Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (December 2, 1832 – March 14, 1915) was a writer and a late 19th and early 20th century advocate of women's rights.

She reached national recognition as one of the key pioneer suffragettes of the South, making numerous appeals to the federal government to recognize women's right to vote.

In 1860, tensions between the North and the South were growing, and Saxon traveled to Savannah, where she noted a buzz in anticipation of the American Civil War.

[3] On an 1861 trip to New Orleans just before the start of the war, Saxon had a dream of her father's death, and she fell into despair when she could not contact him in Arkansas, where he had traveled with her brothers.

There, she met a woman who knew Saxon's father and reported that he was gravely ill the Irving Block prison in Memphis, where he was being held as a Confederate spy.

[1] In 1878, she was elected president of the Ladies Physiological Association and in 1879 she helped New Orleans suffragettes promote a successful voting rights petition.

[2] That same year, Saxon spoke before the Louisiana Constitutional Convention, where a motion was made to give women equal voting rights.

A moving orator, she also spoke before the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee and traveled with women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony on a tour of New England.

[2] However, her work was instrumental to the social changes leading up to the amendment's passing, and she left behind a lasting legacy as an activist, writer, and woman of the South.