We went to Huntsville, Texas to visit the Sam Houston Museum and found ourselves in the main museum where they had a display on the Texas suffrage movement. When we were in Maine we went to the Maine State Museum where there was also a display on the women's suffrage movement. Now we learn about Texas and other women involved in the movement.
Beginning in the 19th century, thousands of women across the United States campaigned relentlessly for women suffrage ~~ the right for women to vote. Participants in the movement believed that securing the vote was essential for women to achieve economic, political, and social equality. Through hundreds of organized state and local campaigns, suffragists held meetings, lobbied legislatures, circulated flyers and petitions, and canvassed door-to-door in an effort to gain widespread support for their cause. Their tireless work led to the adaptation of the 19th Amendment in 1920 -- the single largest expansion of voting rights in American history.
The suffrage movement is often portrayed as one led by women that culminated successfully in 1920. The movement was, in fact, quite diverse and crossed international borders. It was also profoundly segregated and not exempt from racial injustice. After passage of the 19th Amendment, which declared that states could not discriminate in voting on the basis of sex, millions of women of color were still barred from the polls. It took nearly 50 more years and a new generation of activists to make the promise of the amendment a reality for many Americans, including women of color, through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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| Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, 1881 |
Disagreement over whether or not to support the 15th Amendment, which granted Black men the right to vote, led to a division in the women's rights movement. By 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. The pair believed women's rights activists should fight for women to be included as well, rather than support the amendment in its current form.
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| Frances E.W. Harper, 1898 |
In 1869, the American Equal Rights Association formally dissolved when Anthony and Stanton became angry over the newly-drafted 15th Amendment. Lucy Stone and others, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Mary Livermore, founded the American Woman Suffrage Association.
The women suffrage movement was a decades-long fight for women to gain the right to vote in the United States. The campaign for women's right to vote arose among abolitionists in the years leading up to the Civil War but lost momentum when the war began. After the war and the abolition of slavery, deliberations among early women's rights advocates and former abolitionists led to the formation of the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, with its express purpose "to secure equal rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex."
In Texas, woman suffrage work began shortly after the Civil War. Although Texas had been a Confederate state, some suffragists living in Texas were former abolitionists who publicly advocated for women's right to vote.
After the Civil War, the Reconstruction period began June 19, 1865, when all enslaved persons in Texas were declared free. Three constitutional conventions were held in the following years - the first in 1866 was unsuccessful, the second in 1868-69, and the final in 1875. Because all elected officials in Texas were men until the late 1910s, the aid of male officeholders was essential for woman suffrage to succeed, and a number of Texas elected officials supported women's right to vote.
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| George Ruby, 13th Texas Legislature, 1873 |
George T. Ruby served in the Texas legislature from 1870 to 1874. He was a prominent Black voice in Texas politics. Ruby was consistent in his support of women's suffrage, voting "yes" on the issue during the 1868-69 convention and signing a strong pro-suffrage resolution in the 1873 legislature.
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| Ebenezer Lafayette "E.L." Dohoney, 13th Texas Legislature, 1873 |
Attorney, newspaper publisher, political leader, prohibition reformer, Dohoney served as a Texas legislature and later as a delegate at the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875, where he chaired the Suffrage Committee. His advocacy for woman suffrage lasted until his death in 1919.
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| Martha Goodwin Tunstall |
Ms. Tunstall served as the Texas vice president for the National Suffrage Association upon its founding in 1869. For more than a decade, Tunstall corresponded with national suffrage leaders, lobbied lawmakers, and sent pro-suffrage pieces for publication in Texas newspapers. The first suffrage organization in Texas, referred to in newspapers as the "Friends of Female Suffrage in Austin," formed in 1868-69 in conjunction with the state's constitutional convention, Martha Tunstall addressed the group in early 1869 shortly before the convention's last vote on the issue.
