photo by: Kansas Historical Society

A photograph showing suffragists seated in an automobile and holding signs "Vote for women," in Lawrence, Douglas County. The women were participating in an automobile parade at the Douglas County Fair. The women are identified: Mrs. Paul R. Brooks, first president of Douglas County League; Mrs. Frank Strong, wife of the Kansas University chancellor and first vice president of the Douglas County League; Miss Florence Payne, former president of College League; Marcella Chalkley; Mr. Clement Perkins; and Miss Dorothy Williston. This photo was thought to be taken between 1910 and 1912.

People are typically surprised to learn that women in Kansas received the right to vote in all elections — state and federal — in 1912, eight years prior to the 19th amendment, which guaranteed women nationwide the right to vote.

That’s according to Diana Carlin, a former University of Kansas professor who taught courses on Kansas women’s suffrage for over 20 years.

“We were way ahead of the game,” she said.

In 1867, Kansas was the first state to hold a referendum on women’s suffrage. In 1887, Kansas became the first state to grant women municipal suffrage. And it was the first state to elect a female mayor: Susanna Madora Salter.

Salter served as mayor of Argonia, Kan. in 1887. She didn’t even discover she was a candidate for mayor until election day, but more on that to come.

On the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, take a look back at how the women’s suffrage movement panned out in Kansas and what current female leaders and legislators say about how far Kansas still has to come.

Kansas’ five campaigns for suffrage

Most people say the movement for women’s suffrage began with the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, but Carlin said it started much earlier.

Abigail Adams, the wife of the second United States president John Adams, wrote in a 1776 letter to her husband that unlimited power should not be put in the hands of husbands.

“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could,” she wrote. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation.”

Female suffrage wasn’t something women had ignored until Seneca Falls, Carlin noted. She said it took over 80 years of activism before the 19th amendment was passed.

“My students are always surprised at how long it took for women to get the right to vote,” she said.

photo by: LifeTouch Photography

Diana Carlin

In Kansas, the fight for women’s rights existed from the state’s acceptance into the Union.

Jeanne Klein, an expert on the local women’s suffrage movement and a former University of Kansas professor, outlines five statewide campaigns for women’s suffrage in her essay, “Woman Suffrage in Lawrence, 1854-1920.” The essay is available for purchase at the Watkins Museum for $5.

photo by: Contributed Photo

Jeanne Klein is pictured in a suffragette costume she plans to wear when portraying Genevieve Chalkley on Aug. 26 for an event with the Watkins Museum.

The first campaign, Klein said, culminated in 1861 with women gaining the right to vote in school district elections.

Clarina Nichols, who moved to Kansas in 1854 and spent some time in both Lawrence and Baldwin City before moving to Quindaro in Kansas City, Kan., circulated a petition in 1859 opposing “any Constitutional distinctions based on difference of sex” in advance of the Wyandotte Convention, the final state constitutional convention prior to the founding of Kansas.

Nichols spoke at the convention and largely because of her efforts, Kansas women won child custody rights, some property rights and the right to vote in school district elections.

photo by: Kansas Historical Society

Clarina Irene Howard Nichols attended the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention in 1859, where she secured for Kansas women liberal property rights, equal guardianship of their children, and the right to vote on all school questions.

In 1867, Kansas became the first state to vote on a proposed amendment to give full suffrage to women. Because of this, women suffragists from all over the nation came to Kansas to campaign. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who was a frequent visitor to Kansas because her brother lived in Leavenworth, campaigned in Lawrence during this time.

Yet, despite the efforts of numerous groups across the state, the amendment — which also included Black suffrage — was defeated.

Suffragist efforts continued, and in 1887, Kansas granted municipal suffrage to women, a first in the U.S. Annie Diggs, a local woman who was active in suffragist efforts, became the first Lawrence woman to register to vote, despite pushback from men in the city clerk’s office. A couple months later, in April, women gained all five seats on the Syracuse city council. And in Argonia, Kan., Salter became the first woman mayor in the country.

photo by: Kansas Historical Society

Portrait of Susanna Madora Salter, Mayor of Argonia, Kan., and first woman mayor in the United States.

A group of local men had nominated her as a joke, hoping to humiliate the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, of which Salter was a member. When asked on Election Day by the Republican Party chairman if she would serve if elected, Salter said yes, and the Republican Party voted for her to teach the jokesters a lesson.

Salter’s one-year term passed without a hitch.

The fourth campaign, according to Klein, culminated in 1894, when Kansas once again had a suffrage amendment on the ballot. Over half of Kansas male voters defeated the amendment. Of those who voted for a governor that year, “one-quarter didn’t bother to vote on the amendment,” Klein writes in “Woman Suffrage in Lawrence.”

