S02 E09 Oregon: Diverse Support Overcomes Fierce Opposition

In this episode on Oregon, Janice Dilg, consulting historian and principal of HistoryBuilt, talks about the struggle for votes for women on the NVWT. 

We talk about the events and fighters in OR suffrage campaign:

• Dr. Pesie Chan, a Chinese immigrant, met with a collegiate suffrage group in 1912 at the Portland Hotel and gave a speech supporting women's suffrage.
• Esther Pohl Lovejoy created Everybody’s Equal Suffrage League that offered a lifetime membership for 25 cents.
• Hattie Redmond served as president of the Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage Association which spread “equal suffrage ideas among those of the race.”
• Katherine and Edith Gray–an African American mother-daughter team– organized voter registration and political education drives for Black voters.
• Sara Bard Field Ehrgott joined Frances Jolliffe in 1915 on a cross-country car trek to deliver a petition demanding a federal suffrage amendment to President Wilson.
• The annual Pendleton Round-up rodeo was on the suffragist speaking tour where they were regularly cheered by crowds.

 ABOUT OUR GUEST

Janice Dilg is principal and consulting historian of HistoryBuilt. She is a founding member of the Oregon Women’s History Consortium and was part of the 19th Amendment centennial celebration in 2020. She is the State Coordinator for the NVWT.

Links to People, Places, Publications

• Oregon and the 19th Amendment (here)
• Women’s Suffrage in Oregon (here)
• Visit the State Capitol and the Votes for Women Trail marker (here)
• Abigail Scott Duniway Biographical Sketch (here)
• Esther Pohl Lovejoy Biographical Sketch (here)
• Chinese American Woman Suffrage in 1912 Portland (here)
• Harriet “Hattie” Redmond Biographical Sketch (here)
• Katherine Gray Biographical Sketch (here)
• Edith Gray Biographical Sketch (here)
• Sara Bard Field Biographical Sketch (here)
• Sylvia Thompson Biographical Sketch (here</

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

Do you have a question, comment, or suggestion? Get in touch! Send an e-mail to NVWTpodcast@ncwhs.org

Transcript

SPEAKERS

CM Marihugh, Janice Dilg, Earth Mama

CM Marihugh  00:00

Welcome to Her March to Democracy where we're telling stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. The trail chronicles the fight for voting rights for women. The Suffragists or Suffs, as they were called, were the revolutionaries of their day and they battled the powers that be. These foot soldiers cut across the lines of geography, race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and numbered in the many 1000s over 70 plus years.

Earth Mama  00:36

We are standing on the shoulders 
Of the ones who came before us, 
They are safe, and they are humans. 
They are angels, they are friends. 

We can see beyond the struggles 
And the troubles and the challenge 
When we know that by our efforts 
Things will be better in the end.

CM Marihugh  01:09

Each episode is a tour on the trail to the places of struggle. The cities, the towns, where wins and defeats happened over and over again. Our theme music is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama. Join us on our travels to hear the stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. 

Today we'll be talking about stories and sites to visit along The National Votes For Women Trail in Oregon. And I welcome Janice Dilg. She is the Oregon State Coordinator for The National Votes For Women Trail, also a founding member of the Oregon Women's History Consortium, which led the Oregon State Women's Suffrage centennial commemoration in 2012, as well as the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment in 2020. 

And I was looking at Oregon, on The National Votes For Women Trail map and database. And it shows that at this point, Oregon has 56 sites that are linked to women's suffrage events. Also in the historical marker database, I found that there are at least four that reference suffrage and we're going to be talking about some of these sites today. So I welcome you, Jan. And I'm wondering, could you start by giving us an overview of Oregon's role in the fight for votes for women?

Janice Dilg  02:48

I'd be happy to do that. Oregon Suffrage Movement really unfolded kind of in three periods over many years from 1870 to 1920. It was initially led by journalist and women's rights advocate Abigail Scott Dunaway and the Oregon equal Suffrage Association, along with national suffrage organizations that are involved in this history as well. The process of putting the issue of women's suffrage on the ballot between 1870 and 1902 was a very convoluted legislative process. And male voters defeated the issue in 1884. And again in 1900. 

