Suffragist County

A few steps ahead

In 1867, a statewide referendum to affirm women’s right to vote failed, an outcome that, ironically, may have served to invigorate suffragists in the state: A year later, the Women’s Suffrage Association of Kansas held its first meeting, with prominent suffrage leaders including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in attendance.

While women were granted the right to vote nationwide with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Kansas women were a few steps ahead. Though a second attempt to gain women’s voting rights in 1893 failed, a third attempt was introduced to the state legislature in 1911 and soon passed. The Equal Suffrage Amendment was ratified in 1912, making Kansas the eighth state in the United States and the first in the Midwest to provide equal voting rights to women.

More than just a vote

The women’s rights movement was about more than just voting rights, however. Leading up to the passage of the Equal Suffrage Amendment, Kansas women won a series of key victories, including the right to vote in school district elections and municipal suffrage, which resulted in the election of 14 female mayors before the turn of the century.

Jury duty

Among Kansas counties, Butler County stands out for contributing several milestones to women’s equality. The women’s rights movement found an ally in Butler County judge Granville Pearl Aikman. In 1912, immediately following the ratification of women’s suffrage in Kansas, Aikman appointed Eva Rider as the first woman bailiff in the nation, and he further instructed her to assemble an all-women jury—another first.

The judge told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Women became qualified to act as jurors when the new constitutional amendment made them electors, and I desire the honor of presiding over the first trial in which their new rights are exercised."

The case that this female jury was tasked with deciding was a case that had previously been tried before a jury of men, with no verdict reached. The women jurors, however, completed their deliberations after two days of proceedings and were praised for their rapt attention and careful consideration of arguments.