to a country?
Early Life
Ethel Coope was born in Woodside, California on March 12, 1885. Her parents J.F. and Bertha Coope were wealthy, white landowners in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. J.F. Coope was also a member of the Sempervirens Club, in which he and other wealthy, white men worked to “Save the Redwoods” and other natural resources. During the early 1900s, many wealthy, white Californians supported the conservation of the redwoods, including women in the California Club. Their efforts led to the creation of Big Basin Redwoods State Park.[1]
Ethel grew up in San Francisco and studied music.[2] On August 14, 1909, she married Mackenzie Gordon, a professional singer from Scotland and member of San Francisco’s elite Bohemian Club and Family Club.[3] The couple had one child, Mackenzie Gordon, Jr.
While living in San Francisco, Ethel Coope Mackenzie became involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. She joined the Club Woman’s Franchise League around 1911, the same year that Californians narrowly approved women's suffrage.
The Expatriation Act
After the referendum passed, Mackenzie tried to register to vote in January 1913. Local election officials rejected her application due to her marriage to a “foreign alien.” They based their decision on the Expatriation Act of 1907. Under this law, any American woman who married a man who was not a U.S. citizen took on the nationality of her husband, and consequently lost her citizenship. On the other hand, American men could marry non-citizen women without losing their U.S. citizenship. Furthermore, non-citizen wives took on the nationality of their American husbands.
The Expatriation Act was based on coverture, a common law precedent from the Middle Ages that linked a woman’s legal status to her husband. Under coverture, courts considered a husband and wife to be one legal "person." As a result, they could not be citizens of two different states. Coverture had also prevented married women from owning property and entering into contracts. Women's rights activists had criticized it for decades.
Under the Expatriation Act, Ethel Mackenzie could only regain her rights if her husband chose to naturalize. Although Mackenzie Gordon had lived in the United States for many years, he had not applied for citizenship.
Mackenzie v. Hare et al., Board of Election of San Francisco
Ethel Mackenzie sued San Francisco’s Election Commissioners to register as a voter. She based her argument on the Fourteenth Amendment’s natural-born citizen clause, which states that anyone who is born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen. Mackenzie argued that her citizenship “became a right, privilege, and immunity which could not be taken away from her except as a punishment for crime or by voluntary expatriation.”
When the California courts rejected Mackenzie’s argument, she took her case the Supreme Court of the United States. But in 1915, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that the Expatriation Act was constitutional. The Court viewed a married couple as a legal entity represented by the husband. Furthermore, Mackenzie’s decision to marry her husband was equivalent to “voluntary expatriation.”
Despite her frustration with the decision, Mackenzie urged her husband to naturalize, so that she could regain her citizenship and right to vote in state elections.
Independent Citizenship and Women’s Suffrage
Mackenzie v. Hare gained significant attention from local and national newspapers. Reporters portrayed Mackenzie as an advocate for American women. They also repeated attorneys’ claims that the case would be as significant as the pre-Civil War decision Dred Scott v. Sanford. The press helped Mackenzie to rally support for married women’s independent citizenship among women’s suffragists.
After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the League of Women Voters sought to help women regain their citizenship and voting rights. The League lobbied for the Cable Act, or Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, which partially repealed the Expatriation Act in 1922.
Under the Cable Act, white and Black American women who married white or Black foreign men could reapply for naturalization. Yet, American women still lost their citizenship if they married men who were ineligible for citizenship. Under the Immigration Act of 1924, all Asian immigrants were considered “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” As a result, Asian American women who married Asian men did not only lose their citizenship, but also became ineligible to reapply for it. Several states also had anti-miscegenation laws that prevented interracial marriage.
Later Life
On March 8, 1916, Mackenzie Gordon applied for U.S. citizenship. When his application was accepted, Ethel Mackenzie’s citizenship and associated rights were automatically restored. After the passage of the Cable Act, she told the press:
“I am glad that an injustice to women has at last been recognized. By gradual unfoldment women are winning equal rights with men. My fight was not brought for personal motives. It was a matter of principle with me. I feel that my fight was not in vain.”
Mackenzie remained a wealthy socialite in San Francisco. She traveled with her husband and mother to their winter home in Arizona. Mackenzie eventually moved to Palo Alto, California, where she died on April 4, 1959.
Places of Ethel C. Mackenzie
[1] The Headquarters Administration Building of Big Basin Redwoods State Park was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
[2] San Francisco is part of the Certified Local Government (CLG) program. CLGs partner with the National Park Service to promote local preservation.
[3] The Family Club building is a contributing property within the Lower Nob Hill Apartment Hotel District. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.
Bibliography
Brown, Tanya Ballard. “That Time American Women Lost Their Citizenship Because They Married Foreigners.” NPR Code Switch (podcast). March 17, 2017. Accessed November 22, 2021. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/17/520517665/that-time-american-women-lost-their-citizenship-because-they-married-foreigners.
Casey, Carey. “The History of the William Kerr House.” Online History Journal of Santa Cruz County (May 2021). Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. https://d2kr105htw9szj.cloudfront.net/uploads/The-Kerr-House.pdf?mtime=20210429181708&focal=none.
Desert Sun. “Mackenzie Gordon Here for Rest.” December 9, 1938. California Digital Newspaper Collection. Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. University of California, Riverside. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DS19381209.2.59.
“Ethel C. Mackenzie v. John P. Hare, et al.” The American Journal of International Law 8, no. 3 (July 1914): 665-672. Accessed December 2, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2187512.
The Evening Star. “Loses Her Citizenship by Wedding Foreigner.” April 7, 1915. Chronicling America. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/dlc_ixtl_ver01/data/sn83045462/00280658637/1915040701/0534.pdf.
Hacker, Meg. “When Saying ‘I Do’ Meant Giving Up Your U.S. Citizenship.” Prologue, Spring 2014. https://www.archives.gov/files/publications/prologue/2014/spring/citizenship.pdf.
Los Angeles Herald. “Calif. Wife of Foreigner in Fight before Highest U.S. Tribunal to Gain Ballot.” April 6, 1915. California Digital Newspaper Collection. Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. University of California, Riverside. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=LAH19150406.2.442.
New York Times. “To Be Citizen to Aid Wife.” March 9, 1916. https://nyti.ms/3GUeDxy.
San Francisco Call. “S. F. Woman in Victory on Alien Rights.” September 22, 1922. California Digital Newspaper Collection. Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. University of California, Riverside. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19220922.2.143.
San Francisco Call. “Demands to Know if Birthright Does Not Surpass Wedding Ceremony.” September 1, 1913. California Digital Newspaper Collection. Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research. University of California, Riverside. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19130901.2.21.
Shanahan, Brendan. “Biography of Ethel Mackenzie (a.k.a. Ethel Gordon), 1885-1959.” Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States. Edited By Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar. Accessed December 2, 2021. https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1009638389.
Volpp, Leti. “Divesting Citizenship: On Asian American History and the Loss of Citizenship through Marriage.” UCLA Law Review 53, no. 405 (2005): 405-483.
The content for this article was researched and written by Jade Ryerson, an intern with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education.