Southern Indiana Business July-August 2020 | Page 23

The long
path to
suffrage
Hoosier women play prominent role in
nationwide push for rights
By John Boyle | Photos provided by the Indiana Museum
A rich history of pushing for social change exists in Indiana.
Just a few years after the likes of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others launched the national women’s
suffrage movement, the Hoosier state began its own organized initiative. The Indiana Woman’s Rights
Association was formed from a convention held in Dublin, Ind., in October 1851.
From its inception, the group pushed for the right to vote and other women’s causes, meeting every
year until the Civil War and eventually reconvening afterward.
“It’s one of the oldest [woman’s groups] in the country,” said Dr. Anita Morgan, Senior Lecturer at
Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. “It started in the east-central part of the state. Most
of the Indiana Woman’s Rights Association were Quakers who had moved here from the Carolinas.
They were not only interested in women’s rights, but temperance a well.”
While the end result of the movement centered around the right to vote, there was more to it.