The Fire of Civic Endeavor: Utah Suffrage

The Fire of Civic Endeavor: Utah Suffrage after Statehood, 1896–1920

BY REBEKAH RYAN CLARK

On a late summer day in 1915, Utah women paraded through Salt Lake City’s Main Street with cars decorated in purple, white, and gold flags. 1 The automobile procession greeted national women’s suffrage leaders just arriving in Utah for a large convention on behalf of the radical Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU). 2 That day’s elaborate display of progressivism, however, was neither controversial nor was it led by militants. Instead, it included many of the most respected, and respectable, women of Utah society.

A photograph taken on the steps of the Utah State Capitol Building on the occasion of a national suffrage envoy visiting the state, October 1915. Courtesy National Woman’s Party (NWP) Collection, Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, Washington, D.C.

At the head of the parade stood the aged and stately Emmeline B. Wells, Utah’s preeminent suffrage leader and the current general president of the Relief Society, the women’s organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The demonstration culminated at the Hotel Utah, where the eastern leaders and dozens of suffragists met with Senator Reed Smoot, thanked him for his support of women’s suffrage, and secured his wholehearted commitment to champion a constitutional amendment in the next congressional session. 3 At the convention the next day, Wells’s daughter, Annie Wells Cannon, served as one of the key speakers and as the convention chairperson. Despite their continued loyalty to the more moderate National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the convention delegates unanimously adopted a motion by Utah suffragist and religious leader Susa Young Gates to support the CU’s work toward adoption of a federal suffrage amendment.

This ardent support for women’s suffrage from prominent women and men in Utah is striking on the surface yet unsurprising in light of Utah’s pioneering role in the early women’s rights movement. Utah women made history in 1870 as the first female citizens in the nation to vote in an election with full equal suffrage rights. 4 Utah Territory’s official entrance into the women’s suffrage movement raised unique complications, sparked nationwide controversy, and added complexity and nuance to contemporary national debates about women’s rights, religious freedom, and citizenship. As the first place in America with a large population of enfranchised women, the remote western territory quickly emerged as a focal point of women’s suffrage in action. As the only place in the country that legalized polygamous marriages, it also became the target of sweeping federal legislation that leveraged women’s suffrage to eradicate the religious practice. After Utah women had actively voted for seventeen years, the U.S. Congress revoked their voting rights as part of the most stringent antipolygamy legislation it enacted. 5 Indignant Utah suffragists mobilized into suffrage associations throughout Utah Territory, and in 1896 they successfully regained their right to vote in Utah’s first state constitution.

Suffragists lobby Senator Reed Smoot outside the Hotel Utah, 1915. Courtesy NWP.

Utah women celebrated this victory, yet it was not the end of Utah’s suffrage story. The state’s suffragists remained actively committed to the larger cause long after securing their own rights with statehood. In 1896, Governor Heber M. Wells predicted, “Their cause is too great to permit of their resting satisfied with merely local advantages—it is the enfranchisement of half the Nation, the better half—they are contending for, and no doubt, the influence of the women of Utah will be felt in behalf of ‘Woman Suffrage’ until the last woman in this broad land shall have been enfranchised.” 6 As demonstrated by the parading cars and widespread support for a constitutional amendment in 1915, many twentieth-century Utah suffragists in fact continued their longstanding engagement in the national movement. Local and state organizations sent delegates to national conventions, raised funds for multiple national associations, obtained tens of thousands of signatures for congressional petitions, and participated in public demonstrations. Despite lingering tensions over the fading practice of polygamy, the rare political experience gained by Utah women as some of the first female voters, lobbyists, and elected officials ensured their complex yet crucial role within the suffrage movement. 7 Utah suffragists continued to cultivate relationships with national leaders, lobby legislatures on behalf of women’s suffrage, and exemplify the good that enfranchised women could do in their communities. Overall, Utah women demonstrated widespread support for the suffrage cause throughout five decades. 8

Notwithstanding this long history of activism, Utah’s place in suffrage history still remains unclear. The pivotal role of western women, and of Utah women in particular, as trailblazers in the women’s suffrage movement has largely been omitted, obscured, or overshadowed within traditional historical narratives. 9 While historians have begun to reconstruct the intricate reality of Utah’s unique suffrage experience, these important analyses generally focus on the most active period of Utah suffrage activism, between 1870 and 1896. 10 The activism that occurred after statehood remains largely unexamined. 11

Utah suffragists’ national activism during the twentieth century took form primarily through contributing to other state suffrage campaigns, offering an example of the positive effects of suffrage, and lobbying for a federal amendment. The continued grassroots activism reflects the commitment of many Utah suffragists to the larger cause of women’s rights while illuminating some of the complex tensions within the national movement. Examining the post-statehood era of Utah activism continues the important process of reinserting Utah women back into the larger national suffrage narrative. Such a study is critical to a deeper understanding of Utah’s suffrage experience and its place within the national movement.

“A Benefit to Our Sister States”

With their voting rights almost secure, members of the Woman Suffrage Association (WSA) of Utah met in 1895 to discuss the fate of the suffrage organizations. Emmeline B. Wells, then serving as president of the territorial organization, described the decision of the WSA leaders to continue their activism even after the re-enfranchisement of Utah women, explaining: “All favored the existences of suffrage clubs in the future. They thought it the duty of all to work for the enfranchisement of women until universal suffrage should be obtained.” 12 By that time, Utah had a thriving territorial association as well as a well-organized structure of associations in at least twenty-one counties and numerous local branches. The suffragists unanimously agreed to continue these WSA groups and to create a state association following Utah’s imminent statehood. They later explained that they continued as an official chapter of NAWSA in order to “evidence our progressiveness in uniting our voices with the rest of the States and Territories in the hope that ere long every State in the Union will concede to woman this right.” 13 Following statehood, the suffrage leader Emily S. Richards similarly predicted “that all women will yet have the right to vote,” and emphasized the role and responsibility of Utah in the growing women’s rights movement. She urged Utah’s suffrage association members to remain “thoroughly organized and united in our work” so they could “be a benefit to our sister States that have not received the franchise yet.” 14 One way that Utah suffragists continued to utilize their highly organized suffrage network and unity after their own victory was to bolster NAWSA’s state-by-state approach.

Utah suffrage leaders with Susan B. Anthony, May 1895. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 20395.

An opportunity for such unity came in the spring of 1895, as activists from throughout the western states arrived in Salt Lake City for NAWSA’s regional Rocky Mountain Suffrage Convention. A large procession greeted national leaders Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw, who spoke in the Tabernacle to a crowd of more than six thousand people and then led the two-day convention. The interdenominational participants of the gathering demonstrated unprecedented unity as the women of Utah celebrated regaining their voting rights. Anthony spoke of the ongoing “battles” in the other states, rejoicing that “the states of these old rock-ribbed mountains are the first to embody justice in their constitutions and are going to set the example.” 15 Utah suffragist Mary Isabella Horne voiced the religious conviction behind her commitment to extend equality, exclaiming, “I would be glad if we could induce all the men and women to believe in equal suffrage for both sexes. God created us equal.” 16 Alice Reynolds, a Utah leader, later described the importance of Anthony and Shaw’s presence, when she noted that “their visit marked the high peak in the suffrage history of Utah.” 17

The 1895 conference celebrated a victorious culmination of suffrage advocacy in Utah, but it also marked the beginning of a new phase of national activism. Utahns had engaged in the national movement since the 1870s, but the focus now shifted outward. The path forward, however, was not always smooth. Despite some local concerns that sending Utah delegates to the NAWSA national convention in 1896 “might seem a useless expenditure of time and money considering that Utah is now a State with universal political equality,” the suffrage association ultimately decided that participating in annual national conventions was “expedient . . . not now as formerly to solicit their influence in our behalf, but that they were in need of our influence . . . to further the cause.” 18 The Woman’s Exponent indicates that Utah was represented by a delegation at every annual NAWSA convention from 1887 until 1920.

