History Day at Special Collections: Topic: Suffrage in Washington

Special Collections is a great resource for all your Pacific Northwest primary source needs!

Background Information

The 1910 campaign for woman suffrage in Washington State is often seen as a key event in the history of woman suffrage in the United States. As the first state in the twentieth century to grant women the right to vote, and the first state to adopt woman suffrage in almost fifteen years, Washington revitalized the suffrage movement and inspired the national campaign that led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Special Collections has numerous newspapers and memoirs of Washington and Oregon Suffragettes, as well as records and newspapers for groups that opposed suffrage.

Digital Collections

Posters, flyers, personal letters, and other ephemera for, and against, suffrage, have been digitized at Special Collections

Path breaking Abigail Scott Duniway's autobiography detailing her work in Oregon
Call Number: 979.519 D921
Votes for women Monthly newspaper for the Washington Equal Suffrage Association
Call Number: 979.706 NE
The Western woman voter Monthly newspaper published from 1911-1913 in Washington "in the interest of the enfranchised women of the west."
Call Number: 979.705 WW
Woman suffrage in Washington Territory Article written for Woman's Journal, a national newspaper devoted to suffrage.
Call Number: JK1911.W2 W65 (rare)
Yours for liberty Selections from Abigail Scott Duniway's suffrage newspaper, The New Northwest, launched in 1871, one of the few newspapers in the nation devoted to woman's advancement. Selections cover the years 1871 to 1887.
Call Number: JK1911.O7 D85 2000

Lucy Gearhart papers
Materials related to temperance and suffrage.
Nellie M. Fick Papers
Scrapbooks, correspondence, clippings from Seattle Suffragette leader.
Ruth Bloom Ibbitsen letter
Letter describing beginnings of woman's suffrage movement

A Ballot for the Lady: Washington Women's Struggle for the Vote
The 1910 campaign for woman suffrage in Washington State is often seen as a key event in the history of woman suffrage in the United States. As the first state in the twentieth century to grant women the right to vote—and the first state to adopt woman suffrage in almost fifteen years—Washington revitalized the suffrage movement and inspired the national campaign that led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Washington women's right to vote was not easily won, however. In a struggle that spanned over 50 years, women wrote petitions, lobbied the legislature, published suffrage newspapers, and delivered speeches. They won the right of franchise several times only to have it taken away each time, but continued to fight for their right to vote as citizens of the United States.

This exhibit celebrates the 100th anniversary of women’s permanent right to vote in Washington State, and the women who worked so diligently to make it happen.