DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and it's one worth tellin' right. Minnie Fisher Cunningham — born March 19, 1882, right here in Walker County, gone December 9, 1964 — and between those two dates, she packed in enough living to wear out three ordinary careers and leave most of Texas politics breathless trying to keep up with her. Let me take you through it.
In 1901, Minnie Fisher earned a pharmacy degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. A woman. A pharmacist.
Nineteen-oh-one. She came back to Huntsville, worked in a drugstore, and in 1902 married an attorney by the name of B. J.
Cunningham. They moved to Galveston in 1907, and from there her world kept expanding — Austin, Washington, D.C. — because Minnie Fisher Cunningham was not a woman who stayed put when there was work to be done. And there was always work to be done.
She rose to the presidency of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association and helped found the National League of Women Voters. Then, in 1928, she did something no Texas woman had ever done before — she ran for the United States Senate. First one ever.
The campaign was unsuccessful, and the year carried personal grief alongside it: her husband died in 1928 as well. That is a heavy year to carry. But carry it she did.
Her career turned toward public relations for government agencies — the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — and she kept herself planted deep in National Democratic Party politics. She counted President Franklin D.
Roosevelt among the many friends who called her, fondly, by her nickname: Minnie Fish. Now, if a sitting president knows your nickname and uses it with affection, you are doing something right. And she wasn't finished.
In 1944 she ran for Governor of Texas against Coke Stevenson and placed second among nine candidates in the primary. Second. Out of nine.
In 1944. Let that settle for a moment. Then, in 1946, she built a home near this very site — came back to Walker County, the place that made her — and she kept working in Democratic Party politics until her death at age 82.
The marker stands near where that home stood. She never really stopped.
What the marker says
(March 19, 1882-December 9, 1964) A native of Walker County, Minnie Fisher earned a pharmacy degree at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1901. She worked in a Huntsville drugstore and married attorney B. J. Cunningham in 1902. They moved to Galveston in 1907, and she later lived in Austin and Washington, D.C. A leader in woman suffrage organizations, she was president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association and helped found the National League of Women Voters. In 1928 she became the first Texas woman to run for the U.S. Senate. Her campaign was unsuccessful, and the year also was marred by the death of her husband. Her career turned toward public relations for government agencies, including the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An activist in the National Democratic Party, she counted President Franklin D. Roosevelt among the many friends who fondly called her by her nickname, "Minnie Fish". In 1944 she ran for Governor of Texas against Coke Stevenson, placing second among nine candidates in the primary. She built a home near this site in 1946 and continued to work in Democratic Party politics until her death at age 82.