While modern-day politicians angle for the women’s vote, 100 years ago, after much struggle, women in Kansas won equal voting rights.
“When I read back through the history and the stories, it makes me feel really proud,” said Melinda Henderson, president of the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County. “Kansas was really a hotbed of the suffrage movement.”
On Nov. 5, 1912, Kansas voters — all of them men — approved a state constitutional amendment by a count of 175,246 votes for and 159,197 against. That was eight years before ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote nationwide.
The fight in Kansas was an exhaustive effort that spanned generations and brought national attention to the state.
Kansas suffragettes had little monetary resources and battled against a history of major defeats; two earlier equal voting rights amendments in 1867 and 1894 failed at the polls.
But in a 1911 letter, Lucy Browne Johnston, president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, kept victory in sight. She reviewed what would be the winning strategy (“membership extension, education and press”) to suffrage association county presidents, and then urged her colleagues with a simple statement, “The world makes way for people who are working for a worthy object and have confidence in their own efforts.”
The debate in the Kansas House in 1911 on the proposed state constitutional amendment outlined the arguments of the time.
Clement Wilson of Greeley voted no. In his explanation of vote recorded in the House Journal, Wilson said not “one lady” in his district had asked him to vote for the amendment. He said that was because “they (women) believe that the protection of morals of a community rightfully rests upon the stronger sex, especially as to making and enforcing the rules and laws looking to the protection of the women of Kansas, and that they believe that this responsibility should remain so.”
W.T. Watson noted that he voted against the amendment two years ago but was now voting for it “out of deference to the wishes of the best woman in Kansas,” his wife.
J.H. Mercer voted against it, saying that giving women the right to vote would burden them and disturb the home.
But J.T. Lacey said, “I believe in a square deal for my fellow men, and see no reason why I should not give women the same fair treatment, and I vote Aye.”
Even with the prior setbacks, Kansas had been seen as a progressive state.
Women won the right to vote in school elections from the start of statehood in 1861 and municipal elections in 1887.
“We were on the forefront of voting rights,” said Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew. “Kansas was seen as kind of an experiment,” he said.
In 1887, Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kan., becoming the first female mayor in the country.
“I’m really proud that Kansas was one of the states that passed women suffrage before the nation did,” said Sarah St. John, who compiles the Old Home Town feature for the Lawrence Journal-World. “We were a little ahead of the game.”
St. John found this nugget from the Journal-World about two weeks before the 1912 election. The newspaper invited people to come to the Journal-World office to receive a free book listing all the reasons to oppose equal voting rights for women. When people arrived, they received a book with eight blank pages. “While the matter was a joke and those who called took it in good part, yet there were some who honestly expected to receive a statement of the other side of the question and were disappointed,” the newspaper reported.
By 1912, a progressive movement was sweeping the nation. Western states were seen as key in the march toward universal suffrage.
The day after Kansas became the seventh state in the nation to give women equal voting rights, telegrams poured in to Johnston.
Anna Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in New York, told Johnston, “the national welcomes the seventh star.” And Ada James, president of the Political Equality League of Wisconsin, congratulated Kansas. “Your victory is our victory,” she said.
In Douglas County, the amendment passed 2,331 to 1,989 and is recorded beside the script-written notation “Equal S” in the official abstract of the vote in the Douglas County Courthouse.
Thinking about the difficult work it took to get the amendment approved, Henderson, president of the local League of Women Voters, said, it makes her sad to hear people say they aren’t voting or that their vote doesn’t matter.
“Every woman in the state of Kansas should get out and vote in celebration,” of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Kansas, she said.