Others Say

Just over a hundred years ago, in August 1920, U.S. women earned the right to vote.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by Congress on Aug. 18 of that year.

Through persistence and courage, Kansas women played an influential role in advancing women’s suffrage from the mid-1800s on, to empower and educate many.

Kansas women began debating suffrage before Kansas became a state — not long after Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY. As a result, Kansas became a battleground for women’s rights nationally. Among the Kansas voter activists of the day were:

• Mary Jane Ritchie, who hosted a meeting of the Women’s Suffrage Association of Topeka, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Olympia Brown attending. Cady Stanton and Anthony actively campaigned for Kansas suffrage and adopted the gold of the Kansas sunflower as a symbolic color or the women’s national suffrage movement.

• Journalist Carrie Langston, daughter of civil-rights activist Charles Hughes and mother to poet Langston Hughes, encouraged African American women to seek education and enter the profession of journalism to influence public opinion.

• Lutie Lytle of Topeka was the first African American to be admitted to the Kansas Bar. Newspaper accounts say that she was the first African American woman to be licensed to practice in Tennessee, and the third in the United States. In her life, she practiced in Kansas, Tennessee and in Brooklyn, N.Y.

• Susanna Salter, placed on the local ballot by some men as a joke, was elected mayor of Argonia, Kan. on April 4, 1887 at age 27 — the first female mayor in the U.S. Although elected unexpectedly to public office, Salter was not wholly unfamiliar with public service, being the daughter of Argonia’s first mayor and daughterin-law of former Kansas lieutenant governor Melville J. Salter.

Step By Step

Kansas women gained the right to vote in small steps. In 1861, Kansas allowed women to vote in school and in municipal elections. From 1887 through 1911, Kansas women elected the following number of local female officials:

16 mayors

73 city council members

Two city treasurers

Five police judges

One city attorney

80 elected county officers

There were at one time 14 all-female city councils across Kansas.

Race and Gender

Cady Stanton and Anthony sought suffrage support from white supremacists, but others disagreed, leading to a split in the national movement that involved racism. Fear about the empowerment of African Americans and how it might challenge the racial and economic status quo of the times moved some to oppose suffrage based on this connection.*

Thanks to the early leadership of women, Kansas was:

First in the nation to allow women to vote in school elections, in 1861.

Fourth in the nation to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1919.

Eighth in the nation to grant women full voting rights, in 1912.

After the 19th Amendment passed, efforts to protect women’s rights stalled somewhat, until the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Today, many take for granted the right to vote in local and national elections, along with corresponding freedoms, including the right to worship, speak out and to seek education. In 1920, only one in three women cast a vote. By the early 1960s, the number of U.S. women voting equaled that of men. As of 2019, 25 women hold seats in the U.S. Senate and 102 in the House.

Author’s note — Information provided in part by the League of Women Voters of Kansas, a grassroots and volunteer political organization with nine local chapters across the state. LWVK encourages the informed, active participation of citizens in government. It influences public policy through education and advocacy, but never endorses candidates or political parties. For information on your voter-registration status or how to help others register to vote, visit lwvk.org or ksvotes.org

* https://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/ posters/suffrage.html or https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/ celebrate-womens-suffrage-dont-whitewash-movements-racism or https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movementracism-black-women.html

Kay Quinn is a history buff, writer and fifth-generation Kansan from Ottawa County. She serves as the development officer for the Smoky Hill Museum in Salina, as part of her work for Salina Arts & Humanities.