To further facilitate support of the national campaign, NAWSA leader Carrie Chapman Catt enlisted the women of Utah in a more official capacity. Emmeline B. Wells was selected as one of the original five members of the NAWSA Standing Committee on Organization, chaired by Catt and established in 1895 to “map out the national work and put organizers in the field” to travel, speak, and raise money for NAWSA’s national treasury. 19 Catt met with twenty-five women in the Woman’s Exponent Salt Lake City office in October 1899 and established the Utah Council of Women (UCW). 20 The UCW bridged former divisions among Utah suffragists by including women from multiple faiths and political parties and served as a state NAWSA branch dedicated to supporting the suffrage efforts of other states. Richards, one of the most prominent Latter-day Saint women who had worked for the inclusion of suffrage rights in the new state constitution, replaced Wells as president of the new state suffrage organization, and Wells was appointed to the NAWSA national executive committee. 21 The UCW supported the national organization’s goals by mobilizing the efforts of the majority of Utah suffragists. They held monthly meetings, sent delegates to each of the annual NAWSA conventions, gathered signatures for congressional petitions, provided funding for the national movement, served in NAWSA leadership positions, hosted national leaders, and attended and spoke at national and international women’s rights conventions. 22 Their support led Catt to observe in 1909: “Utah has always stood so nobly by us that we feel grateful for its many kindnesses, to say nothing of its continued record on woman suffrage.” 23

Whenever the national organization called for financial aid to fund its state campaigns, the UCW “responded liberally.” 24 Utah County suffrage leader Electa Bullock spoke of the need for unity with the rest of the nation when she urged, “In sustaining your local society you are sustaining financially your State and National Association as well. . . . We want to be one grand solid army from one end of the nation to the other.” 25 In addition to dues contributions, the Utah organization participated actively in national fundraisers, such as a 1900 NAWSA bazaar. Catt implored suffragists to “contribute of their time and talent in this common effort,” explaining: “National work means work for all the States.” 26 The UCW responded to Catt’s call to raise funds for the state-by-state campaign and donated items such as a quilt made from Utah silk and a doll “none the less elegantly attired because the women who dressed her were voters.” 27 At the bazaar, Utah shared a prominent booth with the other three enfranchised states next to the main platform, decorated with the national colors and representing the end goal for all the states. 28

Utah’s contributions to neighboring state campaigns went beyond finances. Mary Isabella Horne promoted the cause at meetings in southern Idaho in 1895, where “the question of Woman’s Suffrage . . . was listened to with the greatest attention and interest, and has awakened thought and reflection that cannot fail to produce good results.” 29 One Idaho woman acknowledged that it was “a subject almost new to many of our Sisters,” and that Horne’s words helped convince the Idaho women “to fall in line with Wyoming, Colorado and Utah in the Woman’s Suffrage movement, and secure every advantage that can be obtained by equality at the ballot box.” 30 An Idaho delegate echoed this sentiment at the 1897 NAWSA convention, just after Idaho granted women’s suffrage: “We are proud that our four equal suffrage States are joined together and united . . . and we will stand as a great bulwark of strength to the States around us.” 31 Idaho leaders later recognized that some of Utah’s contributions in southern Idaho were a “strong factor in the campaign,” noting the literature presented by the Utah suffrage association to the Idaho press, the “effective work” of Utah suffragists advocating the cause, and the presence of a large group in southern Idaho “who were residents of Utah when women voted there and who believed in their enfranchisement.” 32

These efforts to encourage the passage of suffrage in other states were not limited to Idaho. Colorado suffragists acknowledged, “It seems that we from Colorado ought to thank you for the help Utah has given us.” 33 Richards assured suffrage leaders in California: “Realizing as we do that women of Utah are highly privileged, we are not indifferent to the interests of our sisters abroad, and would be most happy in assisting them in their wise and laudable efforts.” 34 Wells and her daughter Melvina Woods, a delegate for the newly enfranchised women of Idaho, both addressed the 1897 NAWSA convention in Des Moines and then testified before the Iowa Senate in favor of women’s suffrage. 35 Native Hawaiian and Utah resident Hannah Kaaepa attended the 1899 National Council of Women conference in Washington, D.C. with Gates and other Utah suffragists, where she strongly advocated for women’s suffrage in the new territory of Hawaii. 36 In 1911, Gates represented Utah in the newly organized National Council of Women Voters, a short-lived nonpartisan coalition of the five suffrage states through which the western enfranchised women worked “to gain votes for women in other states.” 37

The commitment of Utah suffragists to helping other women achieve equal suffrage was genuine but limited in scope, especially in regards to race. In 1896, they celebrated that “Utah is now a State with universal political equality guaranteed to all her citizens without regard to race, color or sex,” but like the rest of the mainstream national suffrage movement, Utah fell short of true universal suffrage. 38 This racial myopia resulted in the exclusion and marginalization of many women of color from the general movement in Utah and throughout the nation. 39 Women’s suffrage laws in 1870, 1896, and even 1920 did not include most Native Americans or immigrants of Asian descent because these groups were largely barred from citizenship by federal law. Segregation and local discriminatory restrictions also impacted the ability of African Americans to fully and equally participate as citizens, although records indicate that Utah’s small population of black women and men voted and actively participated in Utah politics by the turn of the twentieth century. The struggle for equal access to suffrage continued for women in these communities for many years—even after important extensions of voting rights such as the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 40

While they often worked on the margins of the mainstream movement, Utah women of color made critical contributions to these efforts. For example, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Taylor and Alice B. Nesbitt, leaders of the Colored Woman’s Republican Club of Utah and the Western Federation of Colored Women, vigorously campaigned for the Republican Party during elections, encouraged black women to register and vote even if they met resistance, and advocated for social and political equality in early-twentieth-century Utah. 41 Zitkála-Šá, who lived on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah, was a leading national advocate for Native people’s citizenship and cultural identity beginning in 1916. She co-founded the National Council for American Indians in 1926 to continue lobbying for Native suffrage rights. 42 Activism by women of color in Utah and in the national cause often took place through separate organizations because of the cultural limitations of prejudice within the mainstream movement.

The intensity of suffrage activism during this phase of Utah’s involvement was also limited by the difficulty of maintaining momentum once Utah women had won back their own voting rights. Gates recorded that “it was hard to keep up the interest” in monthly local suffrage association meetings beyond 1910, although the associations still mobilized throughout the next decade whenever the national association needed help from Utah. 43 Looking back on Utah’s twentieth-century activism, suffragist Alice Reynolds also noted the challenge of maintaining enthusiasm and overcoming apathy among some Utah suffragists after their own victory. She described the steadfast efforts of leaders such as Richards, who maintained Utah’s active engagement in the movement and kept “the home fires burning.” 44 The Deseret Evening News acknowledged the continuing influence of “Utah ladies . . . in the front ranks” of the suffrage cause, noting: “The women of Utah who enjoy the boon of suffrage, do not forget that it is their duty to do all they can, that the sisters in other states may receive the power and opportunity of doing good through the ballot.” 45

“In the Front Ranks”: Leading by Example

Utah’s role as an example of the real-world effects of women’s suffrage was ultimately one of the most influential ways that it contributed to other state campaigns. Initial reactions to enfranchisement in the state reinforced the impression that the eyes of the nation were on Utah and that suffragists indeed looked to Utah to demonstrate the success of women’s suffrage. As noted in 1896, the women of Utah were keenly aware that they were “watched by three classes of men and women. By the cynic who expects that we will make but a poor use of [the franchise], by the timid women who fear for the ‘consequences,’ and by the earnest women of many states who look to us to vindicate their hopes and aspirations.” 46 Other states benefited from the experience, influence, and even just the existence of Utah as a model of women’s suffrage in action. 47 A leader from the Detroit Equal Suffrage Association explained in 1896: “The example of Utah must help to hasten the day of the general enfranchisement of women. . . . To the women of Utah we look for such dignity and discretion in the discharge of their new duties that we may be able to point to them as exemplars.” 48 Utah suffragists repeatedly tried to demonstrate the success of women’s voting and to vindicate the hopes of advocates throughout the nation. In a congratulatory letter to the “newly enfranchised women of Utah,” Colorado suffragists wrote in 1895:

“In the march of progress, may your banner ever float in the front ranks.” 49

Utah women served as an example to the nation of the societal benefits of women’s suffrage as they put their newly won political rights into action. They often framed their political activity in domestic terms, a common method used by Progressive Era–suffragists to illustrate the respectability and femininity of women participating in politics. In 1897, one year after the state constitution restored the franchise to Utah women, the Woman’s Exponent replaced its masthead about women’s rights with a more specific appeal: “The Ballot in the Hands of the Women of Utah should be a Power to better the home, the State and the Nation.” 50 Utah women largely fulfilled this mandate through high voter participation, legislative lobbying, and elected office, providing an opportunity for suffragists throughout the nation to refute the predictions of their detractors and demonstrate that women’s votes would improve society. The legislative gains accomplished through women’s efforts provided a model for future suffrage states and demonstrated the civic interest of women.

