Archives and Special Collections Exhibits
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Creation Date
9-4-2021
Description
The Women's Suffrage Movement in Mississippi
Established in 1897, the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association sought “to advance the industrial, educational, and legal rights of women and to secure suffrage for them by appropriate state and national legislatures” by printing and distributing literature and proposing legislation on issues of particular interest to females. In response to the popular argument that only men were fit for suffrage as a consequence of their status as workers, the activists demonstrated how many women worked outside the homes in schools or in factories.
Despite all the work of the MWSA, the state never extended suffrage to women. It would take federal action to gain the right to vote for women with the addition of the Nineteenth Amendment to U. S. constitution in 1920. Mississippi was also not among the thirty-six states that ratified the amendment before it went into effect; in fact Mississippi did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1984, when it became the last state to do so.
This exhibit includes several items from the Mississippi Woman Suffrage Association Digital Collection, available in eGrove.
Relational Format
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