Oregon Woman Suffrage

1912 - 2012: 100 Years of Women's Votes in Oregon

2012-10-21T01:51:02Z

In 2012, Oregonians will observe the 100th anniversary of the achievement of woman suffrage in our state.

Women in western states led the way in successful campaigns for the vote well before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920. Since 1912, Oregon women have been able to fully engage in the political process, holding office as well as their long-standing role as activists.

Oregon's suffrage history is a vibrant and vital part of the story of votes for women in our region, the nation, and around the globe.

The upcoming centennial is an opportunity for all Oregonians to reflect on important topics: the ongoing role women have played in our state's history, the lessons of the suffrage movement, the achievements of citizen-based political movements, and the importance of civic engagement -- among many other important historic and contemporary issues.

Using the anniversary as a broad, unifying theme, organizations across the state -- small and large, and with a wide range of goals and expertise -- can enhance the recognition and study of women in Oregon. Potential outcomes include (but are not limited to):

exhibits and public programs
enhanced archival collections and oral histories
television, radio, and internet programming
lesson plans and syllabi
publications and research

We invite you to begin networking with others to observe this important occasion. One first step is to ask you to share what you think is most important to learn and do, as well as share any specific plans you may have by filling out a brief survey.

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage History: March, 1912

2010-03-08T18:19:37Z

The Oregon woman suffrage campaign of 1912 exemplifies the "new" movement for woman suffrage in many ways, including the strategic use of mass advertising for the cause. The Woman Suffrage Campaign Committee of the Portland Woman's Club, led by Sara Evans, Grace Watt Ross and Esther Pohl Lovejoy, secured the talents of journalist Nan Strandborg to assist with publicity.

This article from the Portland Evening Telegram indicates that by March 1912 the campaign committee was contacting publishers of newspapers across the state for their stance on suffrage. Strandborg created "leaflets and 'boiled-down' arguments of readable character" for editors to publish - press releases for the mass media.

Oregon suffragists utilized campaign literature from the National American Woman Suffrage Association and "all of the successful literature used in the campaigns in Washington and California." Adapting materials that had helped Washington suffragists gain victory in 1910 and those California in 1911 to local needs around Oregon, Strandborg and the committee used "the yellowest of suffrage yellow paper" to draw the attention of readers.

Suffrage campaign literature was not only eye-catching; it offered specific suggestions for action for both male and female supporters. "'Organize, advertise, give something - time, service, money, yourself. Everything counts.'"

Additional reading

Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)

Gayle Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women's Movement, 1880-1911 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000)

Kimberly Jensen, "'Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign': Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108:3 (Fall 2007): 350-383.

Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004)

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: February, 1874

2010-02-13T01:05:40Z

On the first day of the convention that would create the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association the weather was "inclement" and the "Mass Meeting of the Friends and Advocates of the Woman Movement" at Portland's Oro Fino Theater started a half an hour late. Perhaps organizers hoped that more supporters would venture out in the rain. Though small in numbers, this organizing meeting for the first state suffrage organization in Oregon had a "remarkable degree of earnestness and enthusiasm." The men and women gathered decided to organize a state equal suffrage society "to secure more united action and influence in the work."

The OWSA appealed "to the citizens of Oregon who believe in the principle of 'equality before the law' to aid this Association in every possible way by placing these self-evident truths before the people that all men and women are created equal, and of right ought to be equally free and independent in law, custom, and ethos, and we urge them to proceed at once to perfect the different county organizations throughout the State."

On the afternoon of the first day, February 14, 1873 those present elected Abbie Gibson of Portland as president of the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association, with various vice presidents representing Oregon counties and an executive committee. From the beginning women and men from around the state were officers in the association.

On the second day an African American suffragist from Portland, Mrs. Mary Beatty, addressed the group. Portland historian Tim Hills has located Mary Beatty in the Portland City Directory as a dressmaker married to J.W. Beatty. Three months earlier Beatty had joined three other Portland suffragists, Abigail Scott Duniway, Maria Hendee, and Mrs. M.A. Lambert, in attempting to vote in the presidential election of November 1872.

Other participants included Abigail Scott Duniway, Mary Anna Thompson, M.D., Bethenia Owens (later Owens-Adair) M.D. and Colonel C. A. Reed of Salem.

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: January, 1912, "Men Lend Aid"

2010-01-08T00:13:52Z

Many Oregon men supported votes for women in the final and successful 1912 campaign. On January 3, 1912, dozens of men gathered at the Commercial Club in Portland to form what would become the Men's Equal Suffrage League of Multnomah County, chaired by attorney William M. "Pike" Davis. Abigail Scott Duniway served as acting chair for the evening. Politicians, judges, attorneys and labor leaders spoke in favor of suffrage.

