Struggle for Suffrage

Arkansas efforts go back as far as 1868

Acentury ago the women of Arkansas — or at least most of them — were anticipating voting for the first time. The 1917 Legislature adopted a measure allowing women to vote in state political party primary elections. This was three years before the U.S. Constitution was amended to enfranchise women nationally.

While Arkansas might have been a leader in women’s suffrage, it did not happen overnight. Interestingly and surprisingly, farsighted men and women worked for political rights for women in Arkansas as early as the 1868 Reconstruction-era constitutional convention.

I often cite the 1868 convention as a possible turning point in Arkansas history, one of those rare moments when circumstance and opportunity met in a different sort of milieu following the Civil War. The old order had been swept aside. Young men from outside the state, some for venal and selfish reasons but others with a combination of idealistic and political motivations, found themselves serving in a convention to write a new charter for Arkansas.

One of these men was a young delegate from Clark County, Miles L. Langley. On the 29th day of the deliberations, Langley proposed that “all citizens, twenty-one years of age, who can read and write the English language, shall be eligible to the elective franchise …” This thunderclap was followed the next day with a spirited defense of his proposal, in which Langley said his wife was just as qualified as he to vote, and that he thought society treated women “with great injustice.”

Langley was hooted down by his fellow delegates, most notably by one of the few conservative white Democrats who managed to win election, J. N. Cypert of White County. Cypert ridiculed Langley’s motion as threatening “revolutions in families.” The motion was quickly tabled, leaving Langley to complain that “the Democrats are my enemies because I assisted in emancipating the slaves. The Republicans have now become my opponents, because I have made an effort to confer on women their rights. And even the women themselves fail to sympathize with me.”

The demise of Reconstruction in 1874 brought about the adoption of a new constitution, which though conservative and reactive in many ways, did adopt a provision by Judge James W. Butler granting women the right to own property independently of a husband. The next session of the legislature adopted an “Act for the Protection of Married Women,” which enabled women to buy and sell property, to sue and be sued, and be held unaccountable for a husband’s debt. Arkansas was among the early states to grant extensive rights to married women, but the right to vote was not one of them.

One of the interesting points to note when studying the history of women’s rights in Arkansas is the striking role played by northern-born wives and children of Reconstruction Republican leaders. The movement to enfranchise women in Arkansas was a truly bipartisan effort, which brought together the formidable organizational talents of Democratic-oriented women like Mary W. Loughborough and Republicans like Clara McDiarmid and Ida Joe Brooks, all of Little Rock. [Indeed, Ida Joe Brooks ran for state office in 1920 but was ruled off the ballot by an opinion of the incumbent state attorney general.]

The woman’s suffrage movement was centered in Little Rock, but pockets of activity occasionally arose in smaller towns, such as Forrest City, Eureka Springs, Hope and Stuttgart. The suffrage movement picked up steam as it found common cause with the women’s temperance campaign. In 1890 the Arkansas Prohibition Party convention in Russellville endorsed the enfranchisement of women. This alliance caused liquor forces to oppose women’s suffrage — which was wise, as it turned out.

By the 1911 legislative session, women’s suffrage could be neglected no longer, and the House of Representatives witnessed a strongly argued debate on a motion to grant the vote to women. Ultimately the motion was tabled, but the debate had evolved to the point that respected Democratic legislators such as George P. Whittington of Hot Springs had joined the movement. Many state Republican leaders, like stalwart Wallace Townsend, were strongly in favor of extending suffrage to women.

War clouds drifted across Europe as the Arkansas legislature convened in 1917, perhaps adding to the suffragist cause. The suffragists also strengthened their cause by adopting a new strategy in 1917. Realizing that almost all important elections in the South were decided in the Democratic Party primaries, suffragists convinced Rep. John A. Riggs of Garland County to sponsor a bill that would open the primaries to women voters.

Women from across the state mobilized for the 1917 effort. Women lobbied in many ways, “but the legislature was not harassed by a large and conspicuous lobby.” The bill passed the House by a comfortable 71 to 19 votes. The Senate, however, was another story.

On Feb. 27, 1917, the Senate convened before crowded galleries to consider the suffrage bill. After a spirited debate in which Sen. Walker Smith of Magnolia said women did not want the right to vote, the Senate adopted the bill by two votes, 17 to 15.

At least 40,000 women voted in the Arkansas Democratic primary in 1918. Both political parties began to elect women to party positions. Stella Brizzolara of Fort Smith was the first woman to serve on the Democratic State Committee. In 1920 Arkansans adopted a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote in all elections, though the matter was subject to legal proceedings for several years.