Early Suffrage Organizations

Atop Mount Petit Jean
Courtesy of the Arkansas History Commission

When suffragette Susan B. Anthony visited Arkansas in 1889, she spoke to a receptive audience of women. As early as 1868, Arkansas women packed the legislative gallery to listen to and applaud a proposal to extend suffrage to women in a new state constitution. Some legislators ridiculed the notion that women were intellectually equipped to vote and others suggested that they were too refined for the rough and tumble business of politics. The measure failed but Arkansas women continued to press for suffrage.

In the mid 1880s two female attorneys organized for suffrage in Little Rock and Eureka Springs.

In 1885 Mrs. Lizzie Fyler, a native of Massachusetts who practiced law in Missouri before moving to Eureka Springs, formed an organization solely devoted to suffrage.

Mrs. Fyler died suddenly late that same year, however, and her fledgling organization died with her. Another female attorney, Mrs. Clara A. McDairmid, who came to Arkansas from Kansas during Reconstruction, organized an equal suffrage association in Little Rock in 1888.

Like Attorney Lizzie Fyler, Clara McDairmid found upon arrival in Arkansas that she was not allowed to appear in court as an attorney solely because of her gender.

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