page_title: Women's suffrage in Texas
section_title: Early efforts
hierarchical_section_title: Women's suffrage in Texas / Early efforts
caption_attribution_description: English: Rebecca Henry Hayes (1843-1924)
context_page_description: Women's suffrage in Texas was a long term fight starting in 1868 at the first Texas Constitutional Convention. In both Constitutional Conventions and subsequent legislative sessions, efforts to provide women the right to vote were introduced, only to be defeated. Early Texas suffragists such as Martha Goodwin Tunstall and Mariana Thompson Folsom worked with national suffrage groups in the 1870s and 1880s. It wasn't until 1893 and the creation of the Texas Equal Rights Association by Rebecca Henry Hayes of Galveston that Texas had a statewide women's suffrage organization. Members of TERA lobbied politicians and political party conventions on women's suffrage. Due to an eventual lack of interest and funding, TERA was inactive by 1898. In 1903, women's suffrage organizing was revived by Annette Finnigan and her sisters. These women created the Texas Equal Suffrage Association in Houston in 1903. TESA sponsored women's suffrage speakers and testified on women's suffrage in front of the Texas Legislature. In 1908 and 1912, speaking tours by Anna Howard Shaw helped further renew interest in women's suffrage in Texas.
context_section_description: Titus H. Mundine, an early leader in the Republican Party from Burleson County, brought up a proposition to allow every eligible voter the right to vote, regardless of sex during the 1868-1869 Texas Constitutional Convention. A small group of women were also behind the push for the proposition; and out of the ten African American delegates to the Convention, six supported women's suffrage. Martha Goodwin Tunstall spoke in support of women's suffrage in Austin at a meeting of the Austin Friends of Female Suffrage before the final vote. The proposal of granting women's suffrage was defeated by a vote of 52 to 13.
  Tunstall went on to become the vice president of the Texas chapter of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). In 1872, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) contacted the Texas Legislature to petition for women's suffrage. In 1873, Texas senator, Albert Jennings Fountain of El Paso, proposed extending suffrage to women. His proposal was defeated in the Texas senate.
  In the second Texas Constitutional Convention held in 1875, women's suffrage was again introduced. W.G.T. Weaver from Cooke County was one of the men who introduced a resolution to grant women's suffrage, but his proposal died in the committee. 
  In 1884, minister and suffragist Mariana Thompson Folsom came to Texas. She acted as the main Texas contact for the AWSA and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Folsom was in contact with Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell who both felt that Texas needed to organize, but that the state may not yet be ready for women's suffrage. Folsom did some tours of the state in 1884. On her tours, Folsom recorded that she was surprised by the "timidity" of women in Texas, who seemed to be afraid to be seen in public spaces. In 1885, a suffragist in Texas attempted to send one thousand signatures on a women's suffrage petition to the Texas legislature. However, she found that many supporters of suffrage were hesitant to publicly add their names for fear of "losing 'prestige.'"
  Rebecca Henry Hayes, a suffragist living in Galveston, began to correspond with Laura Clay of NAWSA in late 1892 and early 1893. In April of 1893, Hayes and ten other women in Texas sent out invitations for a convention to be held to create a statewide women's suffrage group which would be called the Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA). The first meeting took place at the Grand Windsor Hotel in Dallas on May 10, 1893 and Hayes was elected the first president of the organization. Around fifty people came together to form TERA, and one-fifth of the members were men. Many of the women involved in the formation of TERA were members of the Texas chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). TERA advocated for women's right to vote, but also supported other rights, such as a women's right to serve on juries. TERA had local chapters formed in Beaumont, Belton, Circleville, Dallas, Denison, Fort Worth, Granger, San Antonio, and Taylor in 1893 and 1894. During 1894, Folsom toured Texas, speaking about women's suffrage in 83 different locations. In 1895, Elizabeth Good Houston became the TERA president and the group sponsored a lecture tour from Folsom. On these later tours, Folsom found that more Texas were interested in women's suffrage.
  In the summer of 1894, suffragists attempted to get women's suffrage added as planks in the major political party platforms. Suffragists reached out to the Democratic, Populist and Republican parties. Mrs. L. A. Craig spoke to the Democratic convention on behalf of the Dallas TERA, but they declined to endorse women's suffrage in the Democratic party platform. Other parties also declined. In August, the Dallas group called on Governor James Stephen Hogg to visit Dallas and listen to the women make their case for equal suffrage. 
  TERA was seriously divided in late 1894 over the question of bringing Susan B. Anthony to speak in Texas. As a Northerner, a "Yankee" and an abolitionist, she was not seen as a welcome guest to some Texans who had been part of the Confederacy. TERA membe
caption: Rebecca Henry Hayes (1843-1924), co-founder of Texas Equal Rights Association (TERA).
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