Volume 9 , Issue 18

Women's Suffrage in Oklahoma

Long before the Nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution, the struggle for women's rights occurred at the state level. Women worked, campaigned and demonstrated in the face of great political opposition. The Oklahoma constitutional convention in 1907 considered writing women's suffrage into the new constitution, but the issued failed at the last moment. In 1910 Oklahomans voted on an Initiative Petition seeking to give women the right to vote by simply eliminating the word "male" from the pertinent section of the state constitution. The measure was overwhelmingly defeated, but women working for it were not. Their demands for the basic democratic right to vote accelerated after World War I. In 1918, two years before the 19th amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, Oklahoma voters approved a Legislative Referendum extending universal suffrage to women. In 1920 Governor Robertson called an Extraordinary Session of the Seventh Legislature, which passed a Joint Resolution ratifying the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution on Women's Suffrage. You can research State Senate and House Bill files, and records from the Office of Governor.
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