LibGuides: Suffrage in Texas Expanded (SITE): Primary Sources

S I T E Primary Sources

Suffrage in Texas Expanded

Suffrage in Texas Expanded (SITE) is an ongoing project to develop a digital research collection that consists of a webliography of resources that chronicle a more inclusive vision of the struggle for women’s suffrage in Texas.

Archival Sources Housed at the Woman's Collection at Texas Woman's University

African American and Black Women

Dorothy Lofton: An Oral History. Texas Association of Women’s Clubs. Interviewed by Liz Nichols. August 25, 2001. Woman's Collection, Texas Woman's University. MSS 300.

Lofton discusses her involvement as secretary in in black club work beginning with the Junior Maids, Strivers and the Voters League. Voting was encouraged by these groups, national voting was ok, but local voting for sheriff did not occur in Marlin, Texas by African American women until the 1960s (7). Integration was frowned upon in Marlin, Texas, and often whites sent their children to different schools to prevent it (11). Lofton also discussed the community aid and focus within her area of black women clubwomen opening up their homes to others after natural disaster.

Hattie Mae White. (1900-) Woman's Collection, Texas Woman's University. Microfiche.

Newspaper clipping and pamphlets on the work of White on the Houston School Board (1958-1967).

Texas Federation of Colored Women Club House, San Antonio, Texas. MSS. 491.01.002

Photograph of the clubhouse in San Antonio, which cost 5,000. Black women often worked within shared club spaces and married women's societies to do their organizing work for civil rights and political equality.

Chicana and Latina Women

Andrea and Teresa Villarreal. Woman's Collection. Texas Woman's University.

Andrea Villarreal published La mujer moderna calling for women's rights and independence including voting, as a result of the Mexican revolution.

Emma Tenayuca. Box 3: General Correspondance. Bexar County Women’s Political Caucus. Women's Collection. Texas Woman's University. MSS 420

In 1988, Tenayuca organized the Bexar County Women's Political Caucus, working on issues of domestic violence awareness, women's history pay equity and electing representatives to both county and federal appointments that are women, cited 26/435 in House and the need for a candidate in Bexar.

Jovita Idar. Woman's Collection. Texas Woman's University. 2 vertical file folders.

Idar's work includes her deep organizing skills and involvement in both children's education and women's political participation. She founded and served as president for La Liga Femenil Mexicanista and wrote for La Crónica, where she voiced the desire for women to have the right to vote. Woman's Collection. Texas Woman's University.

Letters (African American and Black Women)

Clark, Walter. 1918-1919. “Status of African-American Voters Vs. White Women Voters.” University of Houston Libraries Digital Collections.
This letter draws parallels between the adoption of literary tests as a way to disenfranchise black women voters in Texas, while white women gain the ability to vote.
Jessie Daniel Ames looks back, circa 1928, Jessie Daniel Ames Papers, Archives and Information Services Division, Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
Ames was a white woman who organized for women of color rights in Texas for education and anti-lynching, but she was considered more radical and reflects back on the positive ideas and how the vote for white women was initially aimed to be the start to more human rights work, over the end of it.
Jordan, Barbara, 1936-1996. A New Dawn in Southern Politics, text, 1967~; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Southern University.
Jones suggested the Democratic party in Texas preventing African Americans from voting due to historical racism and a shift to liberal humanist politics.
Letter to Erminia T. Folsom from C.B. Randell, November 25, 1910. Erminia Thompson Folsom papers, 1985/119-1. Randell, a Texas Representative in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Randall states he fears giving women voting rights, because then African Americans would be able to vote, due to the “race question” and the “complication” that will result. The reasoning that the vote would lose its racial purity is why white suffrage activists had to carefully skirt the race concerns, because they wanted the vote themselves.
Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for African Americans and Women. Letters between friends, allies, and others. Mary Church Terrell Papers: Correspondence, 1886-1954; 1907. Library of Congress.
Maud E. Craig Sampson Williams writes to Terrell the parent organization of black clubwomen organizing for voting in Texas.
[Transcript of letter from Thomas M. Carroll to Joseph A. Carroll, September 22, 1867], letter, Date Unknown; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History.
Letter citing plan to tax African Americans upon gains in suffrage in Texas.
“Letters Regarding African American Suffrage Organization.” Bullock Texas State History Museum, 1918, Jane Y. McCallum Papers, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.
Maude Sampson wrote to Catt asking for support for black suffrage, citing the “degradation” concerns of the vote for Texas African Americans.
“‘Negro Woman's Resolutions for Enforcement of Federal Suffrage Amendments.’” Tennessee Virtual Archive (TeVA), Att. Josephine A. Pearson Papers, 1860-1943, Southern Women's League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. 1920.
Discussion of anti-suffrage from women by white women. Cites black suffrage leading to degrading of white vote, as black women have to educate themselves on voting. Southern manhood is claimed as being threatened, for example, Texas lost three representative seats.
more...less...
https://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15138coll27/id/235/

Speeches (African American and Black Women)

Jordan, Barbara C. Barbara Jordan - National Archives, text, August 26, 1995. University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting Texas Southern University.
Speech by Jordan at the National Archives about Sojourner Truth who began the movement of voting rights for black women and the need to continue the legacy.