User:ZoyaBoris/sandbox/Texas Suffrage

Women in Texas did not have any voting rights when Texas was a republic (1836-1846) or after it became a state in 1846. Suffrage for Texas women was first raised at the Constitutional Convention of 1868-1869 when Republican Titus H. Mundine of Burleson County proposed that the vote be given to all qualified persons regardless of gender. The committee on state affairs approved Burleson’s proposal but the convention rejected it by a vote of 52 to 13. The first suffrage organization in Texas was the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA) which was organized in Dallas in May 1893 by Rebecca Henry Hayes of Galveston and which was active until 1895. TERA had auxiliaries in Beaumont, Belton, Dallas, Denison, Fort Worth, Granger, San Antonio, and Taylor.

Suffragists in Texas formed the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) in 1903 and renamed it the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) in 1916. The association was the state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Annette Finnigan of Houston was the first president. During Finnigan’s presidency, TWSA attempted to organize women’s suffrage leagues in other Texas cities but found little support. When Finnigan moved from Texas in 1905, the association became inactive.

In April 1913, 100 Texas suffragists met in San Antonio and reorganized TWSA with seven local chapters sending delegates. The delegates elected Mary Eleanor Brackenridge from San Antonio as president. Annette Finnigan, who had returned to Houston in 1909, succeeded Brackenridge as president in 1914, followed by Minnie Fisher Cunningham from Galveston in 1915. By 1917, there were 98 local chapters of TESA throughout Texas. In January 1916, 100 suffragists chartered the state branch of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in Houston. However, most Texas suffragists belonged to the more moderate Texas Equal Suffrage Association.

Texas suffragists publicized their cause through sponsoring lectures and forums, distributing pamphlets, keeping the issue in local newspapers, marching in parades, canvassing their neighborhoods, and petitioning their legislators and congressmen. Many suffragists in Texas used nativist and racist arguments to advocate for women’s suffrage. After the United States entered World War I, Texas suffragists also argued for the vote on the basis of their war work and patriotism.

In 1915, Texas suffragists came within two votes in the Texas legislature of achieving an amendment to the state constitution giving women the vote. In March 1918, suffragists led the effort to get women the vote in state primary elections. In seventeen days, TESA and other suffrage organizations registered approximately 386,000 Texas women to vote in the Democratic primary election in July 1918, which was the first time that women in Texas were able to vote. Texas suffragists then turned their attention to lobbying their federal representatives to support the Susan B. Anthony amendment to the federal constitution. Both Texas senators and ten of eighteen U.S. representatives from Texas voted for the federal amendment on June 4, 1919. Later that month, Texas became the first state in the South and the ninth state in the United States to ratify the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Texas House approved the federal amendment on June 24, 1919 by a vote of 96 to 21 and the Texas Senate approved it on June 28, 1919 by a voice vote.