This year is the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the suffragette movement that made it all possible. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on August 26, 1920. But the struggle for the ballot began decades earlier, when Iowa was first opened for settlement, and then became a state.
The story of Iowa women mirrors what happened on the national level. Iowa was often looked to as an example because of its ties to national suffrage leaders, a history of liberalism, and visionary organizing tactics.
The period from 1854 to 1869 marked the beginning of the suffrage movement in Iowa. Suffrage activity before the Civil War was sporadic at best. Iowa had gained statehood in 1846 and was still very much a pioneer state. Many future suffragists settled in Iowa during the 1850s, including in 1854 when Frances Dana Gage (1808-1884), a women’s rights advocate from Ohio, visited southeastern Iowa to lecture on women’s suffrage. Mary Darwin settled down with her husband, Charles in Burlington and became an avid supporter of the movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Darwin_House
The period from 1870 to 1890 was one of both excitement and disappointment for Iowa suffragists. When Iowa’s constitution was adopted in 1857, the word “white” was included in the voting section, but in 1868, Iowans voted to remove it, enfranchising black and Native American men in law, if not always in practice. This dramatic change in just over a decade led women to believe they would be next. Indeed, in 1870, the Iowa Legislature hired a female clerk (Mary Spencer), changed the code so women could practice law, and approved a resolution to amend the constitution and allow women to vote.
Joseph Dugdale, a Quaker and speaker of some renown, spearheaded a women’s rights convention in Mount Pleasant in 1870, which led to the organization of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association (later known as the Iowa Equal Suffrage Association). A Mount Pleasant Journal editorial encouraged other states to look to Iowa as an example of progress.
Between 1890 to 1915, Iowans witnessed a changing of the guard in the suffrage movement as early leaders aged or died. In many cases, younger women brought fresh hope and ideas to the cause. By this time, many women’s clubs were discussing and debating suffrage. In 1894, Iowa women were granted partial suffrage to vote on bond issues and questions of tax increases for schools or municipalities, but, nationally, women were making slow gains. In 1908, Boone, Iowa hosted one of the first suffrage parades in the nation.
From 1916 to 1919, Iowa was a suffrage battleground. On June 5, 1916, Iowa’s men voted on a referendum to amend the constitution and grant women the ballot. Although the referendum failed in a corrupt election, the campaign piqued national interest. With the U.S.’s entry into World War I, Iowa women were sometimes torn between suffrage and war work, and suffrage campaigns faded a bit from the public eye.
However, just two years later, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, and the women of the Hawkeye state launched a ratification campaign. In a special session of the General Assembly held on July 2, 1919, Iowa became the tenth state to ratify womens suffrage. On August 26, 1920, Tennessee became the last state to ratify, finally ending the work Iowa women had been involved with for 70 years.
In the long struggle for voting rights, Iowa’s efforts had been well-respected across the nation. Although women could vote as individuals, their organizing days were not over. In the fall of 1919, the suffragists met in Boone and formed the League of Women Voters of Iowa (LWV). That organization continues to educate voters today.
To commemorate their struggle, veteran suffragists formed the Iowa Suffrage Memorial Commission in 1922. Fourteen years later, a bronze bas-relief was installed in the Iowa Capitol in Des Moines. The right to vote did not bring about the sweeping freedoms for American women that some suffragists had expe