There are no polling records extant for this period, but other surviving records indicate high voter participation among Utah women throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century. Wells claimed that Utah women exercised the vote “as extensively as men,” based on the election statistics of 1900, with a considerably larger proportion of registered women voting than registered men. 51 Records indicate that this high level of participation continued at least throughout the early twentieth century. In 1911, the NAWSA reported that 85 to 90 percent of eligible Utah women voted, according to the Commissioner of the State Bureau of Statistics. 52 In 1913, NAWSA historian Ida Husted Harper recorded that “official records show that during all the past eighteen years [Utah women] have voted in quite as large a proportion as men.” 53 Gates wrote in 1922, “As a rule about 90 per cent of the women vote and about 85 per cent of the men.” 54 If these statistics are accurate, Utah women defied the national trends following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment of both overall declining voter turnout as well as women’s low electoral participation. 55

The author, activist, and religious leader, Susa Young Gates. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 12329.

Utah’s example was further strengthened by the ability of its women to immediately enter into the political process because of their long history of political participation. After enjoying seventeen years of voting privileges, they gained even more experience with leadership, organization, and legislative procedure during their eight-year fight to regain the vote. The UCW followed NAWSA urgings to use the franchise to influence legislation and became an effective lobbying power. The UCW formed a women’s Legislative Council that met during every legislative session between 1911 and 1920 to carefully review and respond to each bill, or to frame new bills, relevant to the cause of women’s rights and reform. 56 This council served as an effective lobbying power. While Utah women typically voted along party lines rather than as a cohesive group, they nevertheless posed a threat to any legislation that might mobilize the women, as occurred during political fights involving gambling and prohibition. 57 During legislative debates over raising the age of consent, Wells threatened the House Legislative Committee with the risk of losing all the women’s votes and later claimed that the bill’s ultimate success “was all because we have the franchise, and the men know it.” 58

Utah women also organized with women in the other suffrage states to more effectively promote the extension of the franchise and share their suffrage and legislative experiences. Through its prominent role in the formation of the National Council of Women Voters, Utah had the opportunity to share its example of the legislative and social gains that suffrage could accomplish. 59 In a 1910 letter to Gates, who was the appointed Utah delegate to the organizing convention in Tacoma, the Washington state leader Emma Smith DeVoe indicated the importance of Utah as an example of suffrage in action and asked: “Please come loaded with what you did in Utah at first for women, also what you wish you had done, for I know we will be able to secure more and better laws right now than ever again. Please tell me . . . what your laws are concerning women and jury duty.” 60 Her request for information concerning women’s influence on legislation demonstrated her willingness to accept the Utah experience as a valid example.

Utah women influenced key state and municipal laws even more directly by entering political positions on nearly every level, proving themselves well qualified to lead as elected officials. Most notably, Martha Hughes Cannon was elected as the first female state senator in the United States in 1896. As a medical doctor, Democrat, and polygamous wife who had run against and defeated her own Republican husband in the state senate election, Cannon provided a complicated counter-example to the claims of antipolygamists that Latter-day Saint women were dupes controlled by their husbands. Once in office, Senator Cannon worked closely with the other women in the state legislature, particularly Representative Alice Merrill Horne. Cannon and Horne joined forces to secure the passage of legislation to improve public health, provide for higher education, and support the arts. They leveraged the power of women’s suffrage to obtain needed votes on this legislation by scattering yellow flowers, a well-known symbol of suffrage, on the desks of male legislators as a reminder of the strength of women’s collective voice. 61

Over the next two decades, more Utah women gained office and used their power to bring about progressive municipal reforms, particularly on issues of interest to women. Suffragists such as Annie Wells Cannon, Jane Skolfield, Elizabeth A. Hayward, and Lily C. Wolstenholme used their elections to the state House of Representatives to pass legislation relating to marriage, education, minimum wage, widows’ pensions, equal pay, child labor, prohibition, and prostitution. Several women rose to leadership within their elected roles, including Mary G. Coulter of Ogden, who became the first woman in the nation to chair a state House Judiciary Committee, and Grace Stratton Airey, who chaired the House Public Health Committee for two terms. 62 The town of Kanab was the first in Utah to elect an all-female town council, with Mary Chamberlain as mayor and Tamar Hamblin, Luella McAllister, Blanche Hamblin, and Ada Pratt Seegmiller serving as council members. 63 Although initially put on the ballot as a joke, and faced with opposition once in office by those who resisted a “petticoat government,” these Kanab women enacted ordinances to rid the town of problems such as alcohol, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, and stray livestock. 64 Gates asserted, “Since statehood every county, every town, every precinct has been served faithfully and well by women in various positions.” 65 Indeed, by 1920, Utah had elected two women as state senators, fourteen women to the state House of Representatives, and over 120 women to county office. 66

Utah women also earned distinction at a national level as delegates to national party conventions and as presidential electors. For example, as an alternate delegate to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Ellen Ferguson urged the inclusion of women’s suffrage in the party platform. 67 Lucy A. Clark of Brigham City was the first woman in the nation to vote as a delegate at the Republican National Convention and the first to give a speech at such a convention. Clark also spoke to a gathering of women in Chicago just prior to the convention, explaining: “We are asking for a serious consideration of suffrage as a subject that intimately concerns the welfare of the nation.” 68 Elizabeth Cohen seconded the presidential nomination of William Jennings Bryan at the 1900 Democratic National Convention. 69 Margaret Zane Witcher was the first woman in the nation to serve in the Electoral College in 1912, where she had the honor of meeting personally with President William Howard Taft. 70 These and other Utah women had an impact on local, state, and national politics.

Twentieth-century suffragists in Utah, and throughout the nation, often used Progressive Era–rhetoric about the perceived feminine ability to clean up politics as a way to counteract antisuffrage portrayals of suffragists as masculine and militant. Antisuffragists were vocal from the beginning of the suffrage movement and formally organized on a national level in 1911 as the movement began to gain nationwide momentum. 71 Common opposition arguments included the claims that most women did not want the vote, were not mentally capable of participating adequately in politics, would just vote the same as their husbands, or would lose their femininity if they entered the public sphere. 72

Suffrage leaders could counteract these arguments by pointing to the experience in suffrage states as evidence of the real-world benefits of women’s suffrage. Cannon, while serving as a state senator for Utah, testified in 1898 to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee about Utah’s experience with women’s suffrage, assuring the congressmen that “none of the unpleasant results which were predicted have occurred.” Instead, she described the “actual conditions” and “practical reality” in Utah as proof that women’s participation would “elevate” politics and lead to “the well-being of the State,” asserting that “woman’s suffrage in Utah is the story of all efforts for the advancement and betterment of humanity.” 73 Romania B. Penrose, another active Utah suffragist, similarly used Utah’s example to refute specific antisuffrage claims when she spoke to the Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Amsterdam, Holland, in June 1908. She professed that women in Utah often chose different political parties or candidates than their husbands but reassured her listeners that there had been no “disruptions in families which were predicted,” and “it has not robbed her one whit of her womanliness or hindered the performance of home duties.” Penrose described what she saw as the resulting purification of politics, where “polling places are conducted in proper order without unseemly wrangles, vulgar language, and profanity, and free from the uncleanness of tobacco-using,” and included examples of beneficial legislation among the other “good effects of woman suffrage in Utah.” 74

Suffrage itself was never the end goal but rather the doorway to public participation. As Richards declared in her speech to the annual NAW- SA convention in 1896, “Of course, the work is but begun; the cause is in its merest infancy. . . . In a far away promised land we behold a perfected state wherein the heart and hand and intelligence of woman contribute their full share to the welfare of the race.” 75 Women’s engagement in the public sphere enhanced their opportunities to improve society. Utah’s example of political participation and leadership served as an extension of the suffrage movement and an opportunity to promote the cause throughout the nation. Its example was critical to securing suffrage victories in individual states, and particularly in advocating for a national suffrage amendment to secure women’s right to “contribute their full share” to society.

