DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, so let the record stand. Now settle in, because this story took fifty years to tell — and it starts before most folks thought it ever could. Legal efforts to enfranchise women in Texas trace back to 1868, when a representative named T.
H. Mundine of Burleson stood up in the state legislature and introduced a woman suffrage bill. It didn't pass.
But the idea had been spoken aloud, and some ideas, once spoken, don't sit down quietly. Over the next five decades, Texas women organized. Rebecca Henry Hayes put together the Texas Equal Rights Association — TERA — in 1893.
Then in 1903, three sisters, Annette, Elizabeth, and Katherine Finnigan, founded the Texas Woman Suffrage Association. Three sisters. One cause.
Now that is how you make an entrance. That organization got renamed the Texas Equal Suffrage Association in 1916, and under that banner, the final push began. The names leading that charge deserve to be said out loud: Jane Y.
McCallum. Minnie Fisher Cunningham. Eleanor Brackenridge.
Annie Webb Blanton. In March of 1918, Representative C. B.
Metcalfe of San Antonio sponsored legislation giving women the right to vote in primary elections — and it passed. Governor William P. Hobby signed it into law just seventeen days before the voter registration deadline for that year's election.
Seventeen days. Now here's where the story catches fire. In that short window, more than three hundred and eighty-six thousand Texas women registered to vote.
Some of them walked right here, to the Travis County Courthouse, to put their names on the rolls. And then came June 28th, 1919 — the day Texas became the ninth state to ratify the Woman Suffrage Amendment, the Nineteenth, to the United States Constitution. Fifty-one years after one man from Burleson stood up and said the words out loud.
The women of Texas didn't wait for permission — they built the road themselves.
What the marker says
Legal efforts to enfranchise women in Texas can be traced to 1868, when Rep. T. H. Mundine of Burleson introduced a woman suffrage bill in the state legislature. In the following five decades Texas women formed suffrage organizations to lobby for the right to vote. The suffragists included Rebecca Henry Hayes, who organized the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA) in 1893; and sisters Annette, Elizabeth, and Katherine Finnigan, who founded the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) in 1903. The TWSA, renamed the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) in 1916, led the final push for voting rights. The movement's leaders during this period included Jane Y. McCallum, Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Eleanor Brackenridge, and Annie Webb Blanton. In March 1918 Rep. C. B. Metcalfe of San Antonio sponsored successful legislation giving women the right to vote in primary elections. It was signed into law by Gov. William P. Hobby just 17 days before the voter registration deadline for that year's election. In that short period of time, more than 386,000 Texas women registered to vote, including many who gathered at the Travis County Courthouse at this site. On June 28, 1919, Texas became the 9th state to ratify the Woman Suffrage (19th) Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. (1991)