Women's suffrage in South Dakota
While South Dakota was part of the territory, women earned the right to vote on school related issues.
South Dakota was an early ratifier of the Nineteenth Amendment, which was approved during a special midnight legislative session on December 4, 1919.
[1] One of the earliest efforts to grant women full suffrage was proposed in the Territorial House by Enos Stutsman in 1868.
[1] The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) held a convention in Minneapolis in October of 1885 where many Dakota suffragists attended.
[1] Also that year, the franchise department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), made up of Helen M. Barker, Alice Pickler, and S. V. Wilson presented petitions for full women's suffrage to the territorial legislature.
[9] Emma Smith DeVoe and her husband, John, founded the South Dakota Equal Suffrage Association (SDESA) on October 21, 1889.
[19] After the convention, Anthony supporters asked the original members of SDESA to resign and created a new group with the same name and new officers.
[21] Many of the speakers were well-known activists such as Henry Browne Blackwell, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Anna Howard Shaw.
[24] John Pickler, however did mention women's suffrage in his acceptance speech when he was nominated for United States representative.
[24] When the Farmer's Alliance and the Knights of Labor formed an independent part that did not include women's suffrage in their party platform.
[26] Officers of SDESA, Anna R. Simmons and Emma Amelia Cranmer lobbied for a bill so that women could vote for state and county superintendents.
[27] In 1901, Anna Pickler and Philena Everett Johnson started the South Dakota Political Equality Association (SDPEA).
[29] Pickler and Anna R. Simmons, president of the South Dakota WCTU, continued work educating people in the state about women's suffrage.
[36] Pyle knew that anti-suffrage propaganda, especially women who promoted it "could be the deadliest deterrent" of achieving suffrage goals in the state.
[43] In 1915, the legislative committee members of the SDUFL, Mabel Rewman and Etta Estey Boyce were successful in lobbying the state legislature on women's suffrage.
[45] At the end of July, Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Effie McCollum Jones arrived in South Dakota to campaign for women's suffrage.
[46] They affiliated with the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) and published a newspaper called the South Dakota Anti-Suffragist.
[48] The prohibition measure did pass, which meant that liquor interests would no longer lobby against women's suffrage in the state.
[49] During World War I, suffragists used suspicions against German and other European immigrants in South Dakota as a way to promote their cause.
[50] In the early twentieth century, it was true that many German and German-Russian immigrants were historically opposed to women's suffrage in the state.
[51] Pyle also worked with Governor Peter Norbeck to find ways to curtail the voting rights of resident aliens, including German immigrants, in the state.
[52] Because women's suffrage was tied into citizenship, Anti-suffragists had a difficult time campaigning against the bill because it made them look pro-German.
[54] South Dakota activists wanted the state to be one of the first to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and urged Governor Norbeck to call a special legislative session.
[59] Some areas of South Dakota, including Todd, Ogala Lakota, and Washabaugh Counties continued to be disenfranchised until 1974.
[60] During the Republican Convention held in 1890, a large group of Russian immigrants wore buttons that read, "Against Woman Suffrage and Susan B.