Advocacy for the Amendment

Utah women had already experienced the vulnerability of legislative suffrage when Congress revoked their right to vote after seventeen years. Their firsthand knowledge of the weakness of legislatively granted suffrage rights fueled their dedication to obtaining constitutional protection of women’s rights, both to extend the rights of suffrage to women in other states and to provide more security to their own privileges. Following statehood, Utah’s well-organized advocacy focused on the fight for a federal amendment while also endorsing the state-by-state suffrage campaigns and providing a positive example of women’s suffrage in action. In general, Utah suffragists continued to support NAWSA efforts, but their longstanding support for an amendment led them to also form alliances with more radical organizations that emerged with an exclusive focus on constitutional change. As Utah women continued to engage in the battle for nationwide women’s suffrage rights into the twentieth century, they participated in many of the national efforts for a constitutional amendment, including suffrage parades, massive petitions, and even White House picketing.

Utah suffragists demonstrated early and consistent support for a federal suffrage amendment. During the fledgling years of the movement, nineteenth-century suffragists, including national leaders Victoria Woodhull and Susan B. Anthony, had argued that women already had suffrage rights under the Fourteenth Amendment based on their citizenship. 76 Following Minor v. Happersett, the 1875 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that citizenship alone did not guarantee voting rights, the only recourse left for advocates was to either secure a constitutional amendment or lobby each state to individually grant women suffrage. 77 From that point on, national suffrage organizations pursued both courses of action. The conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) focused its efforts primarily on a state-by-state approach, while the more radical National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) emphasized the necessity and efficiency of a constitutional solution. 78 Because NWSA strongly defended Utah women’s suffrage against multiple legislative attacks, while AWSA leaders often refused to endorse Utah women’s suffrage, Utah suffragists developed close ties to NWSA and its nationwide approach. 79

Many Utah women publicly supported a constitutional amendment as one of the main goals of the cause as early as 1877, when Wells mobilized Utah women to gather signatures for a NWSA petition. Utahns responded enthusiastically to official appeals from NWSA leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Anthony for all states to contribute to a “mammoth petition.” 80 Wells publicly declared the “ardent” desire of Utah women “to be one with the women of America in this grand movement.” 81 Utah women gathered nearly seven thousand signatures, more than any other state or territory, for this appeal to the Forty-fifth Congress in favor of a constitutional amendment. 82 Utah’s portion of the petition stated: “The undersigned citizens of the United States, residents of the Territory of Utah, earnestly pray your honorable body to adopt measures for so amending the constitution as to prohibit the several states and territories from disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex.” 83 Utah suffragists were keenly aware that an amendment would protect them from disfranchisement as well as extend rights to other female citizens throughout the nation. A contemporary newspaper noted this motivation for circulating the suffrage amendment petition, reporting that “the measures introduced into congress recently, among which is one to deprive them of that right and virtually disfranchise them, has aroused them and induced this protective action.” 84 Indeed, at the large meeting where Utah activists organized their NWSA petition efforts, they not only expressed the “great practical benefit” of the amendment “for the elevation of mankind” but also protested pending federal antipolygamy legislation that threatened to revoke their right to vote. 85 Utah’s well-organized efforts to support the petition led to the appointment of Wells to the NWSA Advisory Committee and an invitation for Utah women to attend the 1879 NWSA annual convention, thus securing Utah suffragists’ alliance with NWSA. 86

After the two national organizations merged in 1890 to form the NAWSA, the focus on an amendment was often overshadowed as the more conservative members’ emphasis on a state-by-state campaign took precedent. Utah suffragists indeed contributed to these efforts, but they also continued to echo Anthony’s focus on an amendment as the most effective method of extending suffrage rights. Arguing for continued activism after 1896, Utah suffragist Sarah Boyer urged other Utah women to have a continuing role in the movement. After serving as a delegate to a national suffrage convention, Boyer observed that NAWSA was “in need of [Utah’s] influence . . . to further the cause, and to petition Congress to grant them a[n] . . . amendment to the Constitution.” 87 Although the efforts of NAWSA toward an amendment slowed after the merger and throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, Utah suffragists combined their local efforts with national activism on several occasions. In 1898, when Cannon spoke at the congressional hearing on the proposed suffrage amendment, she advocated for it by citing “the actual conditions now existing in Utah as a complete vindication of the efforts of equal suffragists.” 88 In 1908, Utah suffragist Rose Sullivan also testified in favor of an amendment before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, alongside NAWSA leader Carrie Chapman Catt. 89 Utah’s status as one of only four states with enfranchised women at this time gave Utahns credibility.

Particularly in the second decade of the twentieth century, as the suffrage movement began to gain momentum and the focus shifted toward advocating for a national amendment, Utah women participated in NAWSA’s new approach to hold large public demonstrations. In April 1910, NAWSA leaders presented Congress with a mile-long “monster petition” of 400,000 signatures on behalf of a constitutional amendment: the Utah chapter had obtained over 40,000 of those signatures. 90 Utah women were “among the most active” suffragists to participate in the 1912 NAWSA convention and parade in Philadelphia. 91 Having first heard Anthony and Shaw speak when she attended an 1895 NAWSA convention in Salt Lake City as a child, Florence Allen rode in one of the leading limousines heading to the 1912 convention. 92 In the 1913 Senate Committee hearing on the amendment, Senator Reed Smoot presented Congress with Utah’s portion of another large NAWSA petition and related the success of Utah suffrage, claiming that “no evil effects have followed, but, on the contrary, a better condition in public affairs has been the result.” 93 In 1913, Utah suffragists participated in the largest suffrage demonstration in United States history, the NAWSA Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, D.C. Over eight thousand suffragists marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the demonstration, including a contingent of women from Utah who were led by Edna Groshell, a UCW leader who had also served as president of the Woman’s Democratic Club of Salt Lake. 94

The 1913 parade was a turning point in the suffrage movement, not only because publicity from the event shifted public opinion and reinvigorated the cause but also because it led to yet another split within the national suffrage organization. Fundamental disagreements arose between NAWSA leadership and the organizers of the procession, the emerging leaders Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who believed that the American movement needed to employ more radical tactics. When these tensions became irreconcilable, Paul and Burns broke away from NAWSA and formed a more progressive, competing organization called the Congressional Union for Woman’s Suffrage (CU). The CU rejected the slower process of working state-by-state preferred by NAWSA and instead sought to leverage the “latent political power in our Equal Suffrage States to force Congress to give us a Federal Amendment.” 95 CU organizers employed a controversial policy of mobilizing enfranchised women to vote as a protest against a political party’s failure to pass a suffrage amendment. NAWSA president Anna Howard Shaw warned that this policy would be “highly injurious to the suffrage movement in America,” and “utterly suicidal in the campaign states,” and thus urged NAW- SA members to “take a decided stand” against such a policy. 96 Thousands of copies of Shaw’s warning were reportedly sent throughout the suffrage states by NAWSA to undermine CU efforts, with Paul noting that “practically every woman I have met in Colorado, Utah, and Idaho has received a copy.” 97 NAWSA leaders even considered a resolution that would bar any suffragists who worked with the CU from being members of the National Executive Council. 98 Utahns found themselves in the crosshairs of this organizational rivalry as they tried to negotiate their loyalty to both NAWSA and CU agendas. 99

A massive parade in support of women’s voting rights, March 3, 1913, Washington, D.C. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIGnpcc-20233.