Some had "long favored" votes for women, including former state legislator C.W. Fulton who introduced an amendment to the Oregon constitution providing for woman suffrage in 1883. Among the more "recent converts" was attorney and state senator Dan J. Malarky who said that "the light had been breaking in on him for a long time but he was converted last year." Labor leaders in support of suffrage included Floyd Ramp of the Socialist Party of Oregon and Eugene Smith, vice president of the Electrical Workers' Union.

Oregon men joined men in other states who had organized to support votes for women. Their support was a significant element of the victory in Oregon in 1912.

Additional reading

Kimberly Jensen, "'Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign': Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108:3 (Fall 2007): 350-383.

Image: "Men Lend Aid in Great Battle for Woman Suffrage," Oregon Journal, January 4, 1912, 10.

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage History, December: "First Woman to Vote in Umatilla City, Oregon"

2009-12-01T20:26:53Z

Many cities in Oregon held elections in December 1912, just weeks after women in the stated gained the right to vote in November that year. Across the state women cast their ballots and fulfilled the other duties of voting citizens including service as election judges. In Umatilla Mrs. H. T. Duncan was the first woman to vote in her city election and she served as an election judge that day, no doubt an important fulfillment of her goals as a suffrage supporter. Duncan, in business in Umatilla for twenty years, operated the Duncan Hotel.

Additional reading:

Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Social, and Economic Activities (New York: McGraw Hill, 1933), 245-56.

Image: "First Woman to Vote in Umatilla City, OR.," Oregon Journal, December 5, 1912, 10.

Statesman Journal on 2012 Suffrage Centennial

2009-11-18T00:49:31Z

The Statesman Journal covers the 2012 Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial and the recent reception held in Salem:

Three years may seem early to start planning the 100th anniversary of Oregon women obtaining full voting rights, which voters approved in 1912. But given that women's suffrage was on the ballot six times over 28 years -- four of them by initiative -- maybe an early start is a good thing. More than 50 people came to a meeting at the State Archives Building to start offering ideas for the centennial and ways to pay for them."

Read the full article here.

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage History: November 2, 1912, Salem Suffragists Meet

2009-11-18T00:30:40Z

As suffragists and their supporters prepared for the November 1912 election they held final meetings across the state to draw attention to the woman suffrage measure on the ballot, including a large group in Salem. This article demonstrates the variety of suffrage supporters and the reach of suffrage ideas in Salem and the state.

Image: "Salem Suffragists Dine," Oregonian, November 3, 1912, 9.

Salem Reception and Heritage Grant

2009-11-09T23:46:34Z

Last week was a big one for 2012: Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial and the Northwest History Network .

The Oregon Heritage Commission granted our request for funds to develop a comprehensive educational and informational centennial website for 2012: Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial. A project of the Northwest History Network, the website will provide interpretive essays written by scholars, primary documents, and archival links to women's historical collections.

On November 2, Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown and State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert hosted a reception in Salem to launch the 2012 Oregon Woman Suffrage Centennial. Attended by over fifty elected officials, representatives of government agencies and women's organizations, along with members of the academic and archival community and other stakeholders, the event began a collaboration between the many voices and perspectives needed to tell Oregon's suffrage history and women's history. Secretary Brown noted, "This was a vote that changed the face of Oregon and it came with the support of some brave and colorful figures from our past. This is a golden page in Oregon history." Held at the State Archives, Herkert and the archive staff displayed the original proclamation, initiative petitions, and Abigail Scott Duniway voter registration cards Learn more at Secretary Brown's blog.

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: October 4, 1912, Corvallis greets NAWSA President Anna Howard Shaw

2009-10-05T20:27:32Z

On her tour through Oregon in September and October during the final push of the 1912 campaign for woman suffrage, Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), visited Corvallis and spoke at the Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University).

Shaw told the women students in the audience that "agriculture is woman's original vocation" and praised them for "their efforts to secure an educational preparation that would enable them to come back to their own."

The suffrage movement was popular on college campuses in Oregon and around the state. Andrea Moss-Radke has studied the Oregon Agricultural College experience with woman suffrage in connection with other land grant colleges in the western United States.

Shaw also exhibited a view of race and ethnicity that pitted white women who did not have the vote against men "of every race and color" who did. Such arguments were part of what Louise Newman calls the movement for "white women's rights" that has divided reform movements in Oregon and the nation. In Oregon, activists such as Hattie Redmond of the Colored Women's Equal Suffrage League of Portland worked to make a movement that would address the rights of all women.

Image:

Anna Howard Shaw speaks to an audience of college students and community members at Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis, October 4, 1912. "Suffrage Cause is Urged: Dr. Anna Shaw Speaks at Oregon Agricultural College," Oregonian October 5, 1912, 5.

