Henrietta Hay's Column

November 7, 1893 - a day of celebration for the pioneer women of Colorado -- a day for men and women to remember with pride in 1993. On that date a hundred years ago Colorado became the first state in the union to give women the right to vote. We have to be honest. Wyoming granted women suffrage in 1869, but they were a Territory at the time.

The road there was not an easy one, but no social change ever is. The Suffragettes make the women who are working today for equal rights look pretty tame. The long, hard battle for women's suffrage really began in 1848 with the National Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, which proclaimed that, "It is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise." The Seneca Declaration goes on to say, "Resolved, That the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance by asserting that they have all the rights they want." Pretty strong stuff for 1848, or for 1993 for that matter.

Here in Colorado, when the State Constitutional Convention met in 1875, suffrage was a major issue. The Pueblo Chieftain said of the Suffragettes at the Convention, "They were a very interesting lot of females--only one good looking woman among the twenty-five present...The others were faded and awfully frigid." The men had to decide whether to allow these pushy, frigid females to vote and, not surprisingly, the answer was No. They did, however, agree to allow a state-wide vote on the matter.

The next year the issue was put before the male voters (the only kind there were). Some of the arguments that were used against suffrage are still being used against gender equality today. One Denver minister intoned, "God intended woman to be a wife and a mother and the eternal fitness of things forbade her to be anything else."

The referendum was defeated. Most Denver newspapers explained it by pointing to inappropriate female behavior. The Suffragettes assessed the defeat more accurately, realizing that the great majority of women really didn't care enough to get involved in the campaign. A little later, the female owner of the new Denver newspaper, "The Antelope," wrote, "...women should remember that all the evils of society are caused by the bad management of men, and women are greatly to blame for folding their hands and permitting this state of things."

But the fight had just begun. The Suffragettes did the 1893 version of taking off the gloves and rolling up their leg-o-mutton sleeves. They knew they had to get to the women, so they started organizing them, an early version of networking.

The leaders were expert politicians. They argued and cajoled and reasoned, all in very proper language with their skirts trailing in the mud or the dust and wearing their huge feathery hats. Women's organizations were formed. The Women's Christian Temperance Union was the leader, battling demon rum and men-only suffrage with equal enthusiasm. Church groups, literary clubs, garden clubs, labor and political groups, all started working together for the first time. This was a new and wonderful idea for women.

Strong minded women like Susan B. Anthony and Mother Jones and Emily Griffith and Molly Brown and Carrie Nation with her ax and Mattie Silk with her girls -- they all got in the battle.

Their chance came six years later after Davis H. Waite was swept into the governor's office on a Populist wave, which favored women suffrage. Another suffrage election was set for November 7, 1893. This time the women were ready.

The Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association entered the campaign in April 1893 with 28 members and $25 in the treasury. Baby Doe Tabor donated office space in the Tabor Opera House. Their slogan was "LET THE WOMEN VOTE. THEY CAN'T DO ANY WORSE THAN THE MEN HAVE." Colorado women labored direlessly. Suffrage leades like Carrie Chapman Catt stumped the state. On election day the women buttonholed the men as they entered the voting places. We don't know exactly what they said, but whatever it was it worked. By the afternoon of November 8 they knew they had won. The Antelope headlined, "Western Women Wild with Joy Over Colorado's Election.,"

On November 7, 1893 the men of Colorado, by a vote of 35,798 to 29,451, made our state the first in the nation to grant suffrage to its women. Our deepest thanks to those men and to Colorado's first Feminists.