The Woman's Suffrage Movement

On June 10, 1919, Wisconsin became the first state to ratify the 19th amendment granting national suffrage to women. From 1846 to 1919, different groups of women's rights supporters had focused much of their energy on winning the vote, though each pursued different strategies. Although Wisconsin had not been completely unenlightened in its approach to women's legal rights (the rejected 1846 constitution would have given married women property rights), neither had it been on the forefront of the cause. Just seven years before the 19th amendment passed, a statewide referendum on suffrage had met with a resounding two-to-one defeat, so... more...

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	Suffragists prove that Wisconsin ratified suffrage first
	A sketch of the life of Meta Berger
	Suffrage publications from the Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association
	Jessie Jack Hooper runs for the Senate in 1922
	Wisconsin voting and civil rights legislation, 1846-1929.
	Wisconsin's first female lawyer challenges prevailing opinion
	Prominent women journalists and editors
	Wisconsin passes the nation's first equal rights bill, 1921
	A Wisconsin woman recalls the convention at Seneca Falls
	A secret woman suffrage club in Richland Center in 1882
	Suffrage activists seek new members through a "suffrage school" in 1914
	A Wisconsin tunic from a 1916 suffrage parade
	Women's charitable work before 1876
	A guide to Progressivism for women voters, 1922
	Marion Dudley testifies on behalf of suffrage, 1880
	Theodora Youmans appeals for donations to the Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association
	The Political Equality League makes the case for woman suffrage, 1912
	Theodora Youmans emphasizes the need to educate women voters
	Theodora Youmans urges supporters to keep up the fight in 1917
	Anti-suffrage poster from the 1912 referendum
	Pictures of the woman suffrage movement in Wisconsin

Primary Sources Available Elsewhere

	The Wisconsin legislature votes on a 1909 suffrage bill.
	1912 Bulletins of the Political Equality League
	An activist relates how Wisconsin women won the ballot
	Wisconsin Blue Books
	Frances Willard advises young women on how to reach their goals, 1897
	What girls need to know to contribute to society in 1913
	Mabel Raef Putnam decribes the passage of the nation's first bill of rights for women in 1921
	Acquaintances, old and new, among reformers, by Olympia Brown (1911).

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