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Nevada women have long been active in the fight for equal rights and representation, a fight that would begin with early statehood and continue through Nevada’s recent passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the 2018 Women’s March. This history of social organizing for political recognition and equality provides insight into the ways Nevada women conceived of themselves as citizens and activists. Organizing gave women the opportunity to join the political discourse and create positive social change in the Silver State.
The first major struggle they faced was suffrage and legal equality. The first push for suffrage in the 1869 was supported and passed but failed to become law in 1871. In the years after, women used social organizing to spearhead the fight for suffrage. Nevadan women found support for women’s suffrage in the many civic organizations and women’s clubs across the state. Some civic clubs adopted suffrage as part of their platforms but were not exclusively suffrage organizations. The Lucy Stone Nonpartisan Equal Suffrage League, founded in 1894, was followed in 1895 by the Nevada State Equal Suffrage Association. These early organizations saw the way to suffrage through petitioning the state legislature. Beginning in 1911, the second wave of suffrage organizations would form and infuse the fight for the vote with more militant techniques to bring visibility to the campaign.[1]
Image Credit: Nevada Historical Society
Leading this second wave was the Nevada Equal Franchise Society (NEFS) organized by Jeanne E. Wier in 1911. Following Margaret Stanislawksy’s election as the society’s first president, the NEFS would lead the statewide campaign for suffrage through the successful passage of suffrage in 1914. Their campaign targeted both the legislature and the voting public to make their cause visible and convincing. In 1912, newly elected NEFS president, Anne Martin, continued the society’s more aggressive techniques by publishing pamphlets which argued to Nevadan men that Nevadan women were fellow working citizens who deserved the right to vote. Their campaign used the language of citizenship and labor to convince voters and gain their support.[2] However,with success, came division. Following the 1914 legislation that granted Nevadan women the right to vote, the suffrage organizations found themselves without a cause.
In February 1915, Anne Martin and Sadie Hurst, both active members of the NEFS, split to run separate organizations, effectively dissolving the NEFS. Martin would continue her work with the Women’s Civic League and become an active participant in Nevada politics. Sadie Hurst, who in 1918 became the first woman elected to the state legislature, followed her work as president of the Reno Women’s Citizen Club, which transformed into the current League of Women Voters.
To read more about the League of Women Voters, click below!
Sources:
[1] Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada 2nd Edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), pp 246- 266, Rebecca J Mead, How the Vote was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1866-1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp 160-173, James W. Hulse, The Silver State: Nevada’s Heritage Reinterpreted 3rd Edition (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004) pp 297- 302, and Anita Ernst Watson, Into Their Own: Nevada Women Emerging Into Public Life (Reno: Nevada Humanities Committee, 2000).
[2] Bird Wilson, “Women Under Nevada Laws,” 1913, Anne Martin, “Woman Suffrage,” 1913, Anne Martin and Mary Austin, “Suffrage and Government,” 1914.
© Copyright 2018 Doris Morgan Rueda. All Rights Reserved.
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