The fifth and final campaign for women’s suffrage in Kansas took place in 1912. Women and women’s suffrage supporters at the time felt the governor, Walter Roscoe Stubbs, was the progressive leader they needed to approve the Equal Suffrage Amendment. And on Nov. 5, 1912, Kansas became the eighth state to approve a law fully recognizing equal suffrage rights for women, following Wyoming (1890), Colorado (1893), Utah and Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), California (1911) and Oregon (1912).

Many Kansas women continued in the fight for national women’s suffrage until the 19th amendment was passed in 1920.

photo by: Kansas Historical Society

A 1916 photograph showing a group of delegates to the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association in Topeka, Shawnee County. This group voted to affiliate with the national association as support for a women’s suffrage amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Kansas women had already won the right to vote in 1912.

“Kansans were leaders in the women’s rights movement from the start,” Gov. Laura Kelly said in a written statement to the Journal-World. Kelly also said that the centennial celebration of the ratification of the 19th Amendment is “a reminder that Kansas has strong, progressive roots when it comes to women’s suffrage.”

“The 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment is a reminder of how far we’ve come – and the work we have left to do,” she said.

Though once ‘on the forefront,’ current Kansas leaders say there’s work to be done

Women make up about 51% of the population of Kansas, but only 27% of the Legislature, according to 2019 data from the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“100 years ago Kansas was on the forefront,” outgoing Lawrence Rep. Eileen Horn said of the suffrage movement. “But in 100 years we have not made enough progress.”

Horn said she thinks the same barriers that keep women from advancing in other careers also exist in the Legislature, mentioning access to paid family leave and childcare. Horn was pregnant with her second son when sworn in to the Kansas Legislature in 2017.

photo by: Lawrence Journal-World file photo

Eileen Horn, a Lawrence Democrat, takes the oath of office for the 10th District seat in the Kansas House in 2017. Standing with Horn and former Secretary of State Kris Kobach, right, were her husband, Rick Martin, and their then 2-year-old son, Leo.

Thirty years earlier, when Kathleen Sebelius first entered the Kansas Legislature, her children were 2 and 5.

“When I entered the Legislature in 1987 my children were 2 and 5 and early childhood education and early child care issues were very much on my mind,” the former governor said. “Fast forward to 2020, and most of the issues that we were talking about in the Legislature at that time still have not been solved.”

Sebelius was Kansas’ first female insurance commissioner and second female governor. She went on to serve as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2009 until 2014. She now resides in Lawrence.

Sebelius called gender equality not a Kansas issue, but a United States issue and said pay equity and paid leave policies are national issues that should be addressed with changes in federal policy.

While Horn said there seems to be a glass ceiling in the Legislature keeping women from running for office, she said that does not seem to be the case locally in Douglas County, where for the first time in history women represent the majority of all three local governing bodies: the Lawrence City Commission, Douglas County Commission and the Lawrence school board.

Lawrence wasn’t always that way.

Marci Francisco, Lawrence’s third female mayor in history and a current state senator, said she was the only woman on the Lawrence City Commission from 1979-1981. Francisco said she was also the only woman on the faculty in KU’s School of Architecture from 1973 to 1974, the only female draftsperson out of the 119 in the architecture office for London Transport between 1974 and 1976, and the only female member of the Board of Zoning Appeals from 1994 to 2000.

“A lot of times I found myself as the only woman,” Francisco said. She learned “to stick up for yourself and to bring another point of view.”

photo by: Contributed Photo

Marci Francisco, pictured in a checkered shirt in the front middle of the photograph, was the only woman on the faculty in KU’s School of Architecture from 1973 to 1974, she said.

Francisco said she would tell young women today to be civically engaged.

“It’s important to be part of the decision making about your life and your future and you do that by participating,” she said.

According to Wendy Doyle, president and CEO of the Kansas City-based Women’s Foundation, when women have extra time, they tend to devote it to nonprofits, their children’s school or their place of worship.

Doyle and her team seek to get women engaged in civic leadership roles. The organization’s Appointments Project tries to increase the gender diversity of public boards and commissions. Since the program began in 2014, the foundation has worked with 130 women to get them appointed to boards and commissions on the city, county and state level. Of those 130 women, 28% are women of color.

Doyle says women tend to undervalue their expertise and qualifications, and her organization builds their confidence and prepares them to navigate the political process.

Earlier this year, the Women’s Foundation commended Kelly for appointing more than 150 women to state boards, commissions and the judiciary in her first year. In January 2019, women held 37% of state board and commission seats. By Dec. 31, 2019, Kelly had appointed 152 women and 152 men since taking office.

Doyle said Kansas has made “significant progress across the board … but we still have progress yet to make.”

Kelly said the centennial of the 19th amendment is an occasion to celebrate the men and women who “worked tirelessly to ensure the voting rights of women.”

“When Kansans go to the polls this November, I encourage all to remember those who fought to make it possible. We stand on their shoulders,” she said.