June 2009 Archives

What is suffrage, and why would you want it?

Suffrage comes from the Latin suffragium, which means "voting tablet," or more commonly, "right to vote," and is the civil right to vote in political elections, or the exercise of that right. Having suffrage is also referred to as the franschise or the ballot.

The quest for women's suffrage began with the first women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Various western states extended suffrage to many of their female residents from 1860 through 1914. National suffrage for women did not occur until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Consitution in 1920.


Women Lawyers and Oregon Suffrage

Women lawyers were key participants in the successful 1912 campaign for votes for women in Oregon.


Olive England Enright was the first woman to graduate from Willamette Law School in 1889 and was admitted to the Oregon bar in 1898. She was the president of the Salem Equal Suffrage League. Suffragists in Salem elected Enright as president of the League at their initial meeting in March 1912 where "sixty-five women and a large number of men, including most of the state officers, from Governor West down have signified intention to join the club." She died in 1936.

See her image and a brief biography at the Oregon State Library site: http://photos.lib.state.or.us/exhibit4/e40577a.htm and see "Salem Suffragists Organize in Club," Oregon Journal, March 10, 1912, 3; and Montague Colmer, comp. History of the Bench and Bar in Oregon (Portland: Historical Publishing, 1910), 24.


Olive Stott Gabriel was born in Yamhill County, Oregon in 1871 and graduated from St. Mary's Academy in Portland in 1889. She received her L.L.B. and L.L.M. degrees from New York University, completing her graduate work in 1903. By 1912 she was associate editor of the Women Lawyer's Journal. Gabriel returned to Oregon in the summer of 1912 to work for woman suffrage and remained through the campaign. She placed particular emphasis on working women and the vote in her speeches and meetings. When she returned to New York Gabriel was active in state and national suffrage work, later joining the National Woman's Party and supporting the Equal Rights Amendment.

Gabriel became president of the National Association of Women Lawyers in 1930 and served for three terms. She received an honorary L.L.D. degree from the University of Chicago for her work advocating the legal rights of women. Her obituaries noted that she had a "reputation and record of never refusing to accept a woman's case" and often worked pro bono. Gabriel returned to Portland in the mid 1930s and died in 1944.

See "Editor Will Speak," Oregon Journal, October 13, 1912, 5; "Suffrage Worker Appeals for Ballot," Oregon Journal, October 15, 1912, 2; "Services Set for Lawyer, Head of National Group," Oregonian, May 9, 1944, 9; "Olive S. Gabriel, Suffrage Leader," New York Times, May 10, 1944, 19 and entries for her at the Stanford Women's Legal History Biography Project site at: http://womenslegalhistory.stanford.edu/profiles/GabrielOliveScott.html 
                                                                 

                                                                               --Kimberly Jensen

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: June 30, 1905, Suffrage Day at the Lewis and Clark Exposition

NAWSA 1905 Program Cover.jpg


Cover of the 1905 Program for the Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
National American Woman Suffrage Association, Thirty-seventh Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association: June 28 to July 5, 1905 (Portland: Gotshall Printing, 1905)


From June 28 to July 5, 1905 the National American Woman Suffrage Association held its convention in Portland in association with the Lewis and Clark Exposition, the first NAWSA convention held west of the Mississippi. Oregon supporters hosted national and regional leaders including Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw.

Headquarters were at the Portland Hotel and most meetings were at the Congregational Church in the Park Blocks. "Suffrage Day" on June 30 was the main event at the Lewis and Clark Exposition grounds. Suffragists under the direction of Dr. Annice Jeffreys Myers, vice president of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association and local program chair, used banners, flowers, speeches, songs, and poems to call for the vote.

Oregon women activists representing other organizations made remarks across the NAWSA sessions. Esther Pohl spoke on behalf of medical women at the Suffrage Day event at the fair. In that and other sessions Clara Waldo represented the Grange, Mrs. F. Ross the National Federation of Labor, Sarah A. Evans the Federation of Woman's Clubs, Millie Trumbull the National Society of Charities and Corrections, Mrs. L.E. Rockwell, the Y.W.C.A., and Lucia Addington the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

"Suffrage Day" at the fair culminated in a reception honoring Susan B. Anthony in celebration of her role in the great struggle. Votes for women received a great deal of publicity and public support as a result, including endorsements by Governor George Chamberlain and Portland's new mayor Harry Lane, M.D. National and local suffrage leaders pledged to work together to campaign for votes for women in Oregon in 1906. While that 1906 campaign met defeat, "Suffrage Day" at the Fair and the NAWSA convention of 1905 launched the final, modern stage of the votes for women campaign in Oregon that would lead to victory in 1912.

Sources:

"All Gather for Equal Suffrage," Oregonian, June 30, 1905, 12.

"Session at the Fair," Woman's Tribune, July 8, 1905, 46

Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage vol. 5 1900-1920 reprint ed. (New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1969), 117-150 (the official report of the convention)

National American Woman Suffrage Association, Thirty-seventh Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association: June 28 to July 5, 1905 (Portland: Gotshall Printing, 1905)

G. Thomas Edwards, Sowing Good Seeds: The Northwest Suffrage Campaigns of Susan B. Anthony (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1990), 216-244.

For more information on the Fair see:

Deborah M. Olsen, "Fair Connections: Women's Separatism and the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905," Oregon Historical Quarterly 109:2 (Summer 2008): 174-203

Lisa Blee, "Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March: Exhibiting a History of Empire at the 1905 Portland World's Fair," Oregon Historical Quarterly 106:2 (Summer 2005): 232-253

Carl Abbott, The Great Extravaganza: Portland and the Lewis and Clark Exposition (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1981).



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1870: First Oregon suffrage organizations

1878: All Oregon taxpayers, regardless of gender, may vote in school elections

1878: Married women’s property act passes Oregon legislature

1884: Woman suffrage on ballot 1st time

1896: Idaho women achieve the vote

1900: Woman suffrage on ballot 2nd time

1906: Woman suffrage on ballot 3rd time

1908: Woman suffrage on ballot 4th time

1910: Woman suffrage on ballot 5th time

1910: Washington State women achieve the vote

1911: California women achieve the vote

1912: Oregon women achieve the vote

1914: Marian Towne, elected to Oregon Legislature from Jackson County

1920: Nineteenth Amendment ratified

1936: Nan Wood Honeyman, first Oregon woman elected to U.S. Congress, House of Representatives

1977: Norma Paulus elected Secretary of State, first woman elected to statewide office

1982: Betty Roberts first woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court

1990: Barbara Roberts first woman elected governor of Oregon

2012: Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial

2020: Nineteenth Amendment Centennial