Women in Kentucky - Reform

Laura Clay: Laura Clay was the daughter of Mary Jane Warfield Clay, herself asuffragist, and Cassius M. Clay, the Kentucky state representative, minister to Russia, and abolitionist. She was born and raised at Whitehall, which can be visited today.

Clay was one of the South’s most well-known suffragists, but it must be remembered that she and other suffragists worked to secure a range of rights for women, including property rights for married women, women’s rights to guardianship of their children, and the entrance of women into male-only colleges.

Clay served as the first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA) from 1888-1912. During the 1890s, she became affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She corresponded with some of the most prominent suffragists of the era, and in the south was responsible for establishing suffrage societies in nine states and traveling around the country on behalf of the cause. In 1916, she was elected vide-president-at-large of the newly formed Southern States Women Suffrage Association, which appealed more to her firmly-held states’ right belief. Near the end of the fight for suffrage Clay actively campaigned against passage of the Nineteenth Amendment because of her belief that each state should have the right to enact its own laws.

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E. About this Project

Women in Sports:

Minnie Adkins
Elizabeth Barret, Anne Lewis, Mimi Pickering, & Justine Richardson
Jane Burch Cochran
Joan Dance
Enid Yandell

Women in Business:

Nelda Barton-Collings
Julia Dinsmore
Laura Freeman
Mattie Mack
Lena Madesin Phillips
Caroline Burnam Taylor

Women in Education:

Helen Lew Lang
Katherine Pettit
Jane Stephenson
Cora Wilson Stewart

Women in Health/Medicine:

Mary Britton
Linda Neville
Ora Framer Porter
Louise Southgate, M.D.

Women in Journalism:

Linda Boileau
Alice Allison Dunnigan

Women in Law:

Pearl Carter Pace
Lt. Colonel Linda Smith

Women in Literature:

Effie Waller Smith

Women in Military:

Lt. Anna Mac Clarke
Capt. Helen Horlacher Evans
Julia Ann Marcum

Women in Music:

Sarah Ogan Gunning
Helen Humes
Lily May Ledford
Reel World String Band
Jean Ritchie
Mary Wheeler

Women as Pioneers:

Esther Whitley

Women in Public Service:

Governor Martha Layne Collins
Emma Guy Cromwell
Rep. Mary Elliott Flanery
Sen. Georgia Davis Powers
Lt. Gov. Thelma Stovall

Women in Reform:

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge
Laura Clay
Eula Hall
Josephine Henry
Belinda Mason
Lois Morris
Eliza Caroline Calvert Obenchain
Charlotte Richardson
Joan Robinett
Mary Sue Whayne
Corinne Whitehead
Evelyn Williams

Women in Religion:

Eldress Nancy Moore
Rabbi Gaylia Rooks

Women in Science:

Sarah Frances Price
Ellen Churchill Semple

Women in Sports:

Terri Cecil-Ramsey
Geri Grigsby
Audrey Whitlock Peterson
Mary T. Meagher Plant