Colorado granted women the right to vote by popular referendum in 1893, a full 27 years before the 19th Amendment in 1920. This achievement is significant but not without controversy. The Colorado Territorial Legislature had an opportunity to grant women suffrage during the stateâs constitutional convention in 1876, but they demurred. Instead, they conceded to women voting in local school district elections only. Additionally, they placed a measure on the ballot for voters not legislators to decide on womenâs suffrage. With enormous opposition from saloon owners, church leaders and newspapers, the measure was defeated by a 2 to 1 margin.
In the following decades, both male and female suffrage activists across the state continued to advocate the issue. In Colorado Springs, Major Henry McAllister was on the Executive Committee of the state-wide Colorado Womenâs Suffrage Society, and Mary Shields, a leader of the Colorado Womenâs Christian Temperance Union were tireless. Additionally, Eliza Tupper Wilkes, the first female ordained minister in Colorado and founder of the original Unitarian Congregation in Colorado Springs, was also an outspoken advocate. Newspaper support in Colorado Springs was mixed, dependent on the editor and publisher at the time.
In 1893, another ballot measure was proposed. Colorado along with the rest of the nation was struggling to recover from the greatest economic downturn to date, the Panic of 1893. Across the state banks, businesses and mines were shuttered and thousands were out of work. With $25 dollars in the bank and only 28 members, the Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association organized a grassroots campaign with a powerful strategy. They would win the vote with four Ps: Populism, Press, Pulpit and Prohibition. Two key leaders of this campaign were Elizabeth Piper Ensley, an African-American educator and community leader, and Ellis Meredith, a Denver-based journalist often called the âSusan B. Anthony of Colorado.â
By appealing to laborers out of work, womenâs suffrage proponents offered a solution to working-class economic woes by doubling the power of the Populist voice in Colorado. Additionally, suffrage activists sought to outmaneuver alcohol & saloon interests through a quick-moving, ambitious campaign. They also made personal contacts with clergyman and newspaper publishers a priority, seeking assurances that if those in the pulpit and press could not endorse womenâs suffrage â they would at least not vocally oppose it. And their work paid off â they received support from approximately 75% of newspapers in Colorado. The Colorado Springs Gazette was a notable exception. The results of the 1893 election were: 35,698 votes in favor of womenâs suffrage, 29,461 against.
Submitted by Leah Davis Witherow, CSPM Curator