Dunaway's brother Harvey Scott was the editor of the state's influential newspaper, The Oregonian, and he actually wrote anti suffrage editorials for many years and was a point of contention between the two of them obviously, but in addition to Scott, there was the Oregon Association opposed to the extension of suffrage to women that organized in 1899 and remained active in the state until 1912. But after 1902, Oregon passed and initiative and referendum law that suffragists used to put the issue on the ballot more easily. 

Dunaway was not only active in Oregon, but active nationally in NAWSA for many years, but was often at odds with national leaders Susan B. Anthony and Anna Howard Shaw, as well as younger Oregon suffragists Esther Pohl Lovejoy, and Sarah Ann Evans, and their strategic and philosophical clashes resulted in negative outcomes for the suffrage issue in the 1906, 1908 and 1910 campaigns. Finally, in 1912, a diverse coalition of women and men elite and working class women across the state were successful in their quest on this sixth and final vote on the issue. 

And with that successful outcome the word male was removed as a voting qualification from Oregon's constitution. When the 19th Amendment went to the states for ratification, Oregon suffragist successfully lobbied to convene a special session of the legislature to make sure they were one of the states to ratify the amendment. Representative Sylvia Thompson, the third woman elected to the Oregon legislature introduced the ratification bill to the joint chambers that each passed joint resolution one unanimously on January 12 1920, making Oregon the 25th state to ratify the 19th amendment.

CM Marihugh  05:32

That's fascinating. When you talk about the anti suffragists. They were in so many places highly effective, and were able to repeatedly get legislatures across the country to vote down women's suffrage legislation. I must say the one in Oregon had a very complicated name. Oregon Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women. But it's also interesting that you say that the conflict may have slowed down actual passage. I'm wondering Jan, if you could start us on our tour. Tell us what what city we're going to start in and, and what stop.

Janice Dilg  06:19

We are going to begin in Portland, Oregon. And our first stop is going to be at 888 Southwest Third Avenue which is in the heart of downtown Portland. It is now the AC hotel. But in 1872 it was the BJ Smith Lime Warehouse, which was often used as a polling station, and is an important part of suffrage history in Oregon. Often called the mother of Oregon suffrage journalist and women's rights advocate Abigail Scott Dunaway was an important link between the state and national women's suffrage movements. 

As Abigail Jane Scott, a young girl, she migrated to Oregon with her family when she was 17 along the 2400 mile, Oregon Trail. Once here she married Benjamin Dunaway in 1853. And they would go on to have six children. Like many migrants to Oregon, they wanted to be farmers, and they lived on two farms in the Willamette Valley lost the first one to a flood. And the second one to debt that Benjamin had incurred that Abigail knew nothing about until the foreclosure and they were kicked off their property. And it was really from those experiences that Dunaway became an advocate for women's right to have a direct say in her political, financial and business life. 

And so in 1870, Dunaway and other women and men formed a local equal Suffrage Association. And the very next year in 1871, Dunaway traveled to San Francisco, California, where she attended a national suffrage convention, and met Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They were all quite a meeting of the minds. And inspired by them, Dunaway returned to Portland, and began publishing her newspaper, the new Northwest, which really was a wonderful avenue for her sharing local suffrage news more broadly around the region, as well as bringing national suffrage news to its readers. And that same year, she invited Anthony to come tour the Pacific Northwest with her which Anthony did, and really mentored Dunaway in the skills of public speaking, and how to advance the cause of women's voting rights. 

And so, as national women's suffragists took the passage of the 14th and 15th amendments addressing voting rights in the Constitution in the post Civil War era, Dunaway and local suffragists adopted what was called The New Departure Strategy based on those amendments. And it was women across the country attempting to vote in the 1872 general election, claiming that they were of course born here and so we're citizens of the United States, and one of their constitutional rights was voting. In October of 1872, Oregon suffragists petitioned our state legislature to pass a statute that would quote instruct judges to receive and count the votes of women in their various precincts in the coming November election. 

