Colorado Connections
When Susan B. Anthony visited Boulder, Colorado in October 1877, a sizeable crowd of men and women turned out to hear her speak. In the state election the following month, women’s suffrage was defeated 2-1. When the measure made the ballot again in 1893, Colorado became the second state in the nation (behind Wyoming) to enfranchise women. Anthony spoke in Boulder once more in 1895; her address calling for efforts to achieve voting equality across the nation.
Susan B. Anthony Letters Thomas M. Patterson Family Papers / COU:1245:07:10
In an 1895 letter to Eliza Routt, an ardent suffragist and Colorado’s original first lady, Anthony raises the question of how to promote the National-American Woman Suffrage Association (a merger between the rival suffrage groups) in states were women already had the vote. In addition to her opinion on the matter, Anthony asks Routt to travel to Washington to speak as “a woman who not only voted herself, but who had seen all the women of her city [Denver] engaged in politics.” A year later, in 1896, Anthony addressed Ex-governor Routt on behalf of California suffragists. Requesting testimony on Colorado’s experience and the benefits of women’s suffrage for his political party, she asks for “just such a letter as will help to convince every man that the best thing he can do is to vote for the amendment.” California women won the right to vote in 1911.
When Edith DeLong enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1898, few women's associations existed. To remedy this, she founded the Alethea Society; alethea being a variation of the Greek word aletheia, meaning truth and immortality. In what is likely a portrait commemorating her initiation, right, Edith is styled as a Greek demigoddess. The Alethea Society would come to form the core of the Beta Mu Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, an organization founded by Edith in 1901 and still active today.
In 1907, Edith moved to California, a state where women still battled for the right to vote. She enthusiastically joined their campaign. As she later explained to a reporter, “While I had always believed in woman suffrage before, I had taken it as a matter of course. When I lived in a state [California] where women had no rights, however, the injustice of it dawned more strongly upon me and I have been working for the cause ever since. I intend to devote all my time to the movement here.” Edith continued her activism after moving to Seattle, leading the Washington Women's Suffrage Association. As described by a local newspaper, she ran “a campaign for the establishment of the equality of the sexes at the polls such as Seattle has never seen before.”