The CU’s exclusive focus on securing a constitutional amendment, as well as its emphasis on the influence of already-enfranchised western women, made Utah a natural partner for CU efforts. When national CU leaders arrived in Utah in 1915 and led the parade down Salt Lake City’s Main Street, this public demonstration was centered on advocacy for an amendment. The cover of a 1915 issue of the CU’s newspaper the Suffragist featured a large photograph of Smoot and several Utah and CU suffrage leaders under a large banner reading, “We Demand an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Enfranchising Women.” 100 Among the participating Utah suffragists were Wells and Richards, who had both served as presidents of Utah’s NAWSA chapter, as well as other women who remained active in NAWSA efforts. 101 At the large suffrage convention held the next day, Annie Wells Cannon spoke on the “Desire of Utah Women to Help Their Sisters in the East,” and the CU leader Mabel Vernon rallied the Utah women, declaring, “If these women of the western states who already have the vote take a stand for the suffrage amendment to the constitution it will go through this next Congress.” 102 Despite NAWSA warnings, the large meeting of about one hundred delegates unanimously adopted a motion by Gates to support the CU’s work toward adoption of a federal amendment extending women’s suffrage throughout all the states. 103

Utah supported the CU’s bold amendment agenda by holding rallies, attending conventions, providing funds, and signing petitions. Because of a train delay, Paul missed the August 1915 parade and convention in Salt Lake City, but she arrived in time to organize a Utah branch of the CU. 104 Paul observed the “enthusiasm and interest” she encountered in Utah and noted that the state officers for the new branch included “Gentiles and Mormons; and Republicans, a Democrat, a Progressive, and a non partisan—so we are hopeful that the committee will suit all factions.” 105 As Utahns entered this final era of suffrage activism, the religious tensions of the past clearly lingered but did not obstruct their participation. Paul reported that Utah’s new CU committee of officers, which included former Utah state legislators such as Annie Wells Cannon, Wolstenholme, and Horne, had elected sixty delegates to represent Utah at the upcoming “Woman Voters Convention” in San Francisco the next month. 106

This convention of over three thousand delegates, hosted by the CU in conjunction with the Panama Pacific International Exposition, passed a resolution declaring their commitment to work exclusively for the passage of an amendment to prohibit gender as a restriction for voting rights, known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. 107 Interestingly, the only opposing voice to this resolution came from Salt Lake City suffrage leader Elizabeth Cohen, who raised concerns because the CU resolution explicitly opposed supporting any other suffrage amendments. 108 This objection reflected Cohen’s loyalty to NAWSA and the growing tensions between the two organizations. NAWSA had always supported the Anthony amendment, but a few NAWSA leaders had also recently introduced an alternative amendment that would have required each state to hold its own referendum on suffrage once eight percent of voters in the state signed a petition. Known as the Shafroth-Palmer Amendment, this short-lived NAWSA proposal was a strategic compromise to facilitate the state-by-state suffrage platform. It was particularly designed to appeal to southern conservative legislators who wanted to maintain states’ rights and protect discriminatory voting practices by having each state determine its own voting requirements. 109 The Salt Lake City convention the month before had unanimously voted that the Utah delegation would specifically support the Anthony amendment, rather than the Shafroth amendment, so Cohen’s objection likely came as a surprise. 110 Ultimately, most suffragists supported the Anthony amendment, even most members of NAWSA.

The CU resolutions in favor of the federal amendment passed with overwhelming support, and the San Francisco convention gathered 500,000 signatures on behalf of the amendment from enfranchised western women. This 18,333-foot-long petition was then sent with a CU automobile envoy across the country to be delivered to Congress. When the CU leader Sara Bard Field and the rest of the CU cavalcade arrived in Salt Lake City in October 1915, they were greeted by another elaborate procession of decorated cars, a marching band, and many of “Salt Lake’s most prominent women.” 111 Field, Governor William Spry, the Salt Lake City mayor, Wells, and other public figures spoke in favor of the suffrage amendment at an official ceremony held on the steps of the new Utah State Capitol building. 112 When Field and her companions arrived in Washington, D.C. in December, Senator George Sutherland from Utah greeted them on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and then introduced the suffrage amendment to the Senate. 113 Wolstenholme was among the suffragists who delivered the petition to President Woodrow Wilson. 114 Margaret Zane Witcher Cherdron, state chairwoman of the Utah CU branch, presided over a large meeting at the first national CU convention in Washington, D.C. that week. 115 Utah suffragist Alice Reynolds joined another CU envoy to the nation’s capital to present another large petition for a suffrage amendment in the capitol rotunda on May 16, 1916. 116

Utah’s support for the CU and NAWSA became increasingly divided as the CU became more militant and as NAWSA began to emphasize its own advocacy for a national suffrage amendment. The CU launched the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in suffrage states in 1916 and then merged the CU into the NWP in 1917. The longtime activists Annie Wells Cannon, Wolstenholme, and Cherdron attended the first NWP convention as delegates from Utah, and then Utah’s NWP branch held weekly meetings in Salt Lake City beginning in September 1916. 117 The NWP was designed as “a movement of western women” to promote the Anthony amendment by leveraging enfranchised women’s votes against the political party in power. 118 The NWP’s partisanship and confrontational tactics sparked pragmatic concerns from rival NAWSA leaders that echoed earlier AWSA fears about maintaining respectability. During this period, while Utahns maintained their commitment to the Anthony amendment, widespread support for the NWP declined in the wake of World War I. Most Utah suffragists sided with NAWSA’s more moderate approach, disapproving of the NWP’s radical criticism of the U.S. president during wartime. Richards, as president of the UCW, was among the hundred women who joined Catt in Washington, D.C. to offer Woodrow Wilson the wartime support of over two million NAWSA members. 119

The 1915 Salt Lake City suffrage parade. Courtesy NWP.

A small but significant NWP branch stayed active in Utah, however, and as the movement progressed, a few Utah women embraced more aggressive forms of advocacy. Annie Wells Cannon served on the NWP Advisory Council from 1915 until at least 1920. 120 Two Salt Lake City women, Lovern Robertson and Minnie Quay, joined the NWP’s unprecedented and controversial picketing campaign in 1917. Known as “Silent Sentinels,” a systematic rotation of almost two thousand NWP protestors held large banners outside the White House six days a week for over two years. Robertson and Quay were among the thirty-three protestors arrested and subjected to the violent “Night of Terror” while in prison on November 15, 1917. 121 Highly publicized newspaper reports of the prisoners’ mistreatment generated public sympathy for suffragists throughout the nation. While the NWP in Utah heralded the bravery of Robertson and Quay, many Utah suffragists distanced themselves from the NWP’s militancy. UCW president Richards and Democratic Woman’s Club president Hortense Haight Nebeker, both from NAWSA affiliate organizations, publicly denounced the NWP tactics and endorsed NAWSA policies. In a published letter, they condemned Quay’s participation and terminated her Woman’s Democratic Club membership. 122 Most Utah suffragists increasingly aligned themselves with the more moderate NAWSA in the final years leading up to ratification of the amendment.

Utah’s UCW continued to provide support for NAWSA efforts, particularly those focused on a national amendment. While the NWP was protesting in front of the White House and burning presidential speeches, NAWSA emphasized its contributions to the war effort and employed a new strategic approach. Following the failure of both major political parties to adopt a strong federal suffrage platform, Catt called an emergency convention in 1916. At an executive council meeting, she unveiled the “Winning Plan,” which called for increased action on both the state and national fronts. Catt gave the suffrage states in particular an assignment to secure from their legislatures resolutions requesting that Congress submit the women’s suffrage amendment. In response, Elizabeth Hayward, member of the Utah House of Representatives and first vice-president of the UCW, introduced a 1917 resolution to Utah’s legislature recommending consideration of the federal suffrage amendment. The resolution easily passed both houses of the Utah legislature. After Congress finally approved the amendment in June 1919, Hayward secured a special session of the Utah Legislature that met solely to consider ratifying the amendment. 123 Hayward, then as a state senator, introduced the amendment to the Utah Senate on September 29, 1919. It passed in thirty minutes. 124 The next day, Representative Anna T. Piercey chaired the Utah House of Representatives during the passage of the amendment, and representatives Delora W. Blakely and Grace Stratton Airey gave speeches. 125 Utah was the only full suffrage state in the West to ratify the amendment by October 1919. 126 This support was in large part due to the continued activism of Utah suffragists. The UCW immediately sent a telegram to Catt, who came to Utah in mid-November for a convention and special meeting in which she replaced the UCW with the Utah League of Women Voters. 127

National Woman’s Party headquarters in Salt Lake City. Courtesy NWP.

