It blows my mind that there are currently women alive who weren’t born with the right to vote. And yet today, women in the U.S. not only have the right to vote, but there’s a woman on the ballot for the top ticket.
No matter where your political affinities lie, that’s rather remarkable, don’t you think? And it’s thanks to a whole host of fierce women who fought and earned it.
As we (hopefully) close the chapter on much of the anxiety and infighting of the past many months, let’s take a moment to extend some mutual respect for those who committed their legacy to securing a more equal future for all U.S. citizens.
How best to honor them?
Why, voting of course!
Better yet, get your kids excited about voting. Let’s pass the torch of our foremothers to a generation who can continue to make strides in equality. One day, it will be up to their vote.
With respect and gratitude…
Jane Addams (1860–1935) – social activist, president Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Nina E. Allender (1873–1957) – speaker, organizer and cartoonist
Naomi Anderson (b. 1863) – black suffragist, temperance advocate
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) – co-founder and leader National Women’s Suffrage Association, created the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association
Annie Arniel (1873–1924) – member of the Silent Sentinels, arrested eight times in direct actions
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) – African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, and early leader in the civil rights movement
Bertha Hirsch Baruch – writer, president of the Los Angeles Suffrage Association
Alva Belmont (1853–1933) – founder of the Political Equality League that was in 1913 merged into the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage
Alice Stone Blackwell (1857–1950) – journalist, activist
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) – co-founder, with Lucy Stone, of the American Woman Suffrage Association
Henry Browne Blackwell (1825–1909) – founded Woman’s Journal with Lucy Stone
Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (1856–1940) – writer (major contributor to History of Woman Suffrage), founded Women’s Political Union, daughter of pioneering activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Amelia Bloomer (1818–1894) – women’s rights and temperance advocate; her name was associated with women’s clothing reform style known as bloomers
Lucy Gwynne Branham (1892–1966) – professor, organizer, lobbyist, active in the National Women’s Party and its Silent Sentinels, daughter of suffragette Lucy Fisher Gwynne Branham
Madeline McDowell Breckinridge (1872–1920) – suffrage leader, one-time vice president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, one of Kentucky’s leading Progressive reformers
Sophonisba Breckinridge (1866–1948) – activist, Progressive Era social reformer, social scientist and innovator in higher education
Gertrude Foster Brown (1867-1956) – pianist, suffragette, author of Your vote and how to use it (1918).
Olympia Brown (1835–1926) – activist, first woman to graduate from a theological school, as well as becoming the first full-time ordained minister
Emma Bugbee (1888–1981) – journalist
Lucy Burns (1879–1966) – women’s rights advocate, co-founder of the National Woman’s Party
Zina Young Williams Card (1850-1931) – American advocate for women and children; midwife
Frances Jennings Casement (1840–1928) – voting advocate, married General John S. Casement, who lobbied for voting rights for women
Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) – president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women, campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Tennessee Celeste Claflin (1844–1923) – one of the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm, advocate of legalized prostitution
Laura Clay (1849–1941) – co-founder and first president of Kentucky Equal Rights Association, leader of women’s suffrage movement, active in the Democratic Party
Jennie Collins (1828-1887), labor reformer, humanitarian, and suffragist
Ida Craft – known as the Colonel, took part in Suffrage Hikes
Minnie Fisher Cunningham (1882–1964) – first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters, member of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association
Lucile Atcherson Curtis (1894-1986) – the first woman in what became the US Foreign Service
Lucinda Lee Dalton (1847–1925) – Mormon feminist and writer
Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis (1813-1876) – a founder of the New England Woman Suffrage Association; active with the National Woman Suffrage Association; co-arranged and presided at the first National Women’s Rights Convention
Rheta Childe Dorr (1868–1948) – American journalist, suffragist newspaper editor, writer, and political activist
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) – African-American social reformer, orator, writer, statesman
Anne Dallas Dudley (1876–1955) – suffrage activist; in 1920, she, along with Abby Crawford Milton and Catherine Talty Kenny, led the campaign in Tennessee to approve ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution[1][2]
Abigail Scott Duniway (1834–1915) – women’s rights advocate, editor, writer
Max Eastman (1883–1969) – writer, philosopher, poet, prominent political activist
Katherine Philips Edson (1870-1933) – social worker and feminist, worked to add women’s suffrage to the California State Constitution
Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1848-1919) – Caribbean-American woman who was the treasurer of the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association
