Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People, Site

Location

619 Bank St NE, Decatur, AL 35601, USA

Lat/Long

34.612322, -86.985667

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

In 1892, Ellen S. Hildreth founded an early Alabama Suffrage Club in New Decatur. The November 16, 1892 edition of The Memphis Commercial featured a story on the new club:

Mrs. Hildreth of Alabama said her club had been organized about nine months. Its aims were mostly literary and musical, with an ethical plank in the platform. This year they are going to write and illustrate an operetta. They had organized a Suffrage Club but there is a provision in becoming a member, and that is that the married women must convert their husbands and bring them in.

A short time later, in 1895, Hildreth’s suffrage club invited national suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt to speak at the Echols Opera House, as volume four of the book, The History of Woman Suffrage, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper, explains:

In 1895 Miss Susan B. Anthony president of the National Association, and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, chairman of its organization committee, who were making a southern tour, were asked by the New Decatur Club to include that city in their itinerary.

While a suffrage amendment to the Alabama State Constitution was not successful, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate and was subsequently sent to the states for ratification. Alabama did not ratify the amendment, however, on August 18, 1920 the 19th Amendment was successfully ratified and added to the U.S. Constitution, giving women across the United States the right to vote.