Women's suffrage in Texas
In both Constitutional Conventions and subsequent legislative sessions, efforts to provide women the right to vote were introduced, only to be defeated.
Early Texas suffragists such as Martha Goodwin Tunstall and Mariana Thompson Folsom worked with national suffrage groups in the 1870s and 1880s.
TESA grew in size and suffragists organized more public events, including Suffrage Day at the Texas State Fair.
TESA, under the political leadership of Minnie Fisher Cunningham and with the support of Governor William P. Hobby, suffragists began to make further gains in achieving their goals.
An attempt to modify the Texas Constitution by voter referendum failed in May 1919, but in June 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment.
Titus H. Mundine, an early leader in the Republican Party from Burleson County, brought up a proposition to allow every eligible voter the right to vote, regardless of sex during the 1868-1869 Texas Constitutional Convention.
Weaver from Cooke County was one of the men who introduced a resolution to grant women's suffrage, but his proposal died in the committee.
[9] Folsom was in contact with Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell who both felt that Texas needed to organize, but that the state may not yet be ready for women's suffrage.
'"[10] Rebecca Henry Hayes, a suffragist living in Galveston, began to correspond with Laura Clay of NAWSA in late 1892 and early 1893.
[14] TERA had local chapters formed in Beaumont, Belton, Circleville, Dallas, Denison, Fort Worth, Granger, San Antonio, and Taylor in 1893 and 1894.
[32] In 1913, TESA held a convention in San Antonio at the Saint Anthony Hotel, and seven chapters sent delegates, electing Mary Eleanor Brackenridge president of the group.
[27][32] The convention had a minor controversy over whether the group should work towards federal women's suffrage, which might be seen "as an infringement on the rights of the states.
[27] Finnigan was in contact with various Texas state legislators in 1914, lobbying them to include a referendum for a constitutional amendment on women's suffrage.
[25] Minnie Fisher Cunningham, now president of TESA, began a new plan to reorganize women's efforts to fight for suffrage in Texas.
[45][1] El Paso sent a delegate, Mrs. George Ferguson, to the 1916 suffrage demonstration held in Chicago and hosted by the new National Woman's Party (NWP).
[41] Baker wrote: "Remember that the women are one-half of the human race, and, therefore, are entitled by inherent right to all the privileges accorded to men.
[51] The El Paso Equal Franchise League protested his actions against UT, saying they didn't want the school to become "part of governor Ferguson's political or financial machine.
[53] In August, F. O. Fuller, the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives called a special session to consider impeaching Ferguson.
[53] As part of the marathon sixteen hour protest, McCallum was one of the speakers who called Ferguson the "implacable foe of woman suffrage and of every great moral issue for which women stood.
[58] In the fall of 1917, suffragists in Texas gathered signatures in support of a woman's suffrage bill in the United States Congress.
[75][69] Jessie Daniel Ames disagreed about the tactics and wanted Texas to pass a state amendment for the women's vote.
[81] Overall between the time the referendum left the Texas legislature and went to the voters to decide, suffrage groups hosted around 1,500 speakers and put out more than 300,000 pieces of pro-suffrage literature.
[83] Cunningham was involved in helping to support the ratification effort in the West and the South for the federal women's suffrage amendment.
[83] In the special session to ratify the women's suffrage amendment, anti-suffragists Wells and Charlotte Rowe testified against the bill.
[87] The Austin Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1913 used a racist dog-whistle in a distributed flier as a response to the anti-suffrage talking point that letting women vote would "endanger white supremacy.
[89] Jovita Idar began writing articles in favor of women's suffrage in the Spanish language newspaper, La Cronica in 1911.
[93] In El Paso, the president of the local TESA chapter, Belle Critchett, attempted to get black women to serve as clerks in the county election, though she was unsuccessful.
[68] In Houston, around 500 Black women were able to register to vote after threatening a lawsuit from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
[45] Other groups of people, such as those involved in the liquor industry, textile factory owners, and those already in political power opposed women's suffrage in Texas because they did not want the status quo to change.
[49] When Wells testified in front of the Texas Senate that year against women's suffrage, it was the first time a woman had spoken to that voting body.