The Public Crusade: Temperance began in the early 1800s as a movement to limit drinking and other vices in the United States. Women were often involved in temperance societies or temperance advocacy in the U.S. Because of this, many pro-temperance office holders and leaders thought women voters would be supportive of temperance laws. Temperance and suffrage networks continued to grow -- the two often linked in both reform work and public advocacy -- in the years following Reconstruction in Texas. Members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) traveled across the state to speak about woman suffrage and women's reform activities.
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| Sophia Alice Callahan |
An active member of the Muskogee WCTU, Sophia Callahan was born in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1868. Her father, Samuel Callahan, was an influential leader in the Muskogee (Creek) Nation. In her 1891 novel, Wynema, A Child of the Forest, she included woman suffrage arguments and described aspects of Creek culture. The novel is considered to be the first novel published in the U.S. by a Native American woman.
The WCTU was an internally segregated organization. Black women worked in divisions at the local, state, and national levels headed by Black women leaders under the direction of of white WCTU state and national women leaders. In 1898, Texarkana resident Eliza Eubanks Peterson became the president for the African American state division and, in 1909, became superintendent of the national division.
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| Eliza Eubanks Peterson, 1908 |
Eliza Peterson traveled around Texas as a leader of the segregated division for Black women of the WCTU. As part of her advocacy for temperance, Peterson also championed women suffrage.
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| Lucy Thurman |
In 1897, national African American WCTU division head Lucy Thurman toured Texas, organizing local temperance unions for Black women in the state.
In 1890, the National Women Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). With one nationally dominant woman suffrage association, NAWSA leaders prioritized the creation of state suffrage affiliates, especially in the south. In 1892, NAWSA executive and Kentucky suffrage leader Laura Clay recruited Rebecca Henry Hayes to serve as NAWSA vice president for Texas.
In 1893, Hayes and ten other Texas women called for a convention to organize the first statewide woman suffrage organization, the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA). Hayes was elected as TERA's first president along with a slate of officers. TERA's leadership was exclusively white, and the association was segregated. Within its first year, factions formed along political party affiliation lines, and pre-TERA alliances divided its leaders. As a result, Hayes was ousted as TERA president at the 1895 state convention and replaced with Elizabeth Good Houston, the daughter-in-law of Texas political and military leader Sam Houston.
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| Dr. Grace Danforth |
Dr. Grace Danforth was a well-known Texas physician and Populist. She was a founding member of the Texas Equal Rights Association and helped write a formal eight-point plan that focused on educating the public on the need for woman suffrage.
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| Annette Finnigan |
Annette Finnigan was elected the next state suffrage president in 1914. Over the following year, she led a team of suffragists in lobbying the Texas Legislature fort a woman suffrage law. Galveston suffrage president Minnie Fisher Cunningham quickly became an essential member of the lobbying and suffrage organizing team and was elected TWSA president in 1915 when Finnigan stepped down. TWSA subsequently changed its name to the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA).
Born in Laredo, Texas in 1885, Jovita Idar wrote the first of her family's numerous pro-suffrage newspaper articles in 1911 under the pen name Astrea. Other Spanish language newspapers soon joined the Idars in their positive coverage of suffrage. In 1911, Idar became the first president of the Liga Femenil Mexicanista (League of Mexican Women), one of the first known attempts by Mexican American women to unite for a social and political cause.
La Cruz Blanca was a voluntary infirmary and relief service established during the Mexican Revolution to care for those wounded in the conflict. When the Red Cross refused to treat revolutionaries, Leonor Villegas de Magnon founded the White Cross to treat all combatants. Jovita Idar, her sister Elvira, and other members of the Idar family and Laredo community served as nurses and spies for the revolutionaries from 1913 to 1917.
Opposition to woman suffrage took a variety of forms. The organized liquor interest was strongly anti-suffrage, fearing that enfranchised women would vote for prohibition (law-enforced temperance). Women anti-suffragists organized the Texas Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in 1916 led by Mrs. James B. Wells, the wife of a South Texas political boss.
