University of Louisville
Photographic Archives

The Road to the Vote

Woman Suffrage in Kentucky

Kentucky granted widows with school-aged children limited school suffrage in 1837, and some cities allowed women to vote for school board elections in 1894. The right was repealed in 1902, and not regained until 1912.

Kentucky women at present have no greater political rights than the women of Turkey - for we have none at all...

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge
NAWSA National Convention, Louisville, 1911.

Early suffragists included abolitionists, who saw a woman's lot being not much better than a slave's; since she could not hold property, control her own income, or seek custody of her children if divorced. Kentucky in 1890 was the last state to consider women as chattel property, who could not own the clothes they wore.

Temperance advocates thought that if women could vote, they could pass reform legislation that would protect women and children. Kentucky's Carry Nation was a leader in the movement. One contemporary remarked "It's easier to see a drunk than a principle".

Laura Clay, daughter of abolitionist Cassius Clay of Lexington, learned the importance of women's rights during her parent's bitter divorce. In 1888 she helped organize KERA and served as its president until 1912. She served as auditor for NAWSA from 1896 to 1911, and was a popular speaker for the suffrage cause. She was also active in temperance and other women's causes.

Clay favored a state amendment over the federal one, and a literacy requirement that would have excluded many women of color and immigrants.

The American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual meeting in Louisville in 1881. After the last session, the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association was formed, with Mary Clay as its president. It was the first state suffrage organization in the South. In 1888 it was incorporated into the Kentucky Equal Rights Association (KERA), founded by Josephine Henry and Laura Clay.

KERA successfully lobbied for the 1890 law to make women's wages payable to them instead of their husband; the 1893 law allowing them to make wills and control real estate; the 1894 law to allow women to sue, make contracts, and enter into business; and the 1910 "co-guardianship" law.

KERA also influenced laws admitting women to colleges, establishing reform schools for both sexes, and mandating woman physicians at each state asylum with women inmates.

After the passage of the Suffrage Amendment, KERA became the League of Women Voters.

The 1911 National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) convention was held in Louisville, where crowds were so large that the speakers were moved to Macauley's Theater, the largest hall in the city.

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge served as president of the KERA from 1912-1915 and again in 1919-20, as well as vice-president of NAWSA from 1913 to 1915. She also lobbied for the school suffrage bill passed in 1912.

[Kentucky men] class women oratorically with whiskey and horses, and legally with criminals and idiots.
Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, at the 1911 Convention in Louisville.

Sophonisba Breckinridge, Madeline's sister-in-law and a pioneer in social work at Chicago's Hull house and NAACP member, was elected to the NAWSA Board in 1911 after Clay's tenure.

Josephine Henry spearheaded the fight for married women's property rights in Kentucky in 1894. She and Clay founded KERA in 1888.

Henry was also the first woman in the South to run for a state office, on the Prohibition Party ticket in 1890.

During World War I, many women took defense jobs or worked in war relief efforts. In Louisville, they volunteered as nurses at Camp Taylor during the influenza epidemic, despite the high mortality rate there.

After the war, they used their new organizational skills and economic independence to successfully fight for the vote.

Eleanor Flexner of Louisville wrote Century of Struggle, a book on the suffrage movement, in 1959.

The Road to the Vote exhibit will run from August 14 through September 29, 2000 in the Photographic Archives Gallery.

The collection of suffrage memorabilia belonging to Professor Carolyn S. Bratt of the University of Kentucky will be exhibited in the Rare Books Gallery from August 25 through December 15, 2000.

The exhibit is in conjunction with the Suffrage Symposium sponsored by the University of Louisville August 26, 2000 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the women's vote.

Learn more about suffrage and the women who fought for it.