These days, it’s common to see women on the ballot for school boards, city council and mayoral races in Kansas. The state’s top official, Gov. Laura Kelly, is in the middle of her second term. But women running for office — heck, even women voting — is only a little more than 100 years old in most of the country. Except in Kansas. There, women were allowed to vote in school board elections in 1861. By 1887, women could vote in Kansas in a municipal election. And by 1912, women had full suffrage — a full eight years before the passage of the 19th Amendment. “Kansas was ahead of most other states but it took a long time to get to the ultimate goal. Kansans, some Kansans, were struggling for a better place from the beginning,” says historian Virgil Dean, retired editor of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains. Dean traces suffrage efforts back to 1859, when there was an unsuccessful move to grant women and African Americans full suffrage at the Wyandotte constitutional convention. Not only was Kansas ahead of the curve in terms of granting the right to vote, it also beat the rest of the country to elect a woman to office. That honor falls to Susanna Madora Salter of Argonia, Kansas, who, on April 4, 1887, became the first woman ever elected mayor in America.
Source: KCUR News
