Working together as human beings

 “Equal suffrage is not an end; it is a beginning. It is the commencement of responsibilities and opportunities so vast that time itself is hardly long enough to work out the problems set before us. For years our resolutions have begun with the familiar preamble, ‘We, as women.’ The enfranchised woman has passed to a higher plane. It is not we as women, nor we as men who will make this world better, but all of us, working together as human beings.”

 _ Ellis Meredith

 

 Ellis Meredith

 

Men and women outside a polling station in Colorado in 1893.

It came earlier here and other Western states

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

It is sort of simple. The national amendment reads:

"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." 

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest.

It was a long time coming, even here in Colorado and the rest of the West. Though, it arrived earlier than most parts of the country.

"Ellis Meredith, an accomplished journalist who led Colorado’s suffrage movement, was widely known as the “Susan B. Anthony of Colorado.” She attended the Women’s Congress in Chicago in 1893, and she convinced Susan B. Anthony to send organizer Carrie Chapman Catt to Colorado, saying, “If Colorado goes for woman suffrage, you may count on a landslide in that direction throughout the West.”

 

Women get the vote in Colorado.

"Meredith and her parents made significant contributions to Colorado. Her mother was a suffragist and her father was an editor for the Rocky Mountain News. In 1889, Meredith began writing a column for the News, titled “A Woman’s World.” She became the first Colorado woman to cover the State Legislature in 1894, and she was one of four female delegates to the 1902 Denver City Charter Convention, which drafted the City’s first charter. Meredith testified in 1904 before the U.S. House of Representatives in support of a Constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote. From 1904-1908, she served as Vice-Chair of the Democratic Party State Central Committee. A 1910 newspaper headline claimed Meredith was the first woman elected to office in Denver. She became the Election Commissioner with 20,997 votes – more than the combined total of votes cast for all seven of the men running for the same office. She died 1955," according to a biography by Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, and on its site.

After Colorado granted women the right to vote in 1893, Meredith became a national leader. She was a featured speaker and published in magazines including Atlantic Monthly, Twentieth Century Magazine, and The Woman Voter Magazine. She moved to Washington D.C. in 1917 to work at the National Democratic Headquarters, acording to Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

On November 7, 1893, a referendum on women's suffrage was held in Colorado that secured women's voting rights. Subsequently, Colorado became the first American state to enact women's suffrage by popular referendum. The act granted women the right to vote "in the same manner in all respects as male persons are."

 

Before Colorado, many western states and territories had already granted women's suffrage, most notably Wyoming and Utah. Influenced by the actions of female activists in those states, Colorado's own suffrage movement began to gain traction in the 1870s. Throughout the earlier half of the decade, many propositions urging legislators to grant suffrage were defeated.

On January 10, 1876, suffrage advocates held a convention at the Unity Church in Denver, intending to influence the state's constitutional convention. The convention established the Territorial Women's Suffrage Society, which turned into the Women's Suffrage Association of Colorado once Colorado was granted statehood. The Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association was eventually backed by Governor John Routt. A minority report was created and sent to the convention.Women were not granted the right to vote, but they were granted the right to vote in school elections and hold school offices.

With the backing of John Routt, the women's suffrage movement gained traction. In 1877, male legislators decided to hold a referendum to determine the voting status of women. Although the movement gained the recognition of many popular suffrage advocates, such as Susan B. Anthony, suffrage was defeated.mLegislative efforts between 1877 and 1893 were sparse. In 1881, a bill for municipal suffrage was sent to Legislature and lost. However, during that time, many grassroots organizations still were still holding meetings and advocating for women's rights.

In 1893, the Ninth General Assembly passed a motion to put the question of women's suffrage up for election. As a result, the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association was integral to the 1893 referendum. It was a grassroots coalition of women's organizations, churches, political parties, charity groups, unions and farmers alliances. Having no members or money to their name, the organization toured around the state, rallying for support. Their campaign pivoted to directly address the women of Colorado: "Women of Colorado, do you know the opportunity that is before you this fall? Do you know that there is a possibility you may rise to legal equality with man?" one leaflet asked the state's women. "Awake from your indifference . . . The ballot is the greatest power and protection of this day and age."

 

A suffragist and child circa 1920., League Of Women Voters Of Larimer County

The act itself was drafted by lawyer J. Warner Mills of Denver and sponsored by Rep. J.T. Heath of Montrose County. After the bill was presented in the Colorado General Assembly, anti-suffragists placed a copy of their journal, the Remonstrance, on the desk of ever legislator. The suffrage bill left committee and went to the House on January 24, 1893. After a first attempt, the bill failed in the house by 39 to 21. It came up for another vote on March 8.At this vote, it passed 34 to 27.It was then introduced in the Senate and passed there on April 3 by 20 to 10. Then the bill was signed by governor Davis Hanson Waite. The general election where the referendum would appear would be held in fall of 1893.

In the end, 55% of the electorate turned out to vote, with 35,798 voting in favor and 29,551 voting against. The Delta Independent had a headline that read "Women will vote in this state just like a man" after women won the vote.

The women’s suffrage movement was a sociopolitical movement in the late nineteenth century that secured voting rights for Colorado women by state referendum on November 7, 1893. The movement’s success made Colorado the first state to enact women’s suffrage by popular referendum.

