The Women's Rights Movement In Texas

Although the Women’s Rights Movement is widely known to have started in New York, there is no doubt that the women of Texas fought great battles in order to gain civil liberties. Even though women were seen as partners in land labor and expected to contribute during the settlement of Texas, women were seen as unfit and too frail to partake in politics. Orestes Brownson, a religious author and activist of those times stated “We do not believe women . . . are fit to have their own head. Without masculine direction or control, she is out of her element and a social anomaly -- sometimes a hideous monster.” The awakening of the lack of Women’s Rights was not only due to the obvious absence of their presence in any historically important political
A “Government by the people for the people,” was a term that these women did not take lightly. In the state of Texas these organizations fought for the right for women to hold political office with the same stipulations as men, the right to serve on a jury. The purpose of this paper is to report on the organizations that helped set the course for Texas Women and the right to vote.
The first Women's Rights Convention was in 1848 and lasted two days, with few amendments. Although it wasn’t held in Texas it certainly set the wheels in motion. At the convention, debate over the woman's right to vote was the main concern. The first time the question of women’s right to vote was raised in Texas was at the Constitutional Convention of 1868, twenty years after the first Convention. It is hard to believe that women did not secure the right to vote until 1919.
The first female rights association was formed as a state branch of NAWSA, The National American Women Suffrage Association in 1893. It was founded with the intent to spread awareness to southern states with the philosophy to "advance the industrial, educational, and equal rights of women, and to secure suffrage to them by appropriate State and national legislation. " It was presided by Rebecca Henry Hayes of Galveston, Texas. The organization was open to both men and women and required annual dues of fifty
Later she reclaimed her position with the support of National American Women Suffrage Association. Hayes was stayed in office long enough to preside over the third convention but later lost the election to a Ms. Elizabeth Houston. Houston organized to have TERA campaign county by county . Although valuable in the fight for women’s rights later that year local groups and membership slowly declined. Due to the lack of involvement and financial difficulties that the organization was already seeing with Hayes as president, the organization ceased