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Selected history of
women and public service in Kentucky.
1800s
1900s
1800s
1838
Kentucky becomes the first state to permit suffrage of any kind;
property-owning widows and single women were given the right to vote in
school elections.
1853
Lucy Stone delivers three suffrage speeches at the Masonic Hall in
Louisville.
1867
First woman's suffrage association in Kentucky blossoms briefly in
Glendale, Hardin County, but soon disappears.
View
photographs and primary documents from the
suffrage movement in Kentucky.
1872
Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes to Louisville.
1879
Susan B. Anthony speaks in Richmond.
This sparked the state's first permanent women's rights
association, Madison Co. Equal Rights Assoc.
1880
Women admitted into the University of Kentucky.
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Kentucky
legislature denies women the right to be admitted to the bar.
1881
The American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, meets in
Louisville; at the close of the convention, Kentucky Woman Suffrage
Association is formed with Laura Clay as president.
Louisville
Women's Club founded- did not originally support woman suffrage.
1882
Louisville School of Pharmacy admitts women.
1883
Mary Barr Clay of Kentucky elected President of the American Woman
Suffrage Association.
1888
Laura Clay reorganizes and founds the Fayette Co. Equal Rights
Association.
1888
American Woman Suffrage Association Convention, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Laura Clay calls suffragists to establish a new statewide
organization; Fayette and Kenton county formed Kentucky Equal Rights
Association. Laura Clay served as 1st President until 1912.
1892
Sophonisba
Breckinridge becomes first women admitted to the Kentucky bar.
1894
School suffrage laws extended to women of 3rd class
cities: Lexington,
Covington, and Newport.
Kentucky
passes a Married Women's Property act allowing married women to make
wills and own property.
Kentucky
Federation of Women’s Clubs forms in 1894, as the fourth state
association to affiliate with the (national) General Federation of
Women’s Clubs.
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Susan
B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt visit Louisville and other Kentucky
cities to speak on behalf of women's suffrage.
1895
Part I of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman's Bible is
published (Part II in 1898). Kentucky’s Josephine Henry writes a chapter.
Henry was later ejected from the Kentucky Equal Rights
Association as an "undesirable member" for her involvement in
the project, just as Stanton was distanced from the NAWSA.
1896
Kentucky women are allowed to sit on the board of directors of the
state reform school for girls.
Emma
Guy Cromwell becomes the first woman to be elected to statewide office
when she becomes state librarian.
1898
For the first time, women physicians are permitted in women's wards
in hospitals for the insane.
1899
At the Kentucky Equal Rights Association's annual convention in
Lexington, Sally Clay Bennett reported, as Superintendent of Federal
Suffrage, that “a petition was presented to the Congress from the ERA
of KY asking its members to protect white and black women equally with
black men against state denial of the rights of citizens of the U.S. to
vote. . .”
1900s
1900
Women gained the right to keep their own earnings.
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1901
Cora Wilson Stewart becomes first woman president of Kentucky
Education Association.
Kentucky
Federation of Women's Clubs, an organization made up of white women,
opposes the admission of Black women clubs into the Federation.
General Federation of Women's Clubs affirmed the opposition in
1902.
In
Lexington, a higher turnout of Black women than white women for the
school board elections creates alarm over the potential for black
influence in school politics.
1902
The Kentucky Legislature repeals laws granting women the right to
vote in school elections, becoming the first and only state to repeal
suffrage once given. The
reason given for the repeal is the large number African American women
voting in a block in the 1901 Lexington school board elections.
1904
Carry Nation, a temperance activist, is almost killed in an
altercation with a saloon keeper in the city of Elizabethtown.
Kentucky
Legislature passes Day Law, effectively segregating all Kentucky schools
based on race.
1910
Kentucky Legislature raises the age at which a girl can marry from
age 12 to 16.
Kentucky
passes a co-guardianship law which recognizes a mother's claim to her
own children.
1911
National American Woman Suffrage Association holds its national
convention in Louisville at the Seelbach Hotel, attended by Jane Addams
of Hull House in Chicago; Sophonisba Breckinridge, Professor at Chicago
University; M. Carey Thomas, President of Bryn Mawr College; and
Emmaline Pankhurst, leader of British suffragists.