On July 4, 1876, Denverites gathered to celebrate the nation’s centennial. On the banks of the South Platte they watched a parade of the Knights of Pythias, the Governor’s Guard, and the Odd Fellows astride their milk-white horses. They listened to toasts, including one to “Woman—the last and best gift of God to man . . . May there yet be had a fuller recognition of her social influence, her legal identity and her political rights.”

But securing women’s political rights took more than Fourth of July rhetoric. In 1870 territorial governor Edward McCook urged lawmakers to follow Wyoming’s lead and grant women the vote. Legislators rejected the notion. During the 1875–76 convention to draft a state constitution, delegates Henry P. Bromwell of Denver and Agapito Vigil, representing Huerfano and Las Animas Counties, wanted to include equal suffrage in the constitution, but they were outvoted by their fellow delegates.

As a consolation prize, the constitution makers allowed women to vote in school elections and provided that men would hold an 1877 referendum to determine if women would be given full suffrage. Seizing the referendum opportunity, national suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony; Lucy Stone; Stone’s husband, Henry B. Blackwell; Matilda Hindman; and Margaret W. Campbell joined local suffrage partisans to barnstorm the state in September 1877. In Denver they enjoyed the backing of former territorial governor John Evans.

By railroad and stagecoach they reached remote places such as Lake City in the San Juan Mountains, where Anthony spoke on a moonlit night under the pine trees because the crowd was too large to be seated indoors. Curious crowds did not signal victory for equal suffrage, however, as the referendum was defeated by a margin of two to one in early October. Most Hispanos in southern counties opposed women voting, as did men in Denver and mountain mining towns. Dismissed as “bawling, ranting women, bristling for their rights” by Presbyterian preacher Rev. Thomas Bliss, women found that most Colorado men held fast to the past.

Sixteen years later, in 1893, a handful of reformers—the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association—sensed the time was right for another campaign. Women in southern Colorado were threatening to run their anti-suffrage state senator out of the region. Populist governor Davis Waite endorsed suffrage, as did former governor John Routt, a Republican. The opposition saloonkeepers and brewers, who feared women voters would crack down on liquor, were not taking the suffrage campaign seriously and mounted little opposition.

A referendum granting equal suffrage was drafted by a male lawyer from Denver and sponsored by Rep. J. T. Heath of Montrose County. Thirty-three newspapers surveyed approved of suffrage; only eleven were opposed. Thomas Patterson, publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, opposed women’s suffrage, but his paper was officially neutral. Two of the paper’s columnists, Ellis Meredith and Minnie J. Reynolds, were vocal suffragettes who helped organize the 1893 campaign.

Underpinning the pro-suffrage alliance of the late nineteenth century were larger forces working in the women’s favor. The first was the Hispano factor. Hispano men largely did not support voting rights for women and were part of the reason why the 1877 referendum failed. But by 1890, they constituted a smaller percentage of the state’s population, giving the pro-suffrage camp an advantage. Second, more than 70 percent of Colorado’s females over age nineteen were married; less than 20 percent were single or divorced. If enfranchised, this stable domestic contingent would constitute less than 30 percent of the electorate, so men were not courting political suicide by approving equal suffrage. Additionally, in an era of immigration that produced ethnic tension in many mining camps and towns, immigrant-wary Coloradans may have recognized that enfranchising women would give native-born residents more ballots than foreigners.

The suffrage campaign also benefited from the journalistic talents of Reynolds and novelist Patience Stapleton. Grand Junction’s Dr. Ethel Strasser, Colorado Springs’s Dr. Anna Chamberlain, and Dr. Jessie Hartwell of Salida joined Denver teacher and president of the Equal Suffrage Association Martha A. Pease in the effort to convince men that women were intellectually capable and deserved the vote. Socialites such as Mrs. Nathaniel P. Hill, wife of the Denver smelter magnate, and Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, wife of “Silver King” Horace Tabor, lent names and office space. In the end, careful planning and a low-key campaign yielded a 6,000-vote margin for equal suffrage, making Colorado the first state to enact equal suffrage by referendum.

For women, equal suffrage did not result in equal political power, however. Despite token female representation starting in 1894, the general assembly was almost totally controlled by men, who always elected men to the US Senate. Men manipulated the political levers and only grudgingly let women have a small share of legislative seats and other posts. Yet women made a mark, especially in their crusade against alcohol. In 1907 the state granted local governments the authority to prohibit liquor sales. In 1916, after prohibitionists won a statewide vote against booze, Colorado became a dry state three years ahead of the rest of the nation.

In 1912 Edward Taylor told his colleagues in the US Congress that women had helped enact more than 150 statutes, ranging from an 1899 law making the white and lavender-blue columbine the state flower to a 1908 measure prohibiting the display of anarchistic flags. Much of the legislation Taylor cited was designed to protect women and children; for example, pimps were barred from taking their prostitutes’ profits. A law setting up a model juvenile court was passed. Wives were permitted to homestead property and accorded rights as household heads if they provided the family’s chief support. Clearly, Colorado women’s hard-won right to the ballot was already paying dividends for the people of the Centennial State and would continue to do so through the present. 

Adapted from Carl Abbott, Stephen J. Leonard, and Thomas J. Noel, Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, 5th ed. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2013).

 Colorado's ratification of the 19th Amendment on Dec. 12, 1919.