And so that November, three white women, Abigail Scott Dunaway, Maria P. Hendee, who was owner of a photography studio with her husband, Mary Ann Lambert, a homemaker And one black woman, Mary L. Beatty a dressmaker went to their local polling precinct at the BJ Smith lime warehouse to vote. They brought their completed ballots which they handed to the election judge, he very politely took them but placed them under the ballot box rather than inside where the votes would have been counted. The women were of course disappointed but undeterred and continued to lobby the state legislature to place women's suffrage on the ballot in the future. 

I think Mary Beatty's presence is notable given Oregon's history of racial discrimination. Oregon State Constitution included black exclusion laws that prohibited black people from living in the state or owning property when it joined the Union, a unique circumstance, and those laws remained in our constitution until their repeal in 1926. But despite this racist history, black women like Mary Beatty were political activists, and gain universal voting rights in 1912 in the state. The historical record here does not show evidence of Jim Crow suppression of black voting rights in Oregon. However, many indigenous women and first generation Asian immigrant women who could not become citizens at this time, did not gain voting rights in Oregon until many decades later.

CM Marihugh  11:28

So 1872, the same year that Susan B. Anthony voted in New York, and was arrested for it. And then in 1912, 40 years later, that women in Oregon won the vote for two years. It's easy to say that and then you remember, they put this ballot measure on six times during those 40 years. Year after year after year. They were lobbying legislators, getting petitions signed, giving tons of speeches, I'm always amazed at the amount of work they went through. 

I've learned that over many years, Abigail actually delivered 1000s of speeches, and traveled 1000s of miles. In the Northwest lecturing on equal suffrage. I actually saw a quote that at the time, she was a forceful logical platform orator with a touch of sarcasm and a dash of humor that made her arguments effective. I always feel like the the suffragists, they define the word persistence. Where is our next stop?

Janice Dilg  12:47

We're going to stay in Portland. But we're going to 701 Southwest Sixth Avenue where the Portland Hotel once stood, which was an iconic hotel and the site of important events in the suffrage movement. Abigail Scott Dunaway led the effort to place women's suffrage on the 1912 ballot. She was the one out there gathering signatures and making sure that it qualified and so that would be the state's sixth attempt to extend voting rights to women. 

Her effort was successful, but she became seriously ill and could not campaign for the measure. This allowed a younger generation of suffragists to run a very different style of campaign. Rather than campaign quietly behind the scenes in what Dunaway like to call "the still hunt," Esther Pohl Lovejoy Sara Evans and 50 statewide suffrage organizations ran what they called a "Ballyhoo Campaign." They were using new methods of advertising in newspapers, they had movie reels going in theaters, they gave talks everywhere, including on street corners. They staffed a lunch wagon during the summer of 1912. And they held many luncheons, the suffrage campaign one of the differences in 1912 was really this set of broad coalition's of women and men across the state. 

It really was very different than any of the campaigns earlier at this luncheon held at the city's premier venue, the Portland Hotel, evidence of those coalition's is clear. One of the guest speakers at this luncheon was a Portland resident and Chinese immigrant, Dr. Pesie Chan, along with her daughters, Bertie and Lillian. Bertie actually translated her mother's speech, which noted that the newly formed Republic of China had been considering women's voting rights as one of their founding principles. 

But Dr. Chan also used what was called the local grievance argument in her speech referring to California, Idaho and Washington as states that had already had women's suffrage for a number of years and Oregon should join into that good company that they were surrounded by. Dr. Chan could not become a naturalized citizen until 1942. And so she was clearly going to be ineligible to vote even if the suffrage measure succeeded in 1912. But she clearly understood the basic importance of voting and actively supported the cause, nevertheless. 

And another important coalition in 1912 was between suffragists and working women. Often suffrage organizations were run by elite women who had funds for expensive memberships. And Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy  Interestingly bridged the division between elite and working class women in a unique way. She was one of the first women in Oregon to earn her medical degree, but because of her gender, she was denied scholarships so would have helped pay her tuition. 

So she had to work in department stores for her education, and therefore had some understanding of what working women endured earning wages before she joined the professional ranks. So at the luncheon, Lovejoy introduced the everybody's equal suffrage League. The 25 cent lifetime membership fee was affordable in most working women's budgets, and every member was a vice president. 

