Portions Reprinted from The Dallas Morning News
June 28th, 1919 — Texas Senate ratifies women’s right to vote |
On this day in 1919, the Texas Senate ratified the national amendment granting women the right to vote. Texas thus became the first Southern state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and the ninth in the nation. Woman suffrage had been discussed in Texas as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1868. The short-lived Texas Equal Rights Association (1893-96) helped organize a suffrage movement. The Texas Equal Suffrage Association, a state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, led the fight for suffrage from 1913 on, and achieved one of its key goals when it won the right for women to vote in primary elections in 1918. Feelings ran strong on both sides of the issue; some women joined the Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. In June 1919 a woman suffrage amendment was sent to the states for approval. The Texas House passed the amendment on June 23 and the Texas Senate on June 28.Not until August of 1919 was the 19th Amendment passed and added to the U.S. Constitution. |
RTT
According to Minnie Fisher Cunningham, president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association from 1915 to 1919, suffrage passed in Texas due to intra-party competition, the need for something to trade, and a leader politically shrewd enough to recognize it.
The setting after the Civil War, as in so many other states, was complex. Politicians took steps to disenfranchise black men through poll taxes and literacy tests. But by the turn of the last century the blooming progressive era became a boon to the cause of women’s suffrage. Women’s votes were considered means to obtain reforms such as pure food and drug legislation, protection for workers, an end to child labor and legislation to curb political corruption. Add to that the not insignificant issue of prohibition, and this untapped source of votes was coveted.
Texas women register to vote in Travis County
