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).