Citizens at Last!

Essay by Anne Firor Scott  

Adapted from "Introduction," to Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas. Copyright © by Ellen C. Temple, Publisher, Austin, TX 

There is considerable mystery as to why historians study some things and ignore others; or why, in our collective memory, we cherish some parts of the past and forget others. Every Texan can give some account of the Battle of the Alamo or the Battle of San Jacinto. Most can recognize the names of Sam Houston and Sam Rayburn. Indeed, Texans more than most Americans have a strong sense of their own past and know quite a lot about it. 

Why, then, has the long, exciting battle for woman suffrage—which in the end doubled the electorate and changed forever the process of politics, propelled women into public life, and shaped the social history of the twentieth century—been virtually unknown? If one walked down the streets of Austin or San Antonio asking citizens, “Tell me what you know about the Nineteenth Amendment,” the results would be startling. In many cases the answer would be only a blank stare. And if one asked, “Who were Minnie Fisher Cunningham and Jane Y. McCallum?” ninety percent, at a conservative estimate, would have no idea.  

Yet the history of the suffrage movement exhibits all the characteristics Texans are said to value: boldness, pioneer spirit, great leaders, hard work—and victory at last. Doubters have only to view this exhibit with its informative illustrations and captions. Viewers can learn all kinds of things about the way the suffrage movement as a whole developed, about the way Texas women in particular functioned, about growth in political sophistication and effectiveness, about men and women in public opinion.  

In 1919 both Texas senators and ten of its eighteen congressmen voted for the women’s suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution. Texas was one of only three southern states that went on to ratify it. The reasons for Texan support of the amendment are worth serious study. What we can learn in this exhibit is something about the nature of the process by which a suffrage movement in a particular state developed. 

In Texas as almost everywhere else the movement's beginnings were small and the battle uphill. A tiny handful of Texas women asked the Constitutional Convention in 1868 to enfranchise their sex, This suggests that the South, or at least the western part of it, had not been entirely devoid of women's rights sentiments before the Civil War. But male Texans were far from ready to take the critical step. To be sure, a majority report from the committee on state affairs supported the idea; a minority report opposed. Anyone now reading the two reports will be struck by the contrast: the first is well reasoned and well written and reaches logical conclusions; the second is a mass of rhetorical confusion. Yet grammar or no, the minority view prevailed, 52 votes to 13. 

The outlook for women was even bleaker in 1875, when only two members of another Texas constitutional convention supported woman suffrage. The supporters might have been forgiven for giving up entirely. 

Meanwhile, an important factor in the woman suffrage situation was developing among the women in the Texas Woman's Christian Temperance Union. That group—made up of exceedingly respectable, pious churchwomen—voted in 1888 to support woman suffrage, the first southern Union to do so. Such women could hardly be perceived as dangerous radicals. Their support opened the door through which more daring women could begin to walk. 

In 1893 the first effort to establish a statewide suffrage association in Texas got off to a good start. Talented women spoke all over the state and organized local groups as they went. They urged the political parties to adopt suffrage planks. Texas suffragists who went to Chicago for the great Columbian Exposition were invigorated by conversations with their counterparts from all parts of the country. 

In spite of this promising beginning, the Texas Equal Rights Association died. The principal problem, I suspect, was a surfeit of good leaders and no followers. Outsiders noted the timidity of many Texas women on the issue. 

In 1903 three energetic sisters, Annette and Elizabeth Finnigan and Katherine Finnigan Anderson, tried to start the movement going again. Carrie Chapman Catt, of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, came to visit and a flurry of new organizing followed; but when the Finnigan sisters left the state, this effort, too, died. Only a local group in Austin remained the keep the flag flying, However, much new activity among women was giving point to the demand for the vote. In Galveston, for example, the Women's Health Protection Association, formed in the wake of the 1900 storm, had demonstrated remarkable civic capability. Women's Clubs were burgeoning, and many of them were actively engaged in reshaping community life. An astute observer would have said that these women could not be held forever in their disenfranchised state. 

By 1912 the suffrage movement nationwide was accelerating. The first considerable cohort of college educated women was moving into positions of community leadership. Emanations of enthusiasm came across the sea from the young militant suffragettes in England. The dramatic suffrage victories in the western states were invigorating. The time was right for the Texas movement to try again—and it did. A convention in 1913 launched a statewide effort that not only would survive but would develop rapidly in the following six years. New leaders of great talent had come on the scene. 

The surrounding environment was rapidly becoming more supportive. In 1915 Carrie Chapman Catt was induced to take the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She proceeded at once to launch her ambitious plan for coordinated local and national organizing. Texas learned the lesson well. When Ethel Smith, Texas Congressional chairman, arrived in Washington in October 1917, she was thoroughly informed about the members of the Texas delegation. After a discouraging visit to one of them, she remarked that the only thing for women to do was to retire the man in question from public life. In that same year Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman in the House of Representatives.  

By 1918 there were ninety-eight local suffrage societies in Texas. Under the extraordinary leadership of Minnie Fisher Cunningham and Jane Y. McCallum (to name only two—there were many others) they were engaging in every kind of political agitation: speeches, forums, small group meetings, pamphlets, newspaper articles, mass meetings, house-to-house canvassing, letters to every member of the legislature and the Congress, on-the-spot lobbying in both. The women, though working desperately hard, were having a grand time.  

Texas suffragists got their feet wet in one kind of campaign when they worked successfully to impeach Governor Jim Ferguson and replace him with William P. Hobby. In another campaign they supported women suffrage in party primary elections, which could be granted by a simple majority in the legislature. They succeeded. In a vivid demonstration of their energy and industry, with only seventeen days in which to register for the July primary, more than 380,000 women registered. In some communities, more women than men qualified to vote. 

But there were setbacks, too. Against Cunningham’s advice, Texas suffragists supported a state suffrage amendment, which was submitted to the voters. However, the amendment coupled woman suffrage with the disenfranchisement of aliens in a single ballot proposal, in an election in which aliens could vote and women could not. The proposal was defeated. The opponents of woman suffrage seemed to score a great victory. Obviously, they argued, Texans had spoken their minds; therefore, the legislature should not ratify the nineteenth amendment. The women were equal to the challenge. They carefully compiled election statistics to prove that the alien vote had killed the state amendment. With support from a group of men in the legislature, they pushed through ratification, and Texas became the ninth state to approve the Nineteenth Amendment.  

That vote marked the end of one campaign and the beginning of another. Transforming the suffrage organization into the League of Women Voters, Texas women hardly missed a beat. They immediately translated the political education they had gained into political action. The first five years of the 1920s were, politically speaking, he woman's day in Texas and in many other states, as suffragists almost everywhere set out to influence the states' political agendas.  

There is much to be learned from this exhibit and from documents collected in the accompanying book, Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas. I hope this story will be read I high schools, colleges, and women's voluntary associations across the state.History, as we all know, is not just something that happened in the past, but something we carry around inside our heads. We live in time requiring the most energetic, dedicated citizen involvement in public policy that has yet been seen in this country. Women, in particular, are deeply concerned about issues ranging from welfare to nuclear disarmament from education to political organization. Where better than in this story of suffrage to find the inspiration to achieve another high point of women's political history?