To the editor:

Annie LaPorte Diggs was a Kansas journalist, author, suffragette and Populist advocate. The diminutive “Little” Annie (who was barely 5 feettall and weighed only 93 pounds) arrived in Lawrence in 1872 and soon married A.S. Diggs, a postal worker.

On Feb. 16, 1887, she became the first woman in Lawrence to register to vote, disregarding the objections of the all-male city council. She campaigned extensively for women’s suffrage throughout her life. By 1888, Diggs had joined the Populist Farmers Alliance which was sweeping the Plains. Soon she became a political powerhouse during the heyday of Kansas Populism. After 1893, Annie Diggs became the best known woman orator for the People’s Party giving speeches all over the nation. Annie was a self-taught journalist who wrote a Farmers Alliance column for the Lawrence Journal and became associate editor of The Advocate, a Populist newspaper based in Topeka, which had a circulation of 80,000.

Diggs was the first woman Kansas State Librarian and implemented the idea of mobile lending libraries which were lifelines for small towns without libraries. By 1900, Diggs had lent a new legitimacy to women’s political participation. Her role in the Populist movement was that of an organizer, speaker and leader. But, most importantly, she helped to relate the farmers’ grievances to the larger problems of social welfare and to propagate the “populist principles” which were adopted later by the major parties. Annie Diggs had fought the good fight and should receive more recognition in the Lawrence community.