Introduction

The first serious attempt to grant Arkansas women the right to vote emerged shortly after the Civil War, when Miles Ledford Langley of Arkadelphia proposed at the 1868 Arkansas Constitutional Convention that “all citizens 21 years of age, who can read and write the English language” should be eligible to vote. While this proposal was rejected, the fight for women’s voting rights did not cease. Women advocating the idea of equal political participation of men and women, known at the time as suffragists, engaged in a variety of tactics and strategies that pushed their agenda. They created suffrage clubs, published and distributed suffrage newspapers and pamphlets, organized marches, parades, and rallies, and sent petitions to state and national legislatures that demanded voting rights for women. In 1917, all these efforts resulted in Arkansas women gaining the right to vote in primary elections.

One of the key activists fighting for women’s voting rights in Arkansas was Florence Brown Cotnam. Cotnam was a member of multiple suffrage organizations and served as president of the Little Rock Political Equality League. In 1914, several suffrage organizations joined with the Little Rock Political Equality League to create the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association, and Cotnam was elected the new organization’s treasurer.  She was an inspiring public speaker and used her talents to convince others that women should have the right to equal political participation. Between 1915 and 1920, Cotnam traveled across twenty states to advocate women’s suffrage. In 1915, she was also the first woman to address the Arkansas General Assembly.

In 1919, Congress passed the federal women’s suffrage amendment, which was ratified and certified in August 1920. Following this momentous achievement, Cotnam and her fellow suffragists focused on citizenship education. Cotnam led the League of Women Voters of Little Rock, an organization that worked to educate women about their new rights and responsibilities as voters. The idea of educated citizenship was central to those efforts. In this activity, you will examine a letter that Cotnam wrote to Louis Wynn of Judsonia, Arkansas. In it, she discusses women’s contributions to social changes and civic responsibilities.