Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an American abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States.
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1900 to 1904 and 1915 to 1920. She founded the League of Women Voters in 1920 and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904, which was later named International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920". She "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women."
Mary Church Terrell was an American civil rights activist, journalist, teacher and one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She taught in the Latin Department at the M Street School —the first African American public high school in the nation—in Washington, DC. In 1895, she was the first African-American woman in the United States to be appointed to the school board of a major city, serving in the District of Columbia until 1906. Terrell was a charter member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the Colored Women's League of Washington (1892). She helped found the National Association of Colored Women (1896) and served as its first national president, and she was a founding member of the National Association of College Women (1923).
Mary Stafford Anthony was an American suffragist during the women's rights movement of the 19th century. Anthony was employed as a school teacher in Western New York, and was eventually promoted to the position of principal within the Rochester City School District, where she was the first woman known to receive equal pay with men in the same job.
Naomi Bowman Talbert Anderson was an African American suffragist, temperance leader, civil rights activist, and writer who advocated for equal rights for all genders and races in the 1870s. She wrote poetry and gave speeches highlighting the experience of African American women who were still enslaved by their inability to vote, receiving considerable praise from other suffragists for her contributions to the movement.
Elizabeth Piper Ensley, was an educator and an African-American suffragist. Born in Massachusetts, Ensley was a teacher on the eastern coast of the country. She moved to Colorado where she achieved prominence as a leader in the Colorado suffrage movement. She was also a journalist, activist, and a leader and founder of local women's clubs.
Adella Hunt Logan was an African-American writer, educator, administrator and suffragist. Born during the Civil War, she earned her teaching credentials at Atlanta University, an historically black college founded by the American Missionary Association. She became a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute and became an activist for education and suffrage for women of color. As part of her advocacy, she published articles in some of the most noted black periodicals of her time.
Women's suffrage in Virginia was granted in 1920, with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. The General Assembly, Virginia's governing legislative body, did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1952. The argument for women's suffrage in Virginia began in 1870, but it did not gain traction until 1909 with the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. Between 1912 and 1916, Virginia's suffragists would bring the issue of women's voting rights to the floor of the General Assembly three times, petitioning for an amendment to the state constitution giving women the right to vote; they were defeated each time. During this period, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and its fellow Virginia suffragists fought against a strong anti-suffragist movement that tapped into conservative, post-Civil War values on the role of women, as well as racial fears. After achieving suffrage in August 1920, over 13,000 women registered within one month to vote for the first time in the 1920 United States presidential election.
This timeline provides an overview of the political movement for women's suffrage in California. Women's suffrage became legal with the passage of Proposition 4 in 1911 yet not all women were enfranchised as a result of this legislation.
Women's suffrage in California refers to the political struggle for voting rights for women in the state of California. The movement began in the 19th century and was successful with the passage of Proposition 4 on October 10, 1911. Many of the women and men involved in this movement remained politically active in the national suffrage movement with organizations such as the National American Women's Suffrage Association and the National Woman's Party.
Maude E. Craig Sampson Williams was an American suffragist, teacher, civil rights leader, and community activist in El Paso, Texas. In June 1918, she formed the El Paso Negro Woman's Civic and Equal Franchise League and requested membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) through the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), but was denied. Williams organized African-American women to register and vote in the Texas Democratic Party primary in July 1918. She was one of the founders and a charter member of the El Paso chapter of the NAACP, which was the first chapter in the state of Texas. Williams served as the vice president of the El Paso chapter from 1917 to 1924 and remained active in the NAACP until her death. Williams played a significant role in the desegregation of Texas Western College in 1955, which was the first undergraduate college in Texas to be desegregated by a court order other than that of the Supreme Court of the United States. Midwestern University (now known as Midwestern State University was previously ordered to desegregate in 1954 by the SCOTUS immediately following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Phyllis Terrell Langston was a suffragist and civil rights activist. She worked alongside her mother, Mary Church Terrell, in the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the White House pickets during demonstrations made by the National Woman's Party.
Even before women's suffrage in Rhode Island efforts took off, women were fighting for equal male suffrage during the Dorr Rebellion. Women raised money for the Dorrite cause, took political action and kept members of the rebellion in exile informed. An abolitionist, Paulina Wright Davis, chaired and attended women's rights conferences in New England and later, along with Elizabeth Buffum Chace, founded the Rhode Island Women's Suffrage Association (RIWSA) in 1868. This group petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for an amendment to the state constitution to provide women's suffrage. For many years, RIWSA was the major group providing women's suffrage action in Rhode Island. In 1887, a women's suffrage amendment to the state constitution came up for a voter referendum. The vote, on April 6, 1887, was decisively against women's suffrage.
Women's suffrage in Illinois began in the mid 1850s. The first women's suffrage group was formed in Earlville, Illinois by the cousin of Susan B. Anthony, Susan Hoxie Richardson. After the Civil War, former abolitionist, Mary Livermore, organized the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association (IWSA) which would later be renamed the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (IESA). Frances Willard and other suffragists in the IESA worked to lobby various government entities for women's suffrage. In the 1870s, women were allowed to serve on school boards and were elected to that office. The first women to vote in Illinois were 15 women in Lombard, Illinois led by Ellen A. Martin who found a loophole in the law in 1891. Women were eventually allowed to vote for school offices in the 1890s. Women in Chicago and throughout Illinois fought for the right to vote based on the idea of no taxation without representation. They also continued to expand their efforts throughout the state. In 1913, women in Illinois were successful in gaining partial suffrage. They became the first women east of the Mississippi River to have the right to vote in Presidential elections. Suffragists then worked to register women to vote. Both African-American and white suffragists registered women in huge numbers. In Chicago alone 200,000 women were registered to vote. After gaining partial suffrage, women in Illinois kept working towards full suffrage. The state became the first to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, passing the ratification on June 10, 1919. The League of Women Voters (LWV) was announced in Chicago on February 14, 1920.
Augusta Theodosia Lewis Chissell was an African-American suffragist and civic leader in Baltimore, Maryland. Chissell was a leader in multiple community organizations, including as a founding member of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP. In 2019 she was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame for her work in promoting women's rights and racial equity.
Mary J. Johnson Woodlen (1870-1933) was an influential suffragist in Wilmington, Delaware. She was vice president of the Wilmington chapter of NAACP, a founding member of the Wilmington Equal Suffrage Study Club, and a major religious speaker at Methodist churches in the area.
Margaret Briggs Gregory Hawkins, worked as a schoolteacher and later became known for her activism on behalf of African Americans and women. She was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2021.
Kate Gannett Wells was an American writer and social reformer, and a prominent member of the anti-suffragist movement in the United States. Wells served on the Massachusetts Board of Education for twenty-four years beginning in 1888 and was a vice president of the New England Women's Club. She also published several books, including the novel In the Clearings (1884) and the nonfiction work Campobello: An Historical Sketch.