Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
This board was unchanged until 1915, when Mrs. Clarence King of
Shreveport became treasurer and Mrs. M. H. Lawless of Garden City and
Mrs. D. C. Scarborough of Natchitoches, auditors. There was no further
change until 1920, when Mrs. McBride became treasurer and Mrs. Horace
Wilkinson took Mrs. Scarborough's place. State conventions met in
Alexandria in 1914 and in Shreveport in 1915. Conferences were held in
twenty-five parishes in anticipation of the proposed constitutional
convention of 1915. A convention was held in Alexandria in July, 1918,
and chairmen were appointed in forty-eight parishes in preparation for
the State amendment campaign.
In reviewing the history of woman suffrage in Louisiana three factors
stand out prominently as influences that molded a favorable public
opinion. These are the national suffrage convention in 1903; the
inauguration of charity campaigns on the lines of political
organization and the forming of the Southern States Woman Suffrage
Conference, the object of which was to place the Democratic party on
record for woman suffrage in this Democratic stronghold of the "solid
South."
In public opinion woman suffrage was largely associated with the
Abolition movement. In 1900 Miss Gordon had accepted an invitation to
address the convention of the National Association in Washington on
the famous Sewerage and Drainage Campaign of women in New Orleans.
Then and there she decided that the most important work before
Louisiana suffragists was to bring this conservative State under the
influence of a national convention. In 1901 she attended another
convention and was elected corresponding secretary of the National
Association. In 1903 she brought its convention to New Orleans and it
proved to be one of the most remarkable in the history of the
association.[59] So impressed was Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, vice-president
at large, with the possibilities in the South that she volunteered a
month's series of lectures in the next autumn and many places in
Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas came under the spell of her
eloquence.
The influence of this convention was immediately seen in the
increasing membership of the Era Club. Its leaders recognized that the
best policy to rouse both men and women to the value of suffrage to
the individual and the community was by applied politics in social
service. It had already secured a partial franchise for taxpaying
women and its achievements in the following years made it an
acknowledged power.[60] In 1910 a great charity and educational
benefit was launched for the Anti-Tuberculosis League and the Woman's
Dispensary. A complete plan of organizing with Era Club members as
ward and precinct leaders taught them political organization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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