Votes for Women

It’s hard to believe that, as we went to the polls yesterday, it was not all that long ago that women did not have the right to vote. It was on this day 119 years ago, November 7, 1893, that Colorado women were enfranchised. (A few other states passed women suffrage laws, but women did not gain the right to vote across the nation until 1920.) Colorado was only the second state, after Wyoming, to give women the right to vote. Visit the Colorado State Archives website to see the original Legislative bill giving Colorado women the right to vote. For more information on the women’s suffrage movement in Colorado, see articles in the July 1956, Winter 1964, and Winter 1967 issues of Colorado Magazine and the Spring 1993 issue of Colorado Heritage, all available from our library. You can also read about several prominent Colorado suffragists — Molly Brown, Elizabeth Ensley, Ellis Meredith, and Minnie Scalabrino — at the Colorado State Library’s www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org.