Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

1 W Rio Salado Pkwy, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA

Lat/Long

33.42934, -111.940283

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Vice-president of Arizona Territorial Suffrage Association Sallie D. Hayden (1841-1907) once lived in the community of Tempe, Arizona. Born in Arkansas in 1841, Sallie Davis, later known as Sallie D. Hayden, was an ardent advocate of women suffrage. During her lifetime she worked tirelessly to help women gain the right to vote. Sadly, in 1907 she passed away before seeing this dream come to fruition however her efforts were not in vain. In November of 1912 Arizona made history by becoming one of only a few states in the U.S. to pass a suffrage amendment to the state constitution. The amendment reads as follows:

The rights of the United States to vote and hold office shall not be denied or abridged by the state, or any political division or municipality thereof, on account of sex, and the right to register, to vote and to hold office under any law now in effect, or which may hereafter be enacted, is hereby extended to, and conferred upon males and females alike.

This new amendment provided women in Arizona the right to vote and to hold public office. In 1913, Hayden’s son, Arizona Senator Carl T. Hayden, introduced a suffrage resolution to Congress granting women the right to vote but the resolution failed to pass through the U.S. Senate.

Men and women across the country continued to fight for women to gain the right to vote and only a short time later, women across the United States were granted the right to vote with the passage and subsequent ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920.