Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

Site

Location

1288 Court St NE, Salem, OR 97301, USA

Lat/Long

44.93877, -123.03057

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

On November 5, 1912, Oregon voters passed an equal suffrage amendment to the state constitution. This was thanks to the efforts of a diverse coalition of suffrage workers that had fought to secure women’s right to vote in the state. According to the Oregon state report found in volume six of The History of Woman Suffrage, the women’s suffrage amendment carried in the state:

… by a majority of 4,161, not by any one person or by any one organization, for no individual or single organization could have compassed the work required to put the State “over the top” with even this meagre majority in a total vote of 118,369.

The suffrage victory in Oregon helped to influence the women’s suffrage movement nationally, and finally on June 4, 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment which states that the right to vote cannot be denied on account of sex. The Nineteenth Amendment then went to the states for ratification. In January 1920, Oregon ratified the amendment and by August, the necessary 36 states had ratified it, securing women’s right to vote across the United States.