In September 1919, the Minnesota legislature ratified the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote.
This change had been a long time coming. As far back as 1858, granting the right to vote to married women was proposed as an addition to the new state’s constitution. This idea was, unfortunately, rejected.
Women moved one step closer to the ballot in 1875 when they were granted the right to vote and run for office- but only for school board and school related issues.
The first statewide suffrage organization was formed in 1881 when the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) was created by 14 women in Hastings.
The MWSA transformed into the Minnesota League of Women Voters, which is still an active organization devoted to civic engagement nearly 100 years later.
The Scott County Historical Society will be commemorating the anniversary of statewide womens’ suffrage during the upcoming year. To kick things off, we are excited to host historian and author Lois Glewwe. Glewwe is the descendant of the longtime South St. Paul Glewwe family. On August 27, 1920, South St. Paul women, including three of Lois Glewwe’s paternal aunts went to the polls. They were the first women in Minnesota to vote after the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Glewwe will share the story of 21-year-old Marguerite Newburgh, a stenographer at South St. Paul City Hall who the national press identified as the very first woman to vote that morning at 6:00 a.m. when the polls opened. Join us on Thursday, August 8th at 6:30pm for this special event! Learn more at https://bit.ly/2NIZGYM
Additionally, look forward to a special exhibit on the journey towards womens’ suffrage in Scott County opening in April of 2020. Do you have any artifacts or stories to share relating to the history of women’s suffrage in Scott County? Don’t hesitate to reach out to SCHS at 952-445-0378, or email info@scottcountyhistory.org
Womens’ suffrage was a hotly contested issue in print publications of the early 1900s. Below is the text of an article entitled “Votes for Women: By a Suffragette” about the British and American womens’ fight for voting rights. It was published in the Scott County Argus on April 2nd, 1909:
IIlustration from the Scott County Argus, April 2, 1909
“Votes For Women”: The peer who could have been apprehended uttering those words 100 years ago in England would have been ostracized by society- by men and women alike. But scan the situation today and you will find that we suffragettes have nearly won our battle. Perhaps it seems far from victory for Americans who have been following the the struggle which we have been conducting in our own way, but let me say right here that “votes for women” is in my mind a certainty within a decade.
The idea has been drive home among the men who are the ruling powers of Great Britain and they cannot help but see the beauty of our arguments. The opening of a vista of light in the stubborn minds of men who construct English law is to the suffragettes a certain indication that if the fight is carried on in the next few years with the same vigorous measures which have marked the pursuit of votes by the feminine British of the past few years our cause is won.
It is an enlightened age. The woman who spurns the thought of participating in the political activities of her country has not yet reached a plane, according to my belief, where she can possibly appreciate the benefits derived from the ballot. Why do women dislike politics? I answer simply because they believe the political side of a country’s life is the degraded one. They connect politics and votes with drinking, graft, and other evils which, I may say beset the safety of political government today.
Illustration from the Scott County Argus, April 2, 1909
And, let me ask the woman who does not believe that she should vote. Would not the introduction of the feminine into government affairs serve to cleanse them of the stigma which is too often attached. To mind that would be the result.
I have said that I would deal impartially in this article and so I am giving “the other hand” of the question. Men have opposed equal rights because they say that the influence a women of evil intentions could throw into a political fight would disrupt organization. I answer: There is now much evil in the manner in which our male citizens are carrying out their policies and it is a certainty that the purifying influences of women would be felt in national questions.
“But women has not the training for a political career”, some of my skeptical friends may declare. True, she has not had the training which has been accorded to the men, but just ow she is not looking for political office, for she is after her primary right- the ballot. Then after that is one the political training will naturally follow with the interest which the woman must take in the affairs of the country which she will necessarily help in deciding.
I do not suppose that enlightened readers will want me to again go over that thread bare motto, which arises to the uppermost part of the brain of man whenever he is arguing against equal rights, vis., that “women’s place is in the home”.
Of course woman’s place is in her home. So is a man’s, but that does not prevent either from participating in the decision of who shall govern the rights upon which that home is built. Think it over. Does it?
It befell me to be a member of the little band of women who, when they asserted their rights verbally in front of the house of commons in February, were dragged into the worst excuse for a court of justice and sentenced to one month in the workshop because they had nerve enough to tell the people of London their ideas on the rights of men and women.
The mental agonies which we women were compelled to undergo were compensated in the good which was done the cause, or we were the martyrs of our division of the great band of women which is fighting for the ballot.
True, the magistrate was good enough to give us places in “jail” which were better than those to which the ordinary drunkard is sentenced, but the care we received was not such that our lived in the confinement of the “jail” was by any means comfortable. Yet we refused to allow ourselves freedom.
Men have laughed at our methods of going about the acquirement of our right to the ballot.
A male friend of mine said to me: “Why do not you women go after suffrage peaceably without the attempt at making your point felt by the use of brute strength?”
Think of it, sisters and brothers. He called our efforts the utilization of “brute strength”. I laughed outright when he chose to term our fight under that caption.
Perhaps he gained his idea from the fact that our vigorous prosecuting of the fight has been styled “rioting” by the sensationalist press. But in my mind, it cannot be called that for to my knowledge, none of the women came to blows with their enemies in this fight. IT seems to me that what “brute strength” has been used was on the other side.
Brains have been used to a greater extent then you might imagine. It was a cunning mind among our leaders who thought out the plan to talk to leaders of Parliament by having two women chain themselves to the guard in the balcony. Just that little incident gave England the idea that the fight was a determined one.
Illustration from the Scott County Argus, April 2, 1909
Modern advertising methods were used to circulate general knowledge of the March demonstration and certainly if we believed that the power of brawn is needed to win this struggle we would not have gone about it in that manner. We could have hired hoodlums to make a far more startling argument in the line with the use of brute strength.
Another manner of unique advertising was the airship episode which unfortunately ended disastrously. The craft, upon the side of which a great banner hung bearing the slogan “votes for women” traveled in the direction opposite to that for which it had been steered, but the moral effect upon the public was good
Though it is not generally known, there are great minds behind this campaign and through them eventual success is sure. Every day new moves are planned, and the members of parliament who are opposed to our creed little know where to look next for an outcropping of the emblem which bears our little legend “equal suffrage”.
Male members of the British nobility are to be figured upon if the selfish would defeat us, and that is why I say I believe I have good reason to argue that within a decade our fight will be won. Are there not in England among the male population minds of far lesser caliber than those of the women who believe they should vote? There is no doubt of it. Yet we, who have a greater grasp of the political side of life in his majesty’s domain are denied the privilege. Is our condition not like that which you Americans fought back in 1776: taxation without representation?
From reading the cable news from America in the daily newspaper here in London I learn that several states of our former colonies have bestowed upon their women the right to cast ballots in rendering decisions as to state and city officers. If the offspring of England shall have so far progressed as to recognize that the feminine branch of the human race deserves a say in the affairs of men is it not time for the mother country to cast from her back the black cloak of unequal suffrage?
There is a suffrage lesson in America and well may England profit by it. The thought that voting is unwomanly is as obsolete as the old stage-coach system, to my mind and some day the eyes of our country will be opened to that fact. We women have simply formed ourselves into a band of leaders and we hope soon to see our way clear to the voting booth.
Our struggle commenced in humble little mass meetings in the street. The success of these resolved itself into the desire to do greater things and today you Americans who read the newspapers are viewing a fight which is nearing the mountain top of victory.