1912
Madeline McDowell Breckinridge replaces Laura Clay as president of
KERA.
1st
public women's rights march in the South, involving 200 Louisville
suffragists led by Mrs. John B. Castleman.
1914
KERA members totaled 10,522 and organizations exists in 119 of the
120 Kentucky Counties.
Madeline
Breckinridge and Laura Clay, introducing a suffrage amendment, become
first women to address a joint session of the Kentucky Legislature.
It fails.
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1918
National American Woman Suffrage Association asks all efforts be
concentrated on the federal Susan B. Anthony amendment.
KERA abides and the suffrage bill is not introduced in the
Kentucky General Assembly.
1919
Laura Clay, a proponent of states’ rights, resigns from KERA and
organizes the Citizens Committee for a State Suffrage Amendment, which
fights against Kentucky’s ratification of the 19th
Amendment in favor of states’ rights.
Madeline Breckinridge predicts that Kentucky will ratify the
federal (19th) amendment.
1920
January 6- On the first day of the legislative session, Kentucky
ratifies the 19th Amendment with a Senate Vote of 30 to 8 and a house
vote of 72 to 25. Kentucky
is the 23rd state to ratify the 19th amendment.
Because of fears that the amendment would not receive full
ratification in time for the November presidential election, a bill was
passed in March giving women the right to vote in presidential
elections.
August
26th- Full passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
National
American Woman Suffrage Association dissolves and reorganizes as League
of Women Voters to operate on local, state and national levels.
Kentucky Equal Rights Association becomes L.W.V.
1921
Mary Elliott Flanery becomes Kentucky’s first female legislator
when she is elected to the House of Representatives.
1923
Emma Guy Cromwell becomes Kentucky’s Secretary of State.
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1927
Katherine Gudger-Langley becomes Kentucky’s first U.S.
Congresswoman.
1928
Kathleen Mulligan becomes Kentucky’s first woman judge.
1938
Pearl Carter Pace becomes sheriff of Cumberland Co.
1949
Caroline Conn Moore becomes Kentucky’s first female Senator.
1961
Amelia Tucker becomes the first African American woman elected to
the Kentucky State Legislature.
1964
Georgia Powers, Lucretia Ward, and many others march on Frankfort
demanding access to public accommodations. Kentucky legislators fail to pass bill until 1966 session.
Kentucky
Commission on Women established by Executive Order; becomes official
state agency in 1970.
1967
Georgia Powers becomes first African American to be elected to the
Kentucky Senate.
1971
Alice
“Dolly” McNutt is elected mayor of Paducah, becoming the first
female mayor of a Kentucky second class city.
1975
Thelma Stovall becomes Kentucky’s first female Lt. Governor.
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1978
As acting governor, Lt. Governor Thelma Stovall, vetoes a resolution
passed by the General Assembly which rescinded Kentucky’s 1972
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
However, the legislature overrode her veto.
1983
Martha Layne Collins becomes first woman Governor of Kentucky.
1993
Sara Combs becomes the first female member of the Kentucky Supreme
Court.
1996
Kentucky House passes HR 70, directing the Legislative Research
Commission to undertake a study of pay equity in Kentucky state
employment.
Governor
Paul Patton creates Governor’s Office of Child Abuse and Domestic
Violence Services; First Lady Judi Patton is appointed special advisor.
1998
The Kentucky Legislature passes HB864, creating the Office of
Women’s Health.
Kentucky
Legislature passes HB 268 which requires the Department of Personnel to
develop a new classification and compensation system to ensure pay
equity.
1999
Nicki Patton and Ellen Williams become chairpersons of the
Democratic and Republican parties of Kentucky, respectively.
For the first time, both parties are lead by women.
This
timeline is based on information gathered from History of Woman
Suffrage, vols. 1-3, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and
Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., vol. 4, Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted
Harper, eds., and vols.
5,6, Ida Husted Harper, ed.; “Madeline McDowell Breckinridge:
Kentucky Suffragist and Progressive Reformer,” Melba Porter
Hay; “The Woman Suffrage Movement in Kentucky, 1879-1920,” Claudia
Knott; The Kentucky Encyclopedia, John E. Kleber, ed.
This
timeline is not meant to be comprehensive, but to represent selected
highlights in the history of women in public service in Kentucky.
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