This suffrage map shows the spread of votes for women around the country. Opponents of woman suffrage had long held that granting women the right to vote would endanger white supremacy by allowing Black women to vote.
In 1915, Jane Y. McCallum was elected president of the Austin Woman Suffrage Association and faced heated criticism as she campaigned for women's voting rights. Undaunted, she gave speeches, wrote newspaper columns, and lobbied legislators.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham was a dynamic suffrage leader. As a skilled speaker and an able political negotiator, she served as the Texas state suffrage president from 1915-1920 ~~ longer than anyone else in the movement.
Eleven states were successful in getting presidential suffrage, and four states passed full suffrage in 1917 and 1918. Carrie Chapman Catt directed Texas suffragists to work for presidential suffrage, but they discovered that elected officials were not supportive of the idea. Minnie Fisher Cunningham approached Catt with a different idea: Texas suffragists would pursue woman's right to vote in political party primary elections.
Active in El Paso's women's clubs and the NAACP, Maude Sampson Williams founded the El Paso Negro Woman's Civic and Enfranchisement League in 1918. Williams wrote to the NAWSA asking to affiliate directly but was ultimately denied when NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt wrote telling TESA president Minnie Fisher Cunningham to refuse the request. Steadfast in her efforts, Williams continued working as an activist and champion for Black rights for the rest of her life.
In 1920, Christia Adair and a group of Black women in Kingsville went to vote on primary election day but were ultimately turned away for being Black. Adair went on to become the executive secretary for the Houston branch of the NAACP, where she helped many Texans achieve equal access to public schools, libraries, transportation, and VA hospitals. In 1974, the Houston chapter of the National Organization for Women honored her for her suffrage activism.
Enacted by the state legislature in 1902 to prevent minorities from voting, a poll tax was required from Texas voters before they could cast their ballot. The Primary Suffrage Act of 1918 exempted women from paying the poll tax for that year only, making them eligible to vote in the July primary of that year. The poll tax was mandatory until 1964, when the federal government made it illegal in federal elections.
Civil Rights Activist Juanita Craft was the first Black woman in Dallas County to vote in the Democratic Party primary following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Serving more than 50 years with the Dallas branch of the NAACP, Craft played a crucial role in integrating The University of Texas School of Law and North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas), the 1954 Texas State Fair, and multiple Dallas theaters and restaurants. She served two terms as a Dallas city councilwoman in the 1970s, where she fought for equal rights for all area residents including Blacks, Latinos, members of the LGBTQ community, and American Indians.
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| Mary Eleanor Brackenridge |
In 1910, Mary Eleanor Brackenridge was chosen by NAWSA President Anna Howard Shaw to lead a reorganization of a Texas state suffrage association. A leading clubwoman with the level of influence to bring women from across the state together, Brackenridge helped successfully organize the San Antonio Woman Suffrage Association. Over 300 women joined, making it the largest woman suffrage organization in Texas at that point. In 1913, Brackenridge called for a state convention to reorganize the TWSA. Many white women from across the state, considered socially elite in their communities, participated.
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| Juana Belen Gutierrez de Mendoza |
After being jailed and forced to leave Mexico for criticizing the dictatorial regime of President Porfirio Diaz, Ms. de Mendoza lived in San Antonio and Laredo before returning to Mexico and co-organizing a woman suffrage petition.
The woman suffrage movement transcended national borders. While the right to vote focused on individual governments, women all over the world found inspiration and connection with like-minded women. In June 1911, Ms. de Mendoza co-organized hundreds of women to petition Mexico's interim government shortly after the removal of dictator Porfirio Diaz. Gutierrez was part of a transnational feminist network that included poet and journalist Sara Estela Ramirez, La Cruz Blanca (The White Cross) founder Leonor Villegas de Magnon, and journalist and reformer Jovita Idar.
