Women's suffrage in Virginia
[4][5] After achieving suffrage in August 1920, over 13,000 women registered within one month to vote for the first time in the 1920 United States presidential election.
[1][2] Organizing for women's suffrage began in Virginia in 1870, when Anna Whitehead Bodeker, originally from New Jersey, invited suffragist Pauline Kellogg Wright Davis to speak in Richmond.
[4] Citing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S Constitution, Bodeker attempted to vote in a municipal election in Richmond in November 1871.
[4] In 1880, Orra Henderson Moore Gray Langhorne unsuccessfully petitioned Virginia's General Assembly to allow women to vote in the presidential election.
In 1894, Langhorne petitioned the General Assembly for female property owners to have the right to vote in state and national elections—also unsuccessfully.
However, due to low membership numbers and organizational challenges, the Virginia Suffrage Society closed before the turn of the century.
While NAWSA favored organizing by electoral districts and putting pressure on politicians, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia had to take different approach.
[5] The Equal Suffrage League focused their legislative efforts on winning support in the General Assembly for a voting rights amendment to the state constitution.
[1][2] A flier distributed by the VAOWS claimed that if both black men and women had the right to vote, then "Twenty-nine Counties Would Go Under Negro Rule.
[2][5] However, private exchanges within the Virginia suffrage movement showed differing views on the issue of giving African American women the right to vote.
[1][2] Between 1912 and 1916, Virginia's suffragists brought the issue of women's voting rights to the floor of the General Assembly on three separate occasions; they were defeated each time.
[1] Maggie L. Walker, an African American businesswoman and the first woman in the United States to establish and serve as president of a bank,[12][13] chaired a committee of female activists that held mass meetings to encourage black women to vote.
[1][2] In 1920, Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, a Richmond community activist and social reformer from was appointed to the Democratic National Committee.
[1][16] In 1923, Sarah Lee Fain and Helen Timmons Henderson become the first women elected to the Virginia's General Assembly; they took office in January 1924.
[1] In June 1948, Clintwood, Virginia, elected its first female mayor, Minnie "Sis" Miller, and an all-female city council: Buena Smith, Ida Cunningham, Ferne W. Skeen, Kate Friend, and Marian C. Shortt.