Helga Estby (1860–1942) – Norwegian immigrant, noted for her walk across the United States during 1896 to save her family farm
Janet Ayer Fairbank (1878–1951) – author and champion of progressive causes
Lillian Feickert (1877–1945) – suffragette; first woman from New Jersey to run for United States Senate[3]
Sara Bard Field (1882–1974) – active with the National Woman’s Party, and in Oregon and Nevada; crossed the US to deliver a petition with 500,000 signatures to President Wilson
Margaret Foley (1875-1957), active with the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association
Jessica Garretson Finch, president of the New York Equal Franchise Society
Clara S. Foltz (1849–1934) – lawyer, sister of US Senator Samuel M. Shortridge
Elisabeth Freeman (1876–1942) – Suffrage Hike participant
Antoinette Funk (1869-1942) – lawyer and executive secretary of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association; supporter of the women’s movement in WWI
Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) – activist, freethinker, author
Edna Fischel Gellhorn (1878–1970) – reformer, co-founder of the National League of Women Voters
Sarah Grimke (1792–1873) – abolitionist, writer
Eliza Calvert Hall (pen name of Eliza Caroline “Lida” Calvert Obenchain) (1856–1935) – author, women’s rights advocate
Ida Husted Harper (1851–1931) – organizer, major writer and historian of the US suffrage movement
Florence Jaffray Harriman (1870–1967) – social reformer, organiser and diplomat
Sallie Davis Hayden (1842-1907) – one of the founders of the suffrage movement in Arizona
Josephine K. Henry (1846–1928) – Progressive Era women’s rights leader, social reformer and writer
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (1878–1951) – social reformer
Elsie Hill (1883-1970) – activist
Helena Hill (1875-1958) – activist, geologist
Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) – prominent abolitionist, social activist and poet
Emily Howland (1827–1929) – philanthropist, educator
Josephine Brawley Hughes (1839-1926) – Established the Arizona Suffrage Association in 1891
Inez Haynes Irwin (1873–1970) – co-founder of the College Equal Suffrage League, active in National Women’s Party, wrote the parties’ history
Ada James (1876–1952) – social worker and reformer
Izetta Jewel (1883–1978) – stage actress, women’s rights activist, politician and the first woman to address a major American political party convention
Rosalie Gardiner Jones (1883–1978) – socialite, took part in Suffrage Hike, known as “General Jones”
Belle Kearney (1863–1939) – speaker and lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association; first woman elected to the Mississippi State Senate
Edna Buckman Kearns (1882–1934) – National Woman’s Party campaigner, known for her horse-drawn suffrage campaign wagon (now in the collection of New York State Museum)
Mary Morton Kehew (1859-1918) – labor/social reformer and suffragist from Boston
Helen Keller (1880–1968) – author and political activist
Abby Kelley (1811–1887) – abolitionist, radical social reformer, fundraiser, lecturer and committee organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society
Caroline Burnham Kilgore (1838-1909) – the first woman to be admitted to the bar in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin (1883–1965) – civil rights activist, organization executive, and community practitioner
Clara Chan Lee (1886–1993) – first Chinese American to register to vote in the US, November 8, 1911[4]
Dora Lewis (1862-1928) – in 1913 became an executive member of the National Women’s Party; in 1918 became their chairwoman of finance; in 1919 became their national treasurer; in 1920 headed their ratification committee
Lena Morrow Lewis (1868–1950) – organizer in South Dakota and Oregon; enlisted the support of labor unions
Mary Livermore (1820–1905) – journalist and advocate of women’s rights
Florence Luscomb (1887–1985) – architect and prominent leader of Massachusetts suffragists
Katherine Duer Mackay (1878-1930) – founder of the Equal Franchise Society
Arabella Mansfield (1846-1911) – first female lawyer in the United States, chaired the Iowa Women’s Suffrage Convention in 1870, and worked with Susan B. Anthony
Anne Henrietta Martin (1875–1951) – Vice-chairman National Woman’s Party, arrested as a Silent Sentinel, president Nevada Equal Franchise Society, first US woman to run for Senate
Ellis Meredith (1865–1955) – journalist
Jane Hungerford Milbank (1871–1931) – author and poet
Inez Milholland (1886–1916) – key participant in the National Woman’s Party and the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913
Harriet May Mills (1857–1936) – prominent civil rights leader, played a major role in women’s rights movement
Abby Crawford Milton (1881-1991) – traveled throughout Tennessee making speeches and organizing suffrage leagues in small communities; in 1920, she, along with Anne Dallas Dudley and Catherine Talty Kenny, led the campaign in Tennessee to approve ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution[1][2]
Virginia Minor (1824–1894) – co-founder and president of the Woman’s Suffrage Association of Missouri; unsuccessfully argued in Minor v. Happersett (1874 Supreme Court case) that the Fourteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote
Esther Hobart Morris (1814–1902) – first female Justice of the Peace in the United States
Mary Foulke Morrisson (1879-1971) – organizer of 1916 suffrage parade in Chicago at the Republican national Convention; founder of chapters of the League of Women Voters
Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) – Quaker, abolitionist; women’s rights activist; social reformer
Frances Lillian Willard “Fannie” Munds (1866-1948) – leader of the suffrage movement in Arizona and member of the Arizona Senate
Sarah Massey Overton (1850-1914) – women’s rights activist and black rights activist
Maud Wood Park (1871–1955) – founder of the College Equal Suffrage League, co-founder of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government (BESAGG); worked for passage of the 19th Amendment
Alice Paul (1885–1977) – leader, main strategist, and inspiration for the 1910s Women’s Voting Rights Movement for the 19th Amendment; founder of the National Women’s Party; initiator of the Silent Sentinels and Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913; author of the Equal Rights Amendment
Juno Frankie Pierce, also known as Frankie Pierce or J. Frankie Pierce (1864-1954) – African-American suffragist[5][6][7][8]
Helen Pitts (1838–1903) – active in women’s rights movement and co-edited The Alpha
Anita Pollitzer (1894–1975) – photographer, served as National Chairman in the National Woman’s Party
Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973) – philanthropist, heiress to the Post Cereal company fortune
Florence Kenyon Hayden Rector (1882–1973) – first licensed female architect in the state of Ohio and the only female architect practicing in central Ohio between 1900 and 1930
Florida Ruffin Ridley (1861–1943) – African-American civil rights activist, suffragist, teacher, writer, and editor from Boston
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924) – African-American publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor
Ruth Logan Roberts (1891-1968) – suffragist, activist, YWCA leader, and host of a salon in Harlem
Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) – birth control activist, sex educator, nurse, established Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Julia Sears (1840–1929) – pioneering academic and first woman in the US to head a public college, now Minnesota State University
May Wright Sewall (1844-1920) – chairperson of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association’s executive committee from 1882 to 1890
Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919) – president of National Women’s Suffrage Association from 1904 to 1915
Mary Shaw (1854–1929) – early feminist, playwright and actress
Pauline Agassiz Shaw (1841-1917) – co-founder and first president of the Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government
May Gorslin Preston Slosson (1858–1943) – educator and first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in Philosophy in the United States
The Smiths of Glastonbury, a family of 6 women in Connectictut who were active in championing suffrage, property rights, and education for women
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) – initiator of the Seneca Falls Convention, author of the Declaration of Sentiments, co-founder National Women’s Suffrage Association, major pioneer of women’s rights in America
Helen Ekin Starrett (1840–1920) – Illinois Woman’s Press Association; author, educator, editor, business owner, early suffragist, and one of the two delegates from the 1869 National Convention to attend the Victory Convention in 1920
Doris Stevens (1892–1963) organizer for National American Women Suffrage Association and the National Woman’s Party, prominent Silent Sentinels participant, author of Jailed for Freedom
Lucy Stone (1818–1893) – prominent orator, abolitionist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women
Helen Taft (1891–1987) – daughter of President William Howard Taft; traveled the nation giving pro-suffrage speeches
Lydia Taft (1712–1778) – first woman known to legally vote in colonial America
M. Carey Thomas (1857–1935) – educator, linguist, and second President of Bryn Mawr College
Grace Gallatin Seton Thompson (1872-1959) – American author
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) – Buffalo and New York activist, later journalist and radio broadcaster
Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) – abolitionist, women’s rights activist, speaker, gave women’s rights speech “Ain’t I a Woman?”
Harriet Tubman (1822–1913) – African-American abolitionist, humanitarian and Union spy during the American Civil War
Mina Van Winkle (1875–1932) – crusading social worker, groundbreaking police lieutenant and national leader in the protection of girls and other women during the law enforcement and judicial process
Mabel Vernon (1883–1975) – principal member of the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage, major organizer for the Silent Sentinels
Sarah E. Wall (1825–1907) – organizer of an anti-tax protest that defended a woman’s right not to pay taxation without representation
Rosa Welt-Straus (1856–1938) – feminist, born in Austria, first Austrian woman to earn a medical degree, first female eye doctor in Europe
Ruza Wenclawska (died 1977) – factory inspector and trade union organizer
Frances Willard (1839–1898) – leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and International Council of Women, lecturer, writer
Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) – leader of woman’s suffrage movement, first female candidate for President of the United States, first woman to start a weekly newspaper, activist for women’s rights and labor reforms, advocate of free love
Emmeline B. Wells (1828–1921) – American journalist, editor, poet, women’s rights advocate, and diarist
* List referenced from here.
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