Women's suffrage movement in Washington

The women's suffrage movement in Washington was part of the broader Women's suffrage movement in the United States. In the state of Washington, women gained and lost the right to vote repeatedly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Women voting, Seattle, 1911

The first champion of women's suffrage in Washington Territory was Arthur A. Denny who introduced a bill to the lower house of the territory in 1854, but it lost 8 to 9.[1]

After the loss, the subject went silent for 12 years, until 1866 when the election code used language that could allow for women to vote, because it simply stated that "all white citizens" could vote, Edward Eldridge stood on the house floor and stated that this interpretation included women.[2] For a while many agreed with Eldridge's statement until Mary Olney Brown attempted to cast her vote in Olympia in 1869 and was turned away and told she was not a citizen, in 1870 she tried again and was again denied. At the same time that she was trying to cast her ballot, her sister, Charlotte Olney French and seven[3] other women in Grand Mound, Washington cast their ballots successfully.

Harry Morgan of Tacoma was a saloon owner who wanted to make sure that women had no vote, because he feared what they would do for his type of business. He was the backer of the case Harland V. Territory which was the first to officially deny women the right to vote.[4] George Turner was a powerful voice in this case, because he argued that women should not be allowed on a jury, and that suffrage allowed them to do so, and that they needed to reverse women's suffrage to keep them off the jury.[5]

Another case that kept the right to vote from Washington from was the Nevada Bloomer case. Nevada Bloomer was the wife of a Spokane saloon owner, who cared little about women's suffrage, but was a very dutiful wife. Her husband along with some local judges, devised a plan in which they would send Nevada to vote and then turn her away so that she could bring her case to the supreme court. The movement would do a lot to support the Bloomer case, although Nevada never had any intention of actually pursuing real action; the case was simply a diversion to keep the issue tied up in the courts and stop women from voting for prohibition.[6]

Susan B. Anthony's tour of Washington

Prominent national suffragist Susan B. Anthony visited the Washington Territory (later Washington state) to campaign for women's suffrage between October 16 and November 10, 1871. On October 17, she gave a speech to the legislature on “The Power of the Ballot” at Olympic Hall in Olympia. She went on to speak at Tumwater, Whidbey Island, Port Townsend, and Seattle, then returned to Olympia November 8 to participate in Washington's first women's suffrage convention and helped draft the constitution for the Washington Territory Woman Suffrage Association (WTWSA).[7][8][9]

Washington became the third territory (after Wyoming and Utah) to approve suffrage in 1883, and for a short time women used their ballots to support temperance and other moral causes. The powerful saloon lobby pressured the courts, which in an 1887 decision found the suffrage law unconstitutional. A new measure giving women the vote was defeated along with prohibition when statehood was attained in 1889, although women did win the right to vote in school elections the following year.

Achieving suffrage

In 1909, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition put Seattle and Washington State in general in the national spotlight. Both the Washington Equal Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held their annual conventions in Seattle in July 1909, and July 7 was declared Suffrage Day at the A-Y-P Exposition itself.[10]

References
  1. Larson, T. A. "The Woman Suffrage Movement in Washington." The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 67, no. 2 (1976): 49-62. JSTOR 40489770
  2. Pearce, Stella E. "Suffrage in the Pacific Northwest: Old Oregon and Washington." The Washington Historical Quarterly 3, no. 2 (1912): 106-14. JSTOR 40473515
  3. Women's votes, women's voices : the campaign for equal rights in Washington (1st ed.). Washington State Historical Society. 2009. ISBN 978-0-917048-74-6.
  4. Parker, Adella M. "How Washington Women Lost the Ballot." In Washington Women's Cook book, 204-08. Seattle, WA: The Washington Equal Suffrage Association , 1909
  5. Johnson, Claudius O. "George Turner of Supreme Court of Washington Territory." Oregon Historical Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1943): 370-85. JSTOR 20611517
  6. Fahey, John . "The Nevada Bloomer Case: An Obedient Wife Played a Key Role in Delaying Women's Suffrage in Washington." Columbia The Magazine of Northwest History 2, no. 2 (1998). Accessed May 3, 2017. Washington Historical Society.
  7. Thomas., Edwards, G. (1990). Sowing good seeds : the Northwest suffrage campaigns of Susan B. Anthony. Portland, Oregon: Oregon Historical Society Press. ISBN 0875951929. OCLC 19921841.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. "Washington's Road to Women's Suffrage: 1871". Washington State Secretary of State. 2009-12-29. Retrieved 2019-03-09. Official blog of the Washington State Secretary of State.
  9. Shanna, Stevenson (2009). Women's votes, women's voices: the campaign for equal rights in Washington. Washington State Historical Society (1st ed.). Tacoma, Washington: Washington State Historical Society. ISBN 9780917048746. OCLC 316512873.
  10. Stein, Alan J.; Becker, Paula (2009). Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition : Washington's first world's fair : a timeline history. HistoryLink staff. [United States]: History Ink/HistoryLink. p. 70. ISBN 9780295989266. OCLC 351324649.
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