Women in Kentucky - SUFFRAGE

Sounds and Images from the Woman Suffrage Movement


As the first state to allow suffrage of any kind, Kentucky played an important role in the suffrage movement.  Activists such as Laura Clay, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, Eliza Calvert Obenchain, Mary Barr Clay, Mary Britton, and Josephine Henry played important roles in the women’s rights movement in both Kentucky and nationwide.  While these women are the most well-known, many other Kentucky women worked to improve the status of women’s lives in Kentucky. 

These images and sound clips represent the struggle for and against suffrage in Kentucky. 

SOUNDS

Listen to the following sound clips to hear the Kentucky Suffragists in their own words.  

To view a transcription of the the clip while you listen, 
click on one of the names below, and then on "view the text."

Listen to Pearl Ferguson
Pearl Ferguson

Pearlie Stephens Pennington 1
Pearlie Stephens Pennington

Pearlie Stephens Pennington 2
Pearlie Stephens Pennington

You can view the text while you listen.

You can view the text while you listen.

You can view the text while you 
listen.

IMAGES

View documents of those fighting to gain the right to vote.

Ky. equal rights assoc. Ky. Women's Journal The Federal Argument for voting Recruitment Broadside
K.E.R.A. expenses K.E.R.A. goals Progress of Women's Suffrage A Mother's Sphere
Suffrage and Temperance Suffrage Poster Women at the Polls - 1920 Progress of Suffrage Map


View documents of those opposed to the idea of women voting.


Read Cassius Clay's views on woman's suffrage  
as published in The Illustrated Kentuckian.  


An Anti-Suffrage Monologue William Jason Fields Scrapbook Letter to Wm. Fields Why Florence Nightengale Opposed Suffrage
Political Cartoon Political Cartoon The Women's Protest Against Suffrage


Follow these Links for more information about the Woman's Suffrage Movement:

To view Kentucky Governor Edwin P. Morrow signing the 19th amendment into
law to the Library of Congress' American Memory page and do a search with
the keyword "Kentucky."

Read the original text of the 19th Amendment.

One Woman One Vote includes suffrage timeline, discussion questions, information about the film.

Susan B Anthony’s House—includes a somewhat extensive biography as well as a timeline.  

Library of Congress, Votes for Women Suffrage Photos, 1850-1920.

Once the vote was extended to women, the National American Woman Suffrage Association dissolved and reorganized as the League of Women Voters to operate on local, state, and national levels. The Kentucky Equal Rights Association became the Kentucky L.W.V.