And it proved incredibly popular so that by the fall of 1912, membership was several 100 active working women members. And although the Portland Hotel was torn down in the 1950s, the wrought iron entrance gates were preserved. So today, they welcome visitors to the same location where the hotel stood the public Pioneer Courthouse Square, which is considered by many Portlanders to be the city's living room.

CM Marihugh  17:04

I'm thinking of a few things related to your stories. One is that 1912 luncheon at the Portland Hotel, which was remarkable at the time, I had researched this before. And I actually saw that a local newspaper, the Oregon journal, reported that quote, side by side with their Caucasian sisters, seven Portland Chinese women sat at a banquet, which apparently sounds like was unheard of at the time. And I'm presuming, because this was the discrimination against the Chinese population. Can you comment on that?

Janice Dilg  17:48

There was an incredibly large Chinese immigrant population in Portland, around this time, in 1900, Portland had the second largest Chinese population outside of San Francisco. So it was a substantial presence in the city. And while we can't say there was any kind of really acceptance of the Chinese, the overt discrimination that Chinese immigrants experienced in other states in the West, was a little less pronounced in Oregon. And so I think there was just a little more ability to maneuver here than in some other locations.

CM Marihugh  18:32

Thank you for that background. I also find it fascinating that Dr. Lovejoy, it's incredible, she was dedicated to getting as many people involved as possible. And I love that name, Everybody's Equal Suffrage League. That sounds several decades ahead of its time. It's gratifying to hear how many people actually joined that effort. So what is the next story we're going to hear?

Janice Dilg  19:03

We're going to move to Northwest downtown Portland at 311 Northwest Broadway, which is the former location of the Mount Olivet First Baptist Church, which was one of the foundational black churches in the city and state and was really the site of significant suffrage activity. Although black women and men in Oregon were few in number due to the black exclusion laws. 

They had a very strong community and made important contributions to women's rights in the state. One of their first organizations formed was the Lucy Thurman's Christian Temperance Union. And I want to note here that the terms used to refer to black people at the time were colored or Negro, and I'm going to use those historical names here. And so over time, other groups were organized By the city's black women, The Colored Women's Council, The Rosebuds Study Club and the Colored Women's Republican Club. During the 1912 campaign for suffrage, The Colored Women's Council renamed themselves The Colored Women's Equal Suffrage Association. Hattie Redmond served as the president of The Colored Women's Equal Suffrage Association with the idea of spreading equal suffrage ideas among those of the race. 

Redmond's father Reuben Crawford was very politically active, and it seems that he mentored her and she was very much following in his footsteps. The group was part of the broad coalition of women working on the 1912 suffrage campaign and there were black and white women working in tandem. Redmond organized meetings and educational lectures on women's suffrage at the Mount Olivet First Baptist Church, and she and Esther Pohl Lovejoy often presented together at suffrage events. 

She also served on the suffragist's State Central campaign committee, and so it's interesting that she was noted by name and the group was noted by name often in suffrage stories in the newspaper. And following the triumph of women's suffrage vote on November 5th 1912. Redmond was one of the first to register to vote in April of 1913. And there was a wonderful mother-daughter team of Katherine and Edith Gray, who worked alongside Redmond for women's rights. 

They were both members and officers in the Oregon Colored Women's Club. Katherine serving as the founding president of that organization, as well as the Oregon Association of Colored Women, which was a coalition made up of 14 black women's clubs and organizations around the state. That group was barred from joining the Oregon Federation of women's clubs due to the white women's racism, but they persevered and their civic and political engagement. 

The Grays worked with other black leaders to organize voter registration drives, they held talks and events to help educate black voters about political issues and held candidate forums. And again from this wonderful archive in Multnomah County. We have microfilm versions of both Katherine and Edith's voter registration cards that they also did at their earliest opportunity in 1913.

CM Marihugh  22:34

It's really inspiring to hear how there was collaboration between white and black women, because of course, in so many areas, the movement had racist elements. This brings up a question. Was there any racist rhetoric regarding black women obtaining the vote in Oregon? Did the anti suffragists use that argument? It was primarily seen in the south, but was there any kind of language that came out about that? 