The efforts of the moderate NAWSA and the militant NWP both contributed to the ultimate victory of the Nineteenth Amendment. The NWP’s public demonstrations garnered media attention, pressured lawmakers, and made NAWSA proposals appear more mainstream in contrast, while the years of alliances, respectability, and groundwork established by NAWSA proved invaluable in securing the votes needed for passage and ratification. Utah suffragists remained involved in each stage of this process as they worked for an amendment that would extend voting rights to women in every state. The long-awaited constitutional amendment was signed into law on August 26, 1920. 128 The Nineteenth Amendment states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 129

After decades of participating in the national movement, Utah suffragists joined women throughout the nation to celebrate the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, a victory that they had helped win. Utah women were actively involved in the NAWSA Jubilee Convention in Chicago in 1920, where fourteen Utah delegates participated in the victory celebrations and helped plan for future work through the National League of Women Voters. 130 Gates later wrote, “Throughout the convention the Utah delegates were proud of Utah’s position, presented and recorded in this greatest of all suffrage conventions.” 131 In addition to the numerous local jubilee meetings held in Utah in celebration of the amendment, a large celebration was held on the steps of the Utah State Capitol. Amid much fanfare, the prominent state suffrage leaders Wells, Richards, Hannah Lapish, and Lydia Alder, along with Governor Simon Bamberger and former Governor Heber M. Wells, spoke “in honor of the final triumph of the cause of woman suffrage in the United States.” 132

Beyond the “Final Triumph”

Looking back over the twenty years that Emily S. Richards led the UCW, Susa Young Gates commended Richards for spending “herself and her vital forces to keep alive upon the altar of struggle and sacrifice the fire of civic endeavor for the women of this State.” 133 Their continued commitment to the suffrage cause, even after Utah women’s own voting rights were restored, indicates how personally invested Utah suffragists had become in the expansion of voting rights for women. They still felt the “fire of civic endeavor” and contributed their efforts to sharing that flame across the nation.

Neither pawns nor militants, Utah’s women actively advocated for and participated in the women’s suffrage movement for fifty years. With statehood and the restoration of their voting privileges on the horizon, Utah suffragists at the end of the nineteenth century had already developed a clear self-image of their own activism, their commitment to the cause of suffrage, and their integral role within the national movement. The experience Utah women gained in organization and leadership during their own suffrage campaign, as well as the close relationships they developed with national suffrage leaders, gave them the necessary skills to continue advocating for nationwide women’s suffrage following statehood. Utah women in the early twentieth century continued to participate actively, strategically, and progressively in the national movement to enfranchise women by helping other state suffrage campaigns, by providing an example of the benefits of women’s suffrage in action, and by advocating for the federal suffrage amendment. For many suffragists throughout Utah and the nation, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 marked the culmination of decades of advocacy.

In reality, this landmark victory was not the “final triumph” or the end of the story. The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited denying voting rights based on sex, but other discriminatory restrictions remained well beyond 1920. Despite limitations and exclusions, many Utah women indeed remained engaged and influential in the national suffrage movement up through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment and beyond. As marginalized women of color persisted with the struggle for citizenship and equal access to voting rights throughout the twentieth century, they built upon the protections established by the Nineteenth Amendment. Many Utah women continued, and still continue, to work toward the goal of true equal suffrage for every American woman. Their dedication to using their political voice to advocate for equality is an inspiring legacy for Utah women today.

Notes

1. Sections of this article are adapted from the author’s 2003 honors thesis for the History and Literature Department at Harvard University, entitled “An Uncovered History: Mormons in the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1896–1920.”

2. “Suffragettes Are Ready for Convention,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1915, p. 12; “Women of Utah Pledge Support,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 21, 1915, p. 12; “Parade Streets to Advance Suffrage Cause,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 20, 1915, p. 2.

3. “U.S. Senator Reed Smoot Pledges Support to Bill Enfranchising Women of the Nation,” Salt Lake Herald- Republican, August 20, 1915, p. 12.

4. Wyoming was the first place in the United States to grant unrestricted equal suffrage, but Utah women were the first to legally cast votes under such a law. Utah held several municipal elections as well as a general election before Wyoming held its first election including women in September 1870. “The Election,” Deseret Evening News, February 15, 1870, p. 3; “The Election,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 2, 1870, p. 3; “Wyoming: The Territorial Election,” Deseret Evening News, September 7, 1870, p. 1. Some unmarried, property-owning women could vote in colonial New Jersey between 1776 and 1807, and a few rural women could vote in local school elections in Kentucky beginning in 1837 and Kansas in 1861. These women legally voted prior to Utah’s historic election but only under certain gender-based restrictions.

5. Edmunds-Tucker Act, 49th Cong., Sess. 2, Ch. 397, March 3, 1887, (24 Stat. 635).

6. “Woman’s Day at Saltair,” Woman’s Exponent, September 1, 1896, p. 37.

7. Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Joan Smyth Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy in U.S. Women’s Movements, 1880–1925 (New York: Routledge, 1997).

8. Katherine Kitterman and Rebekah Ryan Clark, Thinking Women: A Timeline of Suffrage in Utah (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019).

9. Rebecca J. Mead, How the West Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York: New York University, 2004), 4–5. For examples of classic suffrage histories that offer little or no analysis of Utah involvement, see Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 3; Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Belknap Press, 1975), 165–66.

10. Carol Cornwall Madsen, ed., Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870–1896 (Logan, Utah, 1997); Lola Van Wagenen, “Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage, 1870–1896” (PhD diss., New York University, 1994); Iversen, “The Mormon–Suffrage Relationship”; Sarah Barringer Gordon, “The Liberty of Self-Degradation: Polygamy, Woman Suffrage, and Consent in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83, no. 3 (1996): 815–47.

11. Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy, 261 n.43; Kitterman and Clark, Thinking Women; Carol Cornwall Madsen, An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, 1870–1920 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 2005); Better Days 2020, accessed May 26, 2020, utahwomenshistory.org.

12. “Utah W.S.A.,” Woman’s Exponent, October 15, 1895, p. 66. Although many suffragists at the time used the term “universal suffrage,” it is critical to note that discriminatory federal laws and local practices kept many women of color excluded or marginalized from true universal suffrage for many more decades.

13. Sarah A. Boyer, “Visit to Washington,” Woman’s Exponent, May 15, 1896, p. 153.

14. “S. L. Co. W. S. A.,” Woman’s Exponent, March 1, 1896, p. 122.

15. “Conference N.A.W.S.A.: Remarks by Miss Anthony,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 15, 1895, p. 79.

16. “Conference N.A.W.S.A.: Remarks by M. Isabella Horne,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 15, 1895, p. 77; see also Alvira Lucy Cox, “Equal Suffrage,” Woman’s Exponent, October 15, 1893, p. 50.

17. Alice L. Reynolds, “Emily Sophia Tanner Richards,” Relief Society Magazine, October 1929, p. 523.

18. Sarah A. Boyer, “Visit to Washington,” Woman’s Exponent, May 15, 1896.

19. Mary Gray Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1944), 84, 86.

20. “Noted Woman Suffragist,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 30, 1899, p. 8.

21. Richards served in that position until the council merged into the League of Women Voters in November 1919.

22. Ida Husted Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 6, 1900–1920 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922), 645. Note that Susa Young Gates wrote the “Utah” chapter in Harper’s edited volume.

23. “Utah Dolls [Featured] at Suffrage Bazar,” Deseret Evening News, December 23, 1909, p. 16.

24. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 6:645.

25. Electa Bullock, “Conference of the N.A.W.S.A.,” Woman’s Exponent, June 1896; see also Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 4:950.

26. Carrie Chapman Catt, National Suffrage Bulletin 5, no. 8 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, April 1900), available in Susa Young Gates Papers, MS 7692, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (CHL).

27. “Suffrage Bazar Notes,” Woman’s Exponent, January 1, 1901, p. 66; see also “Conference N.A.W.S.A.: Remarks by M. Isabella Horne,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 15, 1895, p. 77.

