100 Years After 19th Amendment, and Hours Before Election, Lewis County Commemorates Women’s Suffrage

Lewis County commemorated the anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted white women the right to vote 100 years ago, on Monday. 

“The fact that women are active in local, state and national government and are running for office in unprecedented numbers reminds us that we all follow in the footsteps of these resolute American suffragists,” Commissioner Edna Fund read from the proclamation. 

Fund, who is also a local historian, has discussed the proclamation in prior weeks — now, the local celebration of women’s right to vote comes not only on the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, but also just hours before election day, where voter participation has already set records across the country. 

While centennial celebrations are happening nationwide, Washington has an especially unique history when it comes to women’s rights to vote. 

Long before the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920, Washington became the first territory to grant women the right to vote. It was 1870 — 17 years after the territory’s first election — and Thurston County women made their way to the polls. The white women were testing a law that granted “all white citizens above the age of twenty-one years” voting rights.

Unsurprisingly, the push to allow women to participate in the democratic process was met with intense resistance. The territorial legislature responded to the Thurston County women by passing a law that explicitly denied them suffrage. 

“In an attempt to crush the women’s suffrage movement, the Territorial Legislature soon after mandated that ‘no female shall have the right of ballot or vote,’” according to the Secretary of State’s history of elections and voting.

Women’s suffrage was granted and rescinded as the measure bounced back and forth between the territory’s legislature and courts, and although it was a hard-fought struggle, Washington was also the home to many “firsts” in the country, like when, in 1883, Black women in Washington became the first to vote in the nation — a right that was quickly stripped away again.

In 1889, The Chronicle wrote about the issue, reporting that Big Bottom, now known as Randle, was the only precinct in Lewis County to approve women’s suffrage with a margin of 13 to 9. 

“The most lopsided vote against women’s suffrage was in Little Falls (known today as Vader), where the vote was 12 for, 72 against,” the article read. 

According to the Secretary of State, the battle for women’s suffrage in Washington also involved famous suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Scott Duniway, who visited the area and helped found the Washington Woman Suffrage Association, which advocated for women’s voting rights throughout the late 1800s, when white women were given the right more than once, only to have it taken away. 

Finally, in 1910, Washington, now a state of the union, amended its state constitution to grant women the right to vote. The amendment was on the ballot, and passed by 63.8 percent. It would be another decade before the 19th amendment passed on the federal amendment, and even longer before non-white women’s right to vote was established and protected.