Janice Dilg  23:10

Our research has not turned up racist language by the Antis at all. Their arguments that they kind of used over and over again, were the people of Oregon have voted on this, well, the men of Oregon have voted on this issue and defeated it soundly. You know, why do you keep bringing up the decision has been made? And that was kind of the same trope they used over and over again.

CM Marihugh  23:37

Where are we going to next? 

Janice Dilg  23:39

We are leaving Portland and heading east to The Dalles along the Columbia River, where the fort dals museum building at 500 West 15th Street becomes part of this story. Throughout the 1912 suffrage campaign organizations supporting women's rights really grew across the state. It was very much a statewide campaign and The College Equal Suffrage League was an especially active group. They campaigned on college campuses where they attended school but they also engaged in bringing the women's suffrage issue pretty much anywhere Oregonians gathered together. Suffragists set up informational booths and walked the grounds of every county fair and the state fair that year. 

One woman in particular Sara Bard Field Ehrgott, was a local leader of The College Equal Suffrage League, but she was also an active member of National suffrage groups NAWSA initially and then later, the National Women's Party. In October of 1912, she traveled to The Dalles and gave a speech on the importance of women's voting rights to roughly 150 Teachers attending a convention there. The speech was given at the former Fort Dell's surgeons quarters, today, the home of the fort Dell's Museum. She would remain active in the suffrage movement throughout the 1920 ratification effort for the 19th amendment. 

And in fact, in 1915, Ehrgott joined American suffragists, Frances Joliffe, and two Swedish women Ingeborg Kindstedt, and Maria Kinberg, in driving an automobile on a cross country trek to hand deliver a petition, demanding a federal suffrage amendment to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington DC. Ehrgott's invitation likely came from two local suffragists. Elizabeth Laughlin Lord and Sylvia Thompson. Lord was a cohort of suffragists Abigail Scott Dunaway, who worked diligently to ensure the suffrage measure passed in 1912. 

She was president of The Dalles Equal Suffrage League, and Sylvia Thompson served as secretary of the organization. The group organized a series of public lectures on women's suffrage in the city. And interestingly, rural voters in Oregon supported the 1912 Women's Suffrage Measure in greater numbers, and we're really responsible for its success, much more than their urban counterparts at that November election. And today, the Fort Dalles Museum holds Lord's suffrage membership certificate and a suffrage hat. 

And we'll talk a little bit more about Sylvia Thompson later and her role in Oregon's ratification of the 19th. Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920. And if you would like to go visit the Fort Dalles Museum, it's typically open daily, and offers some tours and you can probably see Lord's suffrage membership certificate.

CM Marihugh  26:49

Very interesting that rural support was greater than urban, you usually think of that being reversed. Is there a reason for that, that you can talk about?

Janice Dilg  27:01

There's been a lot of discussion over the years about how the West extended voting rights to women sooner than the eastern part of the United States. And I think one of the ideas that they were farther from kind of the centers of power and the real structured political parties, and that these women and men who had traveled across the country together, just had endured similar hardships, and that there was just a little bit more egalitarian feeling that women could use the same rights as men. 

And it was also quite honestly used as sort of a way to get men to come, let's have women here, and they're gonna bring some more, you know, civilization here. And I think that played out a little bit in the rural areas. I know the Granges were very involved in the 1912 suffrage campaign.

CM Marihugh  27:57

Where are we going to next?

Janice Dilg  27:59

We're going to head to Southern Oregon to the city of Phoenix, to 120 West Second Street, which is the former home of Marian B. Towne, Oregon's first female elected legislator. So of course, one inevitable outcome of women gaining voting rights was women would become eligible to run for elective office. Marian B. Towne was a supporter of equal rights for women and at the age of 34, decided to run for state office. Born in a small town in Oregon Towne pursued every educational opportunity, including after graduating high school studying law at night, while she worked as a county clerk during the day. 

