"Shoulder to Shoulder: Kansas Women Win the Vote"

A Moment in Time

Kansas Historical Society

A monthly series from the Kansas Historical Society

"The fact here at the east is, that we cannot meet expenses Neither the Radical republicans or Old Abolitionists, nor yet the Democrats open their purses, pulpits, or presses to our movement I think all of them are really glad to have us work but none of them have the courage or the conscience to openly & earnestly and religiously take sides with us

But no matter, we must work on with such forces as we have at command

Please make your best and wisest statement of work to be done in Kansas . . . . We will make the strongest possible appeal to get the means to help you make Kansas the first state to give Universal Suffrage."

Susan B. Anthony wrote this letter to Judge Samuel N. Wood of Kansas on April 21, 1867, as part of an ongoing correspondence as easterner and Kansan worked toward a common goal the vote for women. A Quaker, New Yorker, and ardent supporter of equal rights for women, Anthony had been dubbed the "Napoleon" of the woman suffrage movement. In 1867, having given up on getting the vote for women in her home state, Anthony had turned her attention to Kansas, which had recently come into statehood with the most progressive laws of any state in the Union. She had at her command the energy of countless individuals, including the inspired and inspirational professional orator Anna Dickinson who had attracted packed audiences since 1861 when, barely twenty years old, she was named the "Joan of Arc" of the unionist cause. Financial resources were, however, considerably more difficult to come by than were human resources. Covering the expenses of lecturers, much less being able to pay them for their services, was a perpetual problem. A lack of money was a theme in the suffrage movement throughout the country and throughout the long years of campaigning.

When the nineteenth amendment was passed in 1920 giving women the right to vote, Kansas women had already gone to the polls. They were able to vote in school board elections beginning in 1861, in municipal elections from 1887, and in state and national elections as of 1912 eight years before women in most of the nation could vote.

Shortly after Kansas women secured the vote, ten thousand suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to catch President Woodrow Wilson's attention on the day before his inauguration. That year and several times every year thereafter, members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association visited the president, asking him to champion woman suffrage. Repeatedly he told them that he had other priorities.

In 1917, five years after Kansas women got the vote, social worker Alice Paul, having seen British suffragists throw bricks through windows to get the attention of Parliament, decided that such activities also might attract notice here. Paul formed the radical National Woman's Party, which proceeded to campaign against Democrats as the party in power and began a day-in, day-out picketing of the White House. As the United States became involved in the Great War and rhetoric about democratic ideals began flowing from the White House, the picketers burned Wilson's words, calling him "Kaiser Wilson" and reminded him that half of the population of the United States was unable to participate in his democracy.

Men and boys attacked the picketers, and the police looked the other way. In fact, the president had the women arrested. The prisoners went on hunger strikes and were force-fed. When the suffragists still persevered, with more women going to jail, Wilson finally gave in and offered his support to an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would give women the vote.

Just as the victory in Kansas helped energize women throughout the nation to push for a federal amendment, a national event had begun the struggle in Kansas. Women were angry as they met at Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19, 1848. They had worked hard within the abolitionist movement to secure freedom for slaves. But their efforts were hampered when they were denied both the right to speak in public meetings and the ability to express their convictions through the ballot. They met to discuss their grievances, and one hundred disgruntled Americans signed a "Declaration of Sentiments" written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It stated in part that "all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"; and that one of these rights was the right to vote. It was a radical document. Women would work not only for the rights of slaves but also for their own rights.

Clarina I.H. Nichols, among others, was radicalized by the Seneca Falls convention. Immigrating to Quindaro, Kansas, under the auspices of the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1854, Nichols was one of twenty-five founders of the first women's rights organization in Kansas Territory. In 1859 she took her knitting and the petitions signed by 250 women of Douglas and Shawnee Counties and 270 women of Linn and Wyandotte Counties to the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention. She stayed throughout the deliberations, lobbying for the right of women to control their property and their children, to have an equal education, and to vote. However, the idea of women "leaving their homes" to participate in the political process was so radical that Kansas men feared Washington would not grant them statehood if they gave women the right to vote.

