Louisiana
Louisiana’s Fight for Suffrage
Women worked for over 70 years to get the vote. Divisions over race, tactics, and strategy did not stop suffrage efforts. Women kept their eyes on the prize . . . suffrage. Learn more about the fight for suffrage in Louisiana in the timeline below, or download the timeline as a printable PDF.
Louisiana’s Suffrage Timeline
1879
After a dying woman willed St. Anna’s Asylum $1,000, a court invalidated her will because female witnesses could not witness legal papers in the state. An infuriated Caroline Merrick, who served on the asylum’s board, alongside other women’s rights activists, presented a petition of 400 signatures to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention. The Convention granted women partial suffrage rights in school elections.
1892
Merrick founded Louisiana’s first suffrage organization, known as the Portia Club.
1894
Sylvanie Williams founded the Phillis Wheatley Club in New Orleans, which was affiliated with the National Association for Colored Women. The groups advocated for Black women’s voting rights and hosted luminaries like Susan B. Anthony to speak to their members after Black women were barred from the 1903 National Association of Woman Suffrage convention in New Orleans.
1895
The Louisiana Woman Suffrage Association (LWSA) elected Merrick as its president.
1898
Merrick and Kate Gordon, who had founded the Equal Rights for All Club (ERA Club) in New Orleans, advocated to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention Suffrage Committee for an amendment granting women full suffrage. Both the LWSA and the ERA Club explicitly excluded Black women, and their members voiced support for white supremacy.*
1914
After years of campaigning, suffragists convinced the legislature to consider a suffrage bill. The House passed the bill, but it failed in the Senate.
The LWSA pressured the legislature to reconsider suffrage, this time via a public referendum. New Orleans Mayor Martin Behrman spoke out against the referendum, and on November 5, 1918, the referendum failed.
1920
The legislature declined to ratify the 19th Amendment and defeated a separate suffrage amendment to the state constitution a month later.
June 11, 1970
Louisiana ratified the 19th Amendment.**
* Gordon staunchly opposed the federal amendment, believing it violated states’ rights, and teamed up with anti-suffragists to oppose its passage.
**Jim Crow laws were enforced in Louisiana until passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and Black women were not able to vote post-1920.
References
Caroline E. Merrick. (n.d.). The Historic New Orleans Collection. https://www.hnoc.org/virtual/voices-progress-twenty-women-who-changed-new-orleans/caroline-e-merrick
Cooney, Robert. (2005). Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement. American Graphic Press.
Gilley, B. H. (1983). Kate Gordon and Louisiana Woman Suffrage. Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association, 24(3), 289–306. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4232287
Louisiana and the 19th Amendment. (2020, July 8). National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/louisiana-and-the-19th-amendment.htm
Louisiana Women’s Suffrage Amendment (1918). (n.d.). Ballotpedia. https://ballotpedia.org/Louisiana_Women’s_Suffrage_Amendment_(1918)
Seiferth, E. (2020, March 20). What Role did Louisianans Play in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The Historic New Orleans Collection. https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/what-role-did-louisianans-play-womens-suffrage-movement
Tyler, P. (2016, March 8). Woman Suffrage. 64 Parishes. https://64parishes.org/entry/woman-suffrage