She even left Oregon to attend University of Michigan Law School for a term and upon her return, resumed her job as county clerk were some of her responsibilities were reviewing and filing new state laws that would affect the county she lived in. And she determined that some male legislators and the laws they were writing were rather mediocre, and that she could be as equally or better legislator. So at her first opportunity in 1914, when she qualified to run as a candidate, Towne ran for the Oregon House of Representatives. She was a very active campaigner going door to door to the majority of homes in her district, which was not an easy task given this was a very rural area of the state. She was elected as her area's representative and arrived in Salem in 1915 to take her oath of office. 

She had received mixed reactions from her male colleagues. And at the outset of the legislative session, the Oregon Daily Journal newspaper described her as a very womanly woman with not the least hint of manishness. And interestingly, right Before the legislative session began, a state senator resigned from his seat. And there was a vacancy that needed to be filled. And it was filled by another woman, Katherine Clark at a special election. So the 1915 legislative session had the first two women elected officials in the state of Oregon. 

There were, you know, the sexist editorial cartoons of the two of them gossiping or discussing fashion on the floor of the legislature. However, as the work of the session, continued news stories, tended to get a little more real and report on the committee's Towne sat on and the bills she introduced, and by the end of the session, the Oregonian newspapers summarize Towne's work by stating "Ms. Towne is a splendid example of the possibilities of women in public life." She was unfortunately unsuccessful in her reelection bid, but she certainly set the stage for other women in Oregon to follow her into politics. 

And I would note that the location of Towne's home still exists. There is a organization called the Jackson County Fuel Committee that occupies a building on the same location. Unfortunately, Towne's home was incinerated during a wildfire in 2021. But the foundation remained and so the structure is in exactly the same place, as Towne's home was. And they have created a historical display inside the building that visitors are welcome to if the buildings open. And as the person I spoke with there wanted to let me know. They don't call her Marian Towne there. She was known to everyone as Molly.

CM Marihugh  31:49

Oh, that's fascinating that they have an actual display to her honor in that building. It's noteworthy that in 1915 they were still commenting on whether suffragists or women involved in politics were quote, masculine. That was certainly the case in the 19th century, when cartoons would show suffragist in mannish clothing, and doing what was considered manly. That changed somewhat in the early 20th century, when when younger women became more prominent, but it obviously didn't die out completely. There was always this fear that women were going to become like men. Where are we heading to next Jan?

Janice Dilg  32:39

We're going to head across the state to the northeast corner to the city of Pendleton, Oregon, where there is a historical marker at The Pendleton Roundup about suffrage events held there. Oregon's Pendleton Roundup is an iconic regional rodeo that has been held the second week of September since 1910. The city's population often quadruples during the event, so it was an ideal location to reach as many voters as possible in the eastern part of the state. 

During the suffrage campaign in 1912, Esther Pohl Lovejoy invited Dr. Anna Howard Shaw to attend the Pendleton Roundup and use the visit to arouse interest in the suffrage campaign among attendees. Lovejoy and Shaw had worked together on Oregon's 1906 suffrage campaign, and had remained friends and colleagues over the year, which was not the case with Shaw and Abigail Scott Dunaway, who did not get along and Dunaway often blamed Oregon's earlier defeats on the presence of outsiders and tactics that she did not approve of. 

But with Dunaway sidelined by illness, Lovejoy paved the way for Shaw's participation in the campaign. The two travelled to Pendleton on the train and borrowed automobiles to navigate to the entrance of the rodeo grounds. Shaw stood up in the backseat and spoke from an automobile holding the meeting at night on the street in which 1000s of horsemen, cowboys, Indians and ranch men were riding up and down blowing horns shouting and singing. 

She was quite the order and they did quiet for her address. They very much approved of what she had to say to them, and they cheered, stopped to talk and shake her hand and even through flowers into her car. Shaw claimed her one regret was that she had arrived too late to see the cow girls compete. When the National Women's Party was working to gain support for a national suffrage Amendment to the US Constitution. Oregon again became a crucial area of support. 

We had eight years of voting experience behind us at that point, and were considered a very influential state and so two National Women Party members, Margaret Whittemore and Mary Fendall spent several months here giving speeches and supporting local suffrage efforts. Again in the fall of 1916, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw came to Pendleton and used the crowds attending the roundup to rally support for a federal suffrage amendment. 