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| Jovita Idar, 1905 |
Born in Laredo, Texas in 1885, Jovita Idar wrote the first of her family's numerous pro-suffrage newspaper articles in 1911 under the pen name Astrea. Other Spanish language newspapers soon joined the Idars in their positive coverage of suffrage. In 1911, Idar became the first president of the Liga Femenil Mexicanista (League of Mexican Women), one of the first known attempts by Mexican American women to unite for a social and political cause.
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| Leonor Villegas de Magnon (left) and Jovita Idar working with La Cruz Blanca (The White Cross), 1913 |
La Cruz Blanca was a voluntary infirmary and relief service established during the Mexican Revolution to care for those wounded in the conflict. When the Red Cross refused to treat revolutionaries, Leonor Villegas de Magnon founded the White Cross to treat all combatants. Jovita Idar, her sister Elvira, and other members of the Idar family and Laredo community served as nurses and spies for the revolutionaries from 1913 to 1917.
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| Headquarters of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, ca. 1911 |
Opposition to woman suffrage took a variety of forms. The organized liquor interest was strongly anti-suffrage, fearing that enfranchised women would vote for prohibition (law-enforced temperance). Women anti-suffragists organized the Texas Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage in 1916 led by Mrs. James B. Wells, the wife of a South Texas political boss.
Anti-suffrage politicians frequently argued that granting women the right to vote was a threat to white supremacy. Joseph W. Bailey, a United States Senator from Texas, was opposed to woman suffrage throughout his political career and denounced it "as an open invitation to the federal government to force Black voting rights on the South."
This suffrage map shows the spread of votes for women around the country. Opponents of woman suffrage had long held that granting women the right to vote would endanger white supremacy by allowing Black women to vote.
In 1916, NAWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled her "Winning Plan" to get a federal suffrage amendment passed. Her multi-part initiative consisted of different directives for different states. Suffragists in the eleven states where women already had the vote would take immediate action toward the passage of a federal amendment. In the states that were likely to pass full suffrage, activists and NAWSA organizers would continue running aggressive campaigns to secure the vote for women. In the states where full suffrage remained improbable, suffragists would focus their efforts on obtaining the right for women to vote specifically in U.S. presidential elections.
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| Jane Yelvington McCallum |
In 1915, Jane Y. McCallum was elected president of the Austin Woman Suffrage Association and faced heated criticism as she campaigned for women's voting rights. Undaunted, she gave speeches, wrote newspaper columns, and lobbied legislators.
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| Minnie Fisher Cunningham |
Eleven states were successful in getting presidential suffrage, and four states passed full suffrage in 1917 and 1918. Carrie Chapman Catt directed Texas suffragists to work for presidential suffrage, but they discovered that elected officials were not supportive of the idea. Minnie Fisher Cunningham approached Catt with a different idea: Texas suffragists would pursue woman's right to vote in political party primary elections.
Texas suffragists originally planned on getting a primary suffrage law passed in 1917, but the U.S. entered WWI that summer and Texas Governor James Ferguson was impeached and removed from office, making for a full legislative season. Even though he was barred from ever holding office again, Ferguson defied the legislative order and ran in the 1918 Democratic primary election for governor. Minnie Fisher Cunningham approached Texas political leaders with a deal: if legislators would agree to pass a primary woman suffrage law, suffragists across the state would use their networks to keep Ferguson from winning the election.
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| Registering to vote at the Travis County Courthouse, Austin |
"360,000 women are registered to vote exceeds estimate;" "Tremendous vote is being cast all over Texas; women voting," Denton Record Chronicle, 1918. After Texas women gained the right to vote in state primary elections, suffrage leaders launched massive recruiting efforts to register women as voters before the next election on July 17, 1918. 360,000 registered before the deadline.
