Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

3620 E 39th St, Kansas City, MO 64128, USA

Lat/Long

39.05515, -94.54138

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Suffragist Anna Holland Jones was born in Ontario, Canada on September 2, 1855. Graduating from Oberlin College in 1875, Jones taught at Wilberforce University in Ohio, before relocating to Kansas City, Missouri. She was a highly regarded teacher at Lincoln High School in Kansas City for many years.

In February 1893, together with Josephine Silone Yates, a fellow Black woman who was also an educator and activist, Jones helped to establish the Women’s League of Kansas City. Yates served as president and Jones as corresponding secretary. Jones was also active at the state and national level, serving as president of the Missouri State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and Superintendent of Race Literature for the National Association of Colored Women. While president, Jones gave the annual address at the 1906 convention of the State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs, held in the Second Baptist Church, then at 10th and Charlotte Streets in Kansas City.

The August 1915 edition of The Crisis, a publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, included “Votes for Women: A Symposium.” The symposium featured an article written by Jones entitled, “Woman Suffrage and Social Reform” in which she asked the question, why should a woman “not have the legal means – the ballot – to widen and deepen her work?” Jones argued that if women had the ballot, society as a whole would be improved, and referred to those states in which women had already achieved the right to vote as an example of the reforms and improvements that would come with women’s suffrage.

After decades of suffrage activism, finally, on June 4, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment which reads, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” On July 3, Missouri ratified the Nineteenth Amendment and by August 1920, the necessary 36 states had ratified the amendment, securing women’s right to vote across the United States.

After a 40-year career as an educator, Jones retired in 1918. She eventually relocated to Monrovia, California, where she passed away on March 7, 1932.