In fact, Whittemore and Fendall had been driving around Pendleton with a banner attached to the car that read, "We demand an amendment to the US Constitution in franchising women." Again Shaw delighted the crowds with her enthusiastic speeches, just as she had in 1912 and helped the cause along for the Federal amendment. 

CM Marihugh  35:44

The suffragists developed such incredible PR skills. The fact that they went to the Pendleton Roundup, a rodeo, they were always looking for ways to reach a larger and more diverse audience, like the rodeo elsewhere, baseball games, food sales, and then speaking on soap boxes or standing in cars, I am in awe of how good they became at marketing their cause. Jan could we close the interview with a summary of the ratification of the 19th amendment and then what happened in Oregon, after 1920?

Janice Dilg  36:30

So as I've noted by 1920, many Oregon women had been voting in local state and federal elections for eight years, but they definitely were in strong support for the federal law and it was important to Oregon women. At the time, Oregon's legislature only met on odd numbered years, and so had completed a session in 1919 and weren't scheduled to meet in 1920. And there was some initial reluctance to pay for a special session in order to ratify the 19th Amendment. 

But Oregon's Governor Ben Olcott who was a pro suffrage supporter, decided to pull together some other issues and fund a special session in January of 1920. And so, Representative Sylvia Thompson, who we mentioned earlier from The Dalles had become the third woman elected to the Oregon State Legislature representing Wasco and Sherman County voters at that point, she was in place and introduced joint resolution one, the bill for ratification of the amendment. 

And really it passed smoothly. It passed unanimously in both the House in the Senate on January 12, in 1920, and that made Oregon the 25th state to ratify the 19th amendment. After 1920 there was really a very long period where no women or few women were elected to local or state office after that initial flurry in the 19 teens. They continued to be very involved in their communities and in other civic issues. But election was just kind of a hurdle that they couldn't seem to surmount again for many years. 

However, I should note that today in Oregon, women hold a majority of elected office in many Oregon cities and counties and comprise 41% of state legislators, as well as the majority of statewide offices in Oregon. So, you know, it took us a while, but I feel like we're kind of right in there with the results of that amendment from so long ago, I think many people talk about the 19th amendment. 

You know, it was the beginning. It wasn't the end of anything, and that certainly is how it has played out in Oregon. And one final note is that because there was such interesting activities going on in Salem, at the Oregon State Capitol, one of the Pomeroy markers that were put in place during 2020, as part of The National Votes For Women Trail project, ended up with a marker on the grounds right next to the state capitol in Capitol Park. We dedicated that marker earlier in 2023. 

And it really commemorates that long history of Oregon gaining state suffrage in 1912. But continuing on to make sure that they were part of the ratification process of the 19th amendment. So I feel like the suffrage history is well represented in Oregon. And this is another wonderful place that you could go experience some of that history.

CM Marihugh  39:47

So if a visitor goes to the Oregon Capitol, they will see that historical marker on the grounds. 

Janice Dilg  39:54

They will see that historical marker on the grounds and the state capitol is a  beautiful art deco building that is open to the public very often. And there are wonderful tours and I highly recommend visiting all of those places.

CM Marihugh  40:11

Well thank you very much, Jan, for being with us today and for telling the stories along The National Votes For Women Trail in Oregon. 

Janice Dilg  40:21

Been my pleasure. 

CM Marihugh  40:22

Thank you for joining us this week. We hope you'll contact us with comments or questions. The National Votes For Women Trail project is a work in progress, please click on the support the project link to contribute to our ongoing work. The trail is a project of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, a nonprofit organization dedicated to putting women's history on the map. Our theme is Standing on The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama. Be sure to join us next time.

Earth Mama  40:59

I'm standing on the shoulders 
Of the ones who came before me. 
I am honored by their passion 
For our liberty. 

I will stand a little taller. 
I will work a little longer. 
And my shoulders will be there to hold 
The ones who follow me. 

My shoulders will be there to hold 
The ones who follow me!