28. “Bazar Notes” and “The National Bazar,” Woman’s Exponent, December 15, 1900, p. 58–59.

29. “Mrs. Horne’s Visit to Idaho,” Woman’s Exponent, July 15, 1895, p. 32; see also T. A. Larson, “Woman’s Rights in Idaho,” Idaho Yesterdays 16 (Spring 1972): 2–19; Beeton, Women Vote in the West, 132–33.

30. “Mrs. Horne’s Visit to Idaho,” Woman’s Exponent, July 15, 1895, p. 32.

31. “Mrs. M. C. Woods’ Speech,” Woman’s Exponent, March 15, p. 1897.

32. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 4:592–93. The legislative representative from Oneida County, an area dominated by people from Utah, introduced the first bill designed to grant women’s suffrage in Idaho.

33. “Conference NAWSA,” Woman’s Exponent, October 15, 1895.

34. Emily S. Richards to the California Suffrage Association, undated letter, reel 61, box 87, fd. 18, Gates papers.

35. Woman’s Exponent, January 15, February 1, 1897; Woman’s Journal, February 6, 1897.

36. “Utah Women at Washington,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, February 26, 1899, p. 4.

37. Western Woman Voter, January 1911, p. 4.

38. Sarah A. Boyer, “Visit to Washington,” Woman’s Exponent, May 15, 1896.

39. “National Capital Affairs,” Wasatch Wave (Heber City, UT), March 11, 1910, p. 6; see also Susan Ware, Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019); Sally Roesch Wagner, ed., The Women’s Suffrage Movement (New York: Penguin Books, 2019).

40. Even after Native Americans received citizenship under the federal Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Utah was one of the last states to end voting restrictions for Native Americans living on reservations on February 14, 1957. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 finally opened citizenship for immigrants of Asian descent, although quotas for specific nations remained in place.

41. “Rally of Colored Women,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 23, 1895, p. 3; “Echoes of the Election,” Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, UT), November 12, 1898, p. 1; “Western Colored Women,” Deseret Evening News, June 15, 1904, p. 2; “Colored Women Form Organization,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 3, 1904, p. 8; “Colored Women in Federation, All of the West Well Represented,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 1904; “Colored Women Hold Convention,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, July 6, 1904, p. 5; “Western Federation of Colored Women’s Benefit,” Ogden Daily Standard, March 24, 1905, p. 7.

42. Gina Capaldi, Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkála-Šá, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist (Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press, 2011).

43. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 6:645.

44. Alice L. Reynolds, “Emily Sophia Tanner Richards,” Relief Society Magazine, October 1929, 524.

45. “Utah Suffrage Council,” Deseret Evening News, April 6, 1904, p. 4.

46. “Woman’s Day at Saltair,” Woman’s Exponent, September 1, 1896, p. 37.

47. California Equal Suffrage Association, “California Next” (San Francisco: California Equal Suffrage Association, 1911), LAW-0245, Special Collections, Cecil H. Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, California; “From a California Leaflet,” Western Woman Voter, February 1911; “Band Wagon,” Western Woman Voter, January 1911, p. 1; Gary L. Bunker and Carol B. Bunker, “Woman Suffrage, Popular Art, and Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 59 (Winter 1991): 195–96.

48. Harriet J. Boutell, “Letters to the Governor and Mrs. E. B. Wells,” Woman’s Exponent, January 1, 15, 1896, p. 101.

49. “Colorado Woman’s Greeting,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 15, 1895, p. 77.

50. Woman’s Exponent, January 15, February 1, 1897.

51. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 4:951–52.

52. Frances Maule Bjorkman, Woman Suffrage: Arguments and Results, 1910–1911 (New York: NAWSA, 1911; New York: Kraus Reprint, 1971), 31.

53. Ida Husted Harper, How Six States Won Woman Suffrage (New York: NAWSA, 1913), 9.

54. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 6:648.

55. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 101–104.

56. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 6:646.

57. Susa Young Gates, “Woman Suffrage in Utah,” locations 31–32, 47, History of Women Files, Revised Chapters, Gates papers, accessed May 28, 2020, catalog. churchofjesuschrist.org.

58. Emmeline B. Wells, quoted in Susa Young Gates, “Where Women Vote in Utah,” Political Equality Series 4, no. 6 (New York: NAWSA, 1899), CHL.

59. This prototype of the National League of Women Voters was organized in Tacoma, Washington, in January 1911, with Emma Smith DeVoe as president. Eleanor Flexner briefly referred to this organization as “an abortive attempt to gather together the voting strength of the enfranchised women of the West,” indicating that the council was ultimately unsuccessful. Flexner, Century of Struggle, 312–13. Abigail Scott Duniway’s account, however, indicated that this council was still active in 1914 and that Utah representatives remained involved. Duniway, Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States (Portland: James, Kerns, and Abbott, 1914), 246– 49.

60. Emma Smith DeVoe to Susa Young Gates, letter, December 13, 1910, reel 32, fd. 10, Gates papers, emphasis in original.

61. Harriett Horne Arrington, “Alice Merrill Horne, Art Promoter and Early Utah Legislator,” Utah Historical Quarterly 58 (Summer 1990): 270–71.

62. “Only Woman in the Legislature Made Chairman of Important Committee,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, January 14, 1903, p. 8; “Committees Organized by Members of House,” Salt Lake Telegram, January 11, 1917, p. 2; “Committees Appointed in Senate, House,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, January 16, 1919, p. 6.

63. Vinnie Jepson was initially elected but resigned at the first council meeting in January 1912, so Ada Pratt Seegmiller was appointed to fill her place. Kanab (Utah) City Council Minutes, March 1884 to January 1920, November 13, 1911, p. 245, 254, reel 1, Series 84960, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Salt Lake City, Utah.

64. Kylie Nielson Turley, “Kanab’s All Woman Town Council, 1912–1914: Politics, Power Struggles, and Polygamy,” Utah Historical Quarterly 73, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 308– 328.

65. Susa Young Gates, “State Suffrage Council,” Gates papers.

66. Kitterman and Clark, Thinking Women, “Utah Women Elected to the State Legislature” and “Utah Women Elected to County Office,” appendix.

67. “The Utah Delegation,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 9, 1896, p. 1.

68. “First Woman to Be Seated in Convention,” Ogden Daily Standard, June 16, 1908, p. 1.

69. “Utah’s Lady Representatives of the Two Big Party Conventions,” Deseret Evening News, July 7, 1900, p. 14.

70. “Mrs. Witcher Tells of Trip,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 4, 1913, p. 14. Margaret Zane Witcher was remarried to Otto Phillip Cherdron in December 1913.

71. “National Anti-Vote Society,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 29, 1911, p. 11.

72. “Some Reasons Why We Oppose Votes for Women,” pamphlet, National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, n.d., Library of Congress; “Prize Winners in the Woman Suffrage Contest,” Sun (New York City), October 13, 1912, p. 54.

73. Martha Hughes Cannon, “Woman Suffrage in Utah,” Hearing on House Joint Resolution 68 (February 15, 1898), 12, 324.623 C226w 1898, CHL.

74. “Delegate from Utah at the Woman’s Congress,” Woman’s Exponent, August 1, 1908, p. 14–15.

75. “Woman Suffrage in Utah,” Deseret Weekly, February 15, 1896, p. 2.

76. “Editorial Notes,” Woman’s Exponent, January 15, 1873, p. 121; “Washington, D.C.,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 4, 1871; Susan B. Anthony, Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony (Rochester, NY: Daily Democrat and Chronicle Book Print, 1874).

77. Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1875); “Right to Vote,” Deseret News, April 7, 1875, p. 8.

78. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 3:104.

79. “Woman Suffrage in Utah,” Woman’s Exponent, February 15, 1876, p. 139; “The Suffrage Movement,” National Republican, January 29, 1876, p. 1; “Constitution of the National Woman Suffrage Association,” Ballot Box, September 1876, p. 1; History of Woman Suffrage, 3:5.

80. “Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment,” November 10, 1876, ID 306647, and “Ten Thousand Petitioners Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment,” December 14, 1877, ID 117874758, both in Petitions and Memorials, 1813– 1968, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NAB).