References

Andrea Radke-Moss, Bright Epoch: Women and Coeducation in the American West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008)

Louise Michelle Newman, White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: September 19, 1912 Jackson County Suffragists Campaign in the "Made in Medford" Parade

2009-09-01T19:30:45Z

In the final Oregon woman suffrage campaign in 1912 activists in communities across the state used county fairs as a way to publicize their views and reach male voters. At the Jackson County Fair one hundred women decorated cars and rode horses as a "special attraction" in the "Made in Medford" parade. Gladys Heard, secretary of the Medford Equal Suffrage Association, rode in the lead car festooned with sunflowers and filled with children. Other cars sported "Votes for Women" flags and streamers. Across this 1912 campaign suffragists took their cause to the people and used popular culture and mass media to make their argument.

Opponents of woman suffrage asserted that the vote would take women away from traditional home duties. Medford suffragists created a float to make fun of this argument. "Prominent Medford men" E.E. Kelly, C. L. Schlefflin and Holbrook Withington dressed as women and as the float passed through the streets they washed clothes and nursed a "huge rag doll" with a whiskey bottle. Suffragists may also have included the children of supporters in the lead car to emphasize that the vote would enhance women's roles as mothers, not detract from them.

Image: Supporters of votes for women in the Rogue River Valley decorated cars and rode horses in the "Made in Medford" parade September 19, 1912. "100 Suffragists in Line," Oregonian, September 20, 1912, 16.

References

Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

Susan E. Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Campaign against Woman Suffrage (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: August 28, 1920 Oregon Women Celebrate the Achievement of National Woman Suffrage

2009-08-05T19:18:18Z

Some 230 women gathered at the Benson Hotel in Portland on Saturday, August 28, 1920 to celebrate the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which made woman suffrage the law of the United States. Oregon women had had full voting rights for almost eight years. Both houses of the Oregon legislature had voted to adopt House Joint Resolution 1, introduced by Representative Sylvia Thompson, on January 12, 1920, making Oregon the twenty-fifth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Tennessee was the last of the thirty-six states to ratify the amendment and it became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920.

Mayor George Baker issued a proclamation asking all Portlanders to participate in a demonstration for noon on Saturday August 28 to recognize the event. Supporters urged mills, factories and churches across the state to ring bells and blow whistles to commemorate the day. At the Benson Hotel women "stood at attention around their tables" at noon for the ringing of the bells as the start of the victory luncheon.

The event commemorated the work of early leader Abigail Scott Duniway, who had died in 1915, and members of "the younger generation" who had been active in the successful 1912 campaign. And those present looked to the future as the Oregon Equal Suffrage Alliance became the League of Women Voters of Oregon with Effie Comstock Simmons as president.

Image: Oregon women celebrated the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment,
which states that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,"
at a luncheon at the Benson Hotel in Portland on August 28, 1920.
"Suffragists Here Celebrate Victory," Oregonian, August 29, 1920, 20.

References

"Senate Gives Way for Mrs. Thompson," Oregonian, January 14, 1920, 6

"Oregon Women Joyous Because Suffrage Wins in Tennessee," Oregon Journal, August 18, 1920, 1.

"Women of Portland to Celebrate Saturday," Oregonian, August 26, 1920, 1.

"Suffragists Here Celebrate Victory," Oregonian, August 29, 1920, 20.

Jean H. Baker, ed., Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Sara Hunter Graham, Woman Suffrage and the New Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996)

One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, prod. Ruth Pollack, 1996, DVD, 146 minutes. www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/OneWomanOneVote/introduction

League of Women Voters of Oregon

This Month in Oregon Woman Suffrage: July 17-19, 1912 Suffrage Film Votes for Women at the Star Theater in Portland

2009-07-07T18:20:59Z

By July 1912 workers across Oregon were active in the final campaign for woman suffrage that would result in victory in the November election. Oregon suffragists were building their campaign by using mass media and advertising techniques to get their message across to voters in early twentieth-century consumer culture.

The Portland Equal Suffrage League sponsored a three-day engagement for the film Votes for Women at the Star Theater in Portland. The film featured the story of a fiancée of a state senator opposed to the movement "whose signature alone is needed to put through equal suffrage legislation." She "becomes an ardent suffragist" and, along with suffrage workers, convinces the senator to vote for the bill. Filmmakers blended this fictional account with appearances by national suffrage leaders Anna Howard Shaw and Jane Addams, real-life "equal suffrage slogans and banners" and footage of a New York City suffrage parade.

The use of films like Votes for Women helped to create the modern suffrage movement and brought success to campaigns in states like Oregon that used mass media to put their message across.

References

Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)

Kimberly Jensen, "'Neither Head nor Tail to the Campaign': Esther Pohl Lovejoy and the Oregon Woman Suffrage Victory of 1912," Oregon Historical Quarterly 108:3 (Fall 2007): 350-383.

Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004)

"Motion Pictures Plea for Equal Suffrage," Oregon Journal, July 17, 1912, 5.

What is suffrage, and why would you want it?

2009-06-11T02:17:44Z

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

2009-06-09T15:03:04Z

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

2009-06-01T21:54:32Z

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).