Virginia Vignettes

In 1909 a few Virginia women organized the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia to educate Old Dominion citizens on the issue of woman suffrage. They were following the path blazed by two unsuccessful late nineteenth-century efforts to obtain the vote for women in Virginia. Rejecting radicalism for a more moderate approach, the suffragists capitalized on the evolving view of women’s new roles in the society to argue that women taxpayers and citizens deserved the vote and that the quality of politics and government would improve significantly through their participation. By 1919 the league had grown to over 100 local chapters and 32,000 members, but on three different occasions it had failed to win assembly approval for a voting rights amendment to the state constitution. In the face of these disappointments, many Virginia women joined the militant National Woman’s Party that was more aggressive in pressing for a federal amendment, which finally passed Congress in 1919. Although the 1920 assembly rejected the nineteenth amendment (Virginia’s legislators did not approve the amendment until 1952), ratification at the national level allowed Virginia women to vote for the first time in 1920.

Further Reading

Sara Hunter Graham, “Woman Suffrage in Virginia: The Equal Suffrage League and Pressure Group Politics, 1909-1920,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (April 1993).

This Vignette Provided By

Ronald Heinemann, Old Dominion, New Commonwealth: The History of Virginia, 1607-2007