81. Emmeline B. Wells, “Convention Letters,” National Citizen and Ballot Box, July 1877, p. 1.

82. “Sixteenth Amendment Workers,” Ballot Box, April 1878, p. 1; “R.S. Reports,” Woman’s Exponent, January 1, 1878, p. 114; “Notes and News,” Woman’s Exponent, January 15, 1878, p. 121; “R.S. Reports,” Woman’s Exponent, March 15, 1878, p. 154.

83. “Women Suffrage,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 19, 1877, p. 3.

84. “Female Suffrage,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 15, 1877, p. 3.

85. “R.S. Reports,” Woman’s Exponent, January 1, 1878, p. 114; Memorial of Utah Women Against the Christiancy-Luttrell Bills Which Would Disenfranchise Them, March 4, 1878, HR45A-H23.6, RG 233, NAB.

86. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 4:937; “Our Relief Societies,” Woman’s Exponent, October 15, 1878, p. 76.

87. Sarah A. Boyer, “Visit to Washington,” Woman’s Exponent, May 15, 1896, p. 153.

88. Cannon, “Woman Suffrage in Utah”; “Editorial Notes,” Woman’s Exponent, March 1, 1898, p. 253.

89. “Utah Woman Pleads for Women Suffragists,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 4, 1908, p. 1.

90. Harper, ed., History of Woman Suffrage, 6:645; “Council of Women Has Busy Meeting,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 2, 1909, p. 12; “Suffragists at Capitol,” New York Daily Tribune, April 19, 1910, p. 7; “Suffragists Invade Capitol,” Deseret Evening News, April 19, 1910, p. 8; “Advanced on Congress,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, April 19, 1910, p. 1.

91. “Women Declare Independence Near Liberty Bell,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, November 22, 1912, p. 1.

92. “Women Declare Independence Near Liberty Bell”; “Florence E. Allen Named Federal Judge,” New York Times, March 7, 1934, p. 9.

93. “Woman Suffrage Amendment, Proceedings in the United States Senate,” July 31, 1913, U.S. Senate, 63d Cong., Sess. 1, Doc. 155, p. 17–18; “Suffragists at Capitol,” Ogden Daily Standard, July 31, 1913, p. 1.

94. “Mrs. Groshell Leads Big Parade,” Salt Lake Herald- Republican, March 10, 1913; “Utahns Will Witness Ceremonies,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, March 4, 1913, p. 1.

95. Emily H. Bright, “Report of the N.A.W.S.A. Midyear Conference Held in Chicago June 7th–8th 1915,” Congressional Union, General Correspondence, Series II, Alice Paul Papers, MC 399, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

96. Letter from Anna Howard Shaw, July 24, 1915, Congressional Union, General Correspondence, Series II, Paul papers.

97. Alice Paul to Emily H. Bright, letter, August 23, 1915, Congressional Union, General Correspondence, Series II, Paul papers.

98. Bright, “Report of the N.A.W.S.A. Midyear Conference,” Paul papers.

99. “Suffrage Mass Meeting Called,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 12, 1915, p. 12.

100. Suffragist, September 4, 1915, p. 1; “U.S. Senator Reed Smoot Pledges Support to Bill Enfranchising Women of the Nation,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, August 20, 1915, p. 12; “Suffragettes Are Ready for Convention,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1915, p. 12.

101. “Parade Streets to Advance Suffrage Cause,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 20, 1915, p. 2.

102. “Women of Utah Pledge Support,” Salt Lake Herald- Republican, August 21, 1915, p. 12; “Suffragists Change Program for Meeting,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 8, 1918, p. 11.

103. “Women of Utah Pledge Support.”

104. “Women of Utah Pledge Support.”

105. Alice Paul to Miss Lancaster, August 23, 1915, letter, Congressional Union, General Correspondence, Series II, Paul papers.

106. Paul to Lancaster. Fifteen delegates to this convention were reportedly elected at the large meeting in Salt Lake City, including UCW president Emily S. Richards. “Amendment Cannot Pass Next Session, Sutherland Says,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 21, 1915, p. 7.

107. “Suffragists Convene in San Francisco,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 14, 1915, p. 2; “Convention at San Francisco Goes on Record,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 17, 1915, p. 3.

108. “Convention at San Francisco Goes on Record”; “Take Stand for Anthony Amendment,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, September 17, 1915, p. 1.

109. “National Capital Affairs,” Wasatch Wave (Heber City, UT), March 11, 1910, p. 6; “New Amendment Proposed,” Suffragist, March 21, 1914, p. 4–5; “Many Opposed to Plan of Shafroth,” Salt Lake Tribune, March 31, 1914, p. 2; Mabel Vernon, “Working in the Interest of Suffrage Amendment,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 15, 1915, p. 44.

110. “No Immediate Hope Held for Suffrage, Salt Lake Tribune, August 21, 1915, p. 12.

111. “Salt Lake Women Welcome Suffrage Envoy,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 5, 1915, p. 1.

112. “Women Voter’s Delegates Will Meet Monday at the Capitol,” Salt Lake Telegram, October 3, 1915, p. 21; “Militant Suffragist Speaks from Steps of Capitol,” Salt Lake Telegram, October 5, 1915, p. 8.

113. “Monster Suffrage Petition Presented,” Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), December 6, 1915, p. 1; “Senator Sutherland Presents Suffrage Amendment,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 7, 1915, p. 1; “Woman Suffrage, speech of Hon. George Sutherland of Utah in the Senate of the United States, February 18, 1914” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), available online at catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org, accessed May 28, 2020.

114. “Democrats are Urged to Pass Equal Suffrage,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 8, 1915, p. 3; “President Promises Support for Women,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 22, 1915, p. 4.

115. “News of the Women’s Clubs, Salt Lake Tribune, December 5, 1915, p. 45; “Democrats Are Urged to Pass Equal Suffrage”; “President Promises Support for Women.”

116. “Suffrage Envoys Close Salt Lake Conference,” Salt Lake Telegram, May 12, 1916, p. 2.

117. “Women’s Party Names Delegates,” Salt Lake Telegram, July 28, 1916, p. 16; “Woman’s Party Active,” Salt Lake Tribune, September 23, 1916, p. 8.

118. “Women Launch Party to Promote Suffrage,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, June 6, 1916, p. 7.

119. “Emily Sophia Tanner Richards,” Relief Society Magazine, October 1929, p. 525.

120. “National Advisory Council,” Suffragist, November 18, 1916, February 1920, p. 2; “Salt Lake Women Welcome Suffrage Envoy,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 4, 1915, p. 1.

121. “Salt Lake Woman to Picket White House,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 1, 1917, p. 9; “Suffragist Leaves for Washington,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 30, 1917, p. 16; “Salt Lake Picketer Chosen to Address Court During Trial,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 21, 1917, p. 2.

122. “Say Mrs. Quay Is Not a Democrat,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 31, 1917, p. 8.

123. “Special Legislature for Suffrage Asked,” Salt Lake Tribune, July 10, 1919, p. 22.

124. “Suffrage Ratified by Senate of Utah,” Salt Lake Herald- Republican, September 29, 1919, p. 16.

125. “Suffrage Ratified by House, Now Goes to Chief Executive,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1919, p. 18.

126. “Suffrage Measure Signed by Governor,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 4, 1919, p. 22.

127. “Distinguished Suffragists Will Visit Salt Lake City,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 16, 1919, p. 62.

128. “Suffrage Ratified by House,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1919, p. 18; “Governor Signs Suffrage Bill,” Salt Lake Telegram, October 4, 1919, p. 2.

129. Unites States Constitution, Amendment XIX.

130. Donette Smith Kesler, “Three Important Conventions,” Young Woman’s Journal, May 1920, p. 271–76.

131. Susa Young Gates, chapter 50, “Suffrage,” location 71, History of Women Files, Gates papers, accessed June 8, 2020, catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org.

132. “Fiftieth Suffrage Anniversary in Utah,” Ogden Daily Standard, February 9, 1920, p. 2; “Utah Women Observe Suffrage Victory,” Ogden Standard-Examiner, September 1, 1920, p. 3.

133. Susa Young Gates, Chapter 50: “Suffrage,” location 63.