Last month, I wrote a post about the first women jurors chosen to serve on a jury in 1870 Wyoming Territory. It all came about when The territory legislature granted women full voting rights on December 10, 1869. You may find that post by CLICKING HERE
The first opportunity for Wyoming Territory women to vote came on September 6. 1870. Although Utah Territory granted women the right to vote shortly after Wyoming Territory, and women there had opportunities to vote in both February and August of 1870, there is no record of Black women there voting.
In South Carolina, many suffragists, both white and Black argued that the recently enacted Fourteenth Amendment granted women voting rights, Black women voted in some regions of South Carolina in October and November of 1870. The Supreme Court later ruled that the Amendment did not guarantee voting rights to women, so women there were not granted that right until August 1920.
However, in Wyoming Territory, suffrage was granted by the legislature without reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment. Among women voters in the September 9, 1870 election were Black women—quite a step forward for many who were likely enslaved less than a decade earlier. Unfortunately, since Native American tribes were treated like separate nations, women suffrage in Wyoming Territory did not extend to Native women.
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| Nancy Phillips, probable 1870 voter |
Despite the racism that did exist, there were those in Wyoming Territory who worked to protect Black women’s suffrage alongside that granted to the white women. The following quote is from territorial secretary, Edward Lee:
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| Edward M. Lee |
Partisan strife to secure votes among the male adherents of rival candidates culminated in the afternoon, when a brace of colored sisters, hanging gracefully on the arms of a deputy United States marshal of Irish birth, were escorted by him to the polls, and indulged in the right of suffrage. Was not this remarkable coalition a precursor of more harmonious relations between these heretofore bitterly antagonistic elements? The descendants of Ham and St. Patrick hobnobbing in political communion? Verily, ‘the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and a little child shall lead them.’
Another account of the 1870 election comes from Justice John Kingman, also an ardent supporter of woman suffrage. In testimony before the 1876 Massachusetts Legislature, Kingman noted:
I remember a case in point, which, at the time, caused me much uneasiness. We had, at first, a large proportion of Southern men and Northern Copperheads. By that I mean men who advocated secession, and came to Wyoming to escape being drafted. Carriages were employed by the candidates to bring ladies to the polls. At the hotel were a number of colored girls employed as servants. After a while a carriage drove up with four of these colored girls in it. They were helped out, and as they went to the polls the crowd quietly parted; they voted and returned to the carriage without a word said. Then I breathed freely; I knew all was safe.
Both accounts make note of partisanship in the shadow of the recent Civil War. Lee and Kingman were Radical Republicans who had served in the Union Army as brigadier generals, as had Governor Campbell. All three men were committed to equal rights, but they knew that there were many people in Wyoming who were not.
At South Pass City, several drunken and armed white men proclaimed they would not allow any Negros to vote. They attacked a fellow voter who made the statement that they should be allowed the same privilege, as granted by law. A U.S marshal broke up the riot and saw to it the Black men were allowed to vote. When it came to the Black women, the U.S. marshals decided on a more pro-active approach to insure their safety.
The names of the Black women who voted are unknown. Like the numbers of white female voters, the number of Black women who voted are not known. However, it is known through census records that thirty Black or “mulatto” women above the age of twenty-one lived in Wyoming Territory. Most of them arrived in Wyoming Territory as part of a family unit, many of them who owned property. About twenty-five percent lived with their employers and seventeen percent lived independently. The largest Black population lived in Cheyenne. Three lived at nearby Fort D.A. Russell, and resided with their employers.
Women’s right to vote in 1870 started a long tradition of political activism for Wyoming’s Black community. In spite of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protected Black male suffrage, a great deal of opposition to this right existed.
For the rest of the nation, states and territories granted women suffrage in a piecemeal fashion until finally, fifty years after Wyoming women were granted the right to vote, all women in the United States were granted this right in 1920. Universal suffrage was a tradition in which Wyoming Territory led the rest of the nation.
Sources:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/black-women-vote-in-wyoming/
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/then-i-breathed-freely-black-women-vote-wyoming-1870