In Texas full woman suffrage required an amendment to the state constitution. Primary woman suffrage was easier to obtain, requiring simple majorities in the House and Senate and governor approval. The primary suffrage bill, introduced by San Angelo representative Charles B. Metcalfe, was passed by the Texas Legislature on March 21, 1918, and was signed into law by Governor William P. Hobby on March 26, 1918. Woman could now vote in Texas state primaries.
Only women who lived in cities of a certain size had to register in advance to vote in the primary, according to the woman suffrage primary law. Complicated suffrage laws were a way to disenfranchise voters who were not a part of political insiders' information networks. As a result, confused potential voters were discouraged from participating, and those registering voters were provided additional opportunities to turn away those whom they did not want to vote.
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| Maude Sampson Williams (L) at registration table of the NAACP meeting in Dallas, 1954 |
Active in El Paso's women's clubs and the NAACP, Maude Sampson Williams founded the El Paso Negro Woman's Civic and Enfranchisement League in 1918. Williams wrote to the NAWSA asking to affiliate directly but was ultimately denied when NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt wrote telling TESA president Minnie Fisher Cunningham to refuse the request. Steadfast in her efforts, Williams continued working as an activist and champion for Black rights for the rest of her life.
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| Christia Adair, 1920 |
In 1920, Christia Adair and a group of Black women in Kingsville went to vote on primary election day but were ultimately turned away for being Black. Adair went on to become the executive secretary for the Houston branch of the NAACP, where she helped many Texans achieve equal access to public schools, libraries, transportation, and VA hospitals. In 1974, the Houston chapter of the National Organization for Women honored her for her suffrage activism.
Enacted by the state legislature in 1902 to prevent minorities from voting, a poll tax was required from Texas voters before they could cast their ballot. The Primary Suffrage Act of 1918 exempted women from paying the poll tax for that year only, making them eligible to vote in the July primary of that year. The poll tax was mandatory until 1964, when the federal government made it illegal in federal elections.
The final push for Congress to pass the federal amendment for women suffrage took place in Washington, D.C. in 1919. Both Texas senators and 10 of the 18 Texas House members in Congress supported the amendment. After passing in Congress, "Feddy," as the suffragists warmly called the federal suffrage amendment, went to the existing 48 states for ratification. On June 28, 1919, the Texas legislature became the first state in the south and the 9th in the nation to ratify the amendment. In August 1920, the amendment achieved final ratification, granting full suffrage to women nationwide. U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the Certificate of Ratification on August 26, 1920, officially making the 19th Amendment part of the Constitution. Opposed to suffrage, Colby refused suffragists requests for a public signing ceremony that could be photographed and filmed, instead signing the proclamation at his home. Today, August 26 is known as "Women's Equality Day" in the United States.
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| Women delegates to the National Democratic Convention in San Francisco, April 1920 |
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| Juanita Craft |
Civil Rights Activist Juanita Craft was the first Black woman in Dallas County to vote in the Democratic Party primary following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Serving more than 50 years with the Dallas branch of the NAACP, Craft played a crucial role in integrating The University of Texas School of Law and North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas), the 1954 Texas State Fair, and multiple Dallas theaters and restaurants. She served two terms as a Dallas city councilwoman in the 1970s, where she fought for equal rights for all area residents including Blacks, Latinos, members of the LGBTQ community, and American Indians.
The passage of the 19th Amendment in August 1920 was a watershed moment, but not all women gained the right to vote. Discriminatory voting practices still prevented women of color from casting their ballots, and women across Texas and the United States continued to fight for decades against threats of violence and intimidation to secure universal suffrage. As leaders and members of numerous civil rights and educational organizations, including the NAACP, League of United Latin American Citizens, League of Women Voters of Texas, and many others, Texas women participated in lawsuits to overturn poll taxes, the white primary system, voter identification requirements, and other restrictive election laws and practices. People of color, including Black communities in many states, were blocked from full participation until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited racial discrimination at the polls and protected voting rights across the country.
sounds pretty socialist to me loser
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