Arkansas Legislators celebrate 100 years of women voting

Female Arkansas legislators dressed in 1917-era clothing gathered Tuesday in Little Rock to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women being granted the right to vote in party primary elections.

The event included a recreation on the Capitol steps of a historic photo taken 100 years ago.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said female legislators had carried his bill, signed that morning, to exempt military retiree benefits from state income taxes.

“Anybody who runs for office today has to pay attention to the women because they vote more often and more regularly and consistently than men do,” he said.

On Feb. 7, 1917, a bill was introduced in the Arkansas House that would lead to Arkansas becoming the first nonsuffrage state to grant women the right to vote in primary elections. Other states had already granted women full voting rights in primary and general elections, including New York in 1917. The bill was passed 71-19 in the House on Feb. 16 and later passed 17-15 in the Senate.

Two years later, Gov. Charles Brough called the Legislature into special session, where legislators made Arkansas the 12th state in the union and the first Southern state to ratify the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Reps. Charlotte Douglas, R-Alma; Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff; and Deborah Ferguson, D-West Memphis, described the events that led up to that moment. In 1868, women suffrage was discussed in the state’s constitutional convention, where one male delegate said it would create conflicts of interest with husbands and create revolutions in families. In 1891, a bill granting suffrage for white women was introduced and then tabled after a second reading. Another bill was introduced to allow women to serve on school boards. In 1893, the Senate passed a bill allowing women to serve on school boards, but the House did not vote on the bill. In 1899, a resolution calling for women to vote in school elections and in elections pertaining to morality-based issues also failed.

Flowers, the only African-American female out of the 100 members of the House of Representatives, said black women were excluded from the progress in those days.

The event was one of several events occurring from now to 2020, the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, that are being organized in part by the Arkansas Women’s History Institute.

On March 4, the inaugural Arkansas Women’s History Festival will be from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, said Kathleen Pate, president of the Institute.