Still the efforts of Nichols and her cohorts were not without their successes. Moving cautiously, the first state legislature in 1861 granted women the right to vote for school board trustees. The state having survived this reform, the legislature six years later put before the white male voters two issues: suffrage for black men and suffrage for women. Both were defeated in spite of the efforts of such out-of-staters as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who from September 1 through November 5 campaigned in thirty-three of the forty-four Kansas counties.The campaign for the vote for women suffered from the efforts of such "radical Republican" organizations as the Lyon County Anti-Female Suffrage Organization.

Discouraged again two years later in their attempt to put the issue before the voters, Kansas women concentrated their energies for reform on such issues as temperance. For example, it was not until 1879 that Anna C. Wait, Emily Biggs, and Sarah Lutes of Lincoln formed the first woman suffrage organization in the state. Wait kept "the woman question" before the public through editorials in her Beacon of Lincoln County newspaper.

By the time Wait helped create the first statewide suffrage organization, the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, in 1884, Kansas suffragists had learned that the "inalienable rights" argument was not working on women and men who were convinced that the sexes belonged in totally separate spheres. Woman's place, her sphere of influence, was the private one of home and family. Man's was the public sphere business and politics. Mixing the spheres, many believed, would create social chaos and the downfall of civilization. A new language was required, one that would not threaten defined roles. Suffragists developed the argument that woman's duty by definition extended beyond her home to her community. After all, what good would it do her to raise her children to be moral if they were confronted by immorality on their way to school? And male voters, suffragists said, not being expected to understand about children, needed all the help they could get in such matters.

The strategy was effective. In 1886 Kansas women earned the right to vote in local elections. The nation's first woman mayor, Susanna Madora Salter, was elected the following year in Argonia, and an all-woman city council with a woman mayor took office in Oskaloosa in 1888. Cottonwood Falls, Baldwin, Elk Falls, and Rossville soon followed suit.

Municipal suffrage was, however, as Populist Mary Elizabeth Lease sneered, "a pitiful crumb." Kansas women tried again in 1894 to get the full vote. They were more sophisticated politically, having organized the state by legislative districts and successfully recruited every possible women's study club and charity group, including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the General Federation of Women's Clubs. The Kansas Equal Suffrage Association (KESA) had held conventions at various locations around the state every year since its founding and one year held a series of two-day conventions in thirty communities. Suffrage newspapers were flourishing. Laura M. Johns of Salina went to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention in Washington, D.C., and secured pledges of speakers and financial support. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Anna Howard Shaw (president of the NAWSA) all campaigned in Kansas. But party politics and thin skins intervened. Because the Populists had woman suffrage in their platform, all other parties refused to support the effort. And some Kansas men expressed resentment at being insulted by speakers from outside the state. The amendment failed once more.

Almost every year from then on bills were introduced into the legislature to put women's enfranchisement before the voters. Then in 1911, with two thousand women holding KESA offices at the state, district, or local levels, the question was favorably reported out of the state legislative committee, and in 1912 it was put on the ballot and passed. Governor Walter Roscoe Stubbs had urged support for woman suffrage in his inaugural speech and was a member of the men's auxiliary to the KESA and his wife, Stella, was a KESA officer. It helped to have friends in high places.

In no instance, however, can any one person be credited with giving women the right to vote. A great amount of work informed by lessons learned over many years created the push that led to a Kansas governor, legislature, and electorate that favored the vote for women.

Kansas women did not rest after they won the right to vote. They knew that only through a federal constitutional amendment would that right be secure. They also wanted women in every state to be able to create change in their states and on a national level. Suffragists throughout the country put immense energy into securing for women the right to vote. Over the years the story of the struggle at times has been simplified, with an emphasis on the outcome rather than the process. The result, ironically, is crediting President Woodrow Wilson with giving women the right to vote in 1920. Such accounts negate the work and the sacrifices of thousands. The vote for women was not a gift, but a hard-won prize.

"Shoulder to Shoulder: Kansas Women Win the Vote," by Ann Birney and Joyce Thierer, is reprinted from the winter 1995 issue of Kansas Heritage in celebration of Women's History Month in March. Kansas Heritage and Kansas History are membership benefits for those who join the Kansas Historical Society, a nonprofit organization. For more information about membership in the Society contact the membership coordinator, Kansas Historical Society, 6425 SW Sixth Avenue, Topeka, KS 66615; 785-272-8681, TTY 7853-272-8683.