Texas Suffrage Movement
“Jane! My dear—Ratified and Released! Oooooo—how i wish I were in Austin with “the gang”—wouldn’t we celebrate just?”
Minnie Fisher Cunningham to Jane Y. McCallum, August 1920 after final ratification of the 19th Amendment
The earliest organized efforts in Texas for women's suffrage began in 1893 when Rebecca Henry Hayes founded the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA) to "advance the industrial, educational, and equal rights of women, and to secure their right to vote by appropriate State and national legislation.” TERA served as the Texas’ affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), largely led at that time by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. TERA was comprised of 50 members, one-fifth of them men, exclusively white and against universal woman suffrage, meaning only white women would be granted the right to vote. TERA sent representatives to the Democratic, Republican, and People’s Party conventions to lobby for their cause to vote but otherwise the group suffered from ongoing divisiveness within its ranks, so much so that at one point TERA had two presidents as their founder Hayes refused to resign. Under the circumstances, Susan B. Anthony pulled Texas from her national speaking tour and soon after TERA disbanded.
In 1903 Annette Finnigan of Houston led the first 20th century efforts for women’s equality by organizing the Texas Woman Suffrage League (TWSA). Finnigan was elected its president but two years later would move to the east coast to attend school and eventually take over her family business upon her father’s death. Finnegan’s move resulted in eight years of inactivity for the suffrage movement in Texas.
In 1913, Eleanor Brackenridge of San Antonio revived and led the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA). In her 70s and already an accomplished leader for women’s rights, Brackenridge had organized the first woman’s club in Texas, the Women’s Club of San Antonio, to support the votes for women movement. Nine years prior Brackenridge had authored “The Legal Status of Texas Women” which analyzed the state’s legal code relevant to women.
In 1914, Annette Finnigan returned to Texas to share leadership roles with Brackenridge, with Finnegan as president of the state suffrage organization. Finnegan applied the same purpose to suffrage as she did her family holdings when bequeathed to her in her father’s will “because of her superior business experience and tact.” Finnegan’s first step as president of Texas Woman Suffrage Association was to send letters to all Texas legislators urging them to support woman suffrage as a constitutional amendment.
At the 1915 convention, Minnie Fisher Cunningham of Galveston was elected president of TWSA. Finnegan moved to Austin to lobby the Texas legislature; unfortunately by 1916 Finnegan had suffered a stroke which would permanently debilitate her right arm. Twenty-three year old Cunningham had a personal reason to fight for women’s equality, as the first female graduate at UT Medical Branch-Galveston School of Pharmacy in 1901, she earned half of her male co-workers with no education. At that time, TWSA had grown to 2,500 members and 21 local groups throughout Texas, plus had secured the influential endorsement of the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. The women’s suffrage was finally building up an impressive grassroots momentum!
In 1916, TWSA adopted a new constitution and name: Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) and under Minnie Fisher Cunningham’s stewardship quickly increased to 98 chapters throughout Texas. Their next step would be even more critical: move to Austin to lobby and galvanize the Texas legislature.
Fortunately for Texas suffragists, their most formidable opponent Texas Governor James E. Ferguson had been indicted in 1917 on ten counts of embezzlement and abuse of power. Texas Woman Suffrage Association leader Minnie Fisher Cunningham met with then-Lieutenant Governor William P. Hobby and secured his support for their cause, and as a result, suffragists throughout Texas hosted rallies and campaigned, demanding that Ferguson be convicted by the Texas Senate and removed from office.
In August, 1917, suffrage leader Jane Y. McCallum of Austin led a 16-hour demonstration against Ferguson, calling Ferguson the “implacable foe of woman suffrage and of every great moral issue for which women stood.” There is no question that Texas suffragists contributed to Ferguson’s decline in support and his removal from office.
With the enthusiastic support of new Texas Governor William P. Hobby, the primary suffrage bill passed the House and Senate and was signed into law on March 26, 1918. Texas women were now able to vote in the upcoming July 27th primary election. Following a highly publicized voter registration on June 26th, 5,856 women registered to vote—approximately the same number of anticipated male voters.
In late 1918, considering the Pandemic and World War I, suffragists in Texas followed the leadership of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and focused on ratification of the federal amendment.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham moved to Washington, DC to lobby southern Democrats in the Senate. Jane Y. McCallum chaired the newly formed Ratification Committee in Austin in anticipation of lobbying the Texas Legislature once the federal amendment passed in DC.
Although the US Senate failed to pass the federal amendment in January 1919 in DC, Texas Governor P. Hobby signed Texas’ full suffrage bill in February 1919 in Austin.
On June 4th, 1919, the US Senate passed the federal suffrage amendment.
Two weeks later, on June 28th, Texas became the ninth state in the US and the first state in the South to ratify the 19th Amendment.
“With high hopes and enthusiam, women stepped forth into a world in which they were citizens at last!”
Jane Y. McCallum, August 1920