Susan B. Anthony helps found Washington Woman Suffrage Association on October 1, 1871.

HistoryLink.org Essay 5557 : Printer-Friendly Format

In October 1871, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), national women's rights leader and vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, becomes the first woman to address the Washington Territorial Legislature. She and Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915) tour Washington Territory to promote the cause of woman suffrage (the right of women to vote). They help organize the Washington Equal Suffrage Association.

Representative Daniel Bigelow of Olympia had introduced a suffrage bill to the legislature a week before Anthony's speech. She received high marks from several regional newspapers, but the bill failed. The opposition countered by enacting the following law at the next session:

"Hereafter no female shall have the right of ballot at any poll or election precinct in this Territory until the Congress of the United States of America shall, by direct legislation, declare the same to be the supreme law of the land."

Sources:
Abigail Scott Duniway, Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States (Portland: James, Kerns and Abbott Company, 1914); T. A. Larson, "The Woman Suffrage Movement in Washington," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 2 (April 1976), p. 31; Ruth Barnes Moynihan, Rebel for Rights: Abigail Scott Duniway (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 93.

By Mildred Andrews, September 27, 2003

Travel through time (chronological order):
< Browse to Previous Essay | Browse to Next Essay >

Related Topics: Women's History | Government & Politics |

Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.

Susan B. Anthony at 52, 1872

Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915), 1876