As part of the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project, H-Kentucky offers images of the original Constitution of the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association (KWSA) adopted on October 27, 1881 - with many thanks to Sarah Dorpinhaus, Director of Digital Services in the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center. The Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association was founded after an American Woman Suffrage Association meeting in Louisville. The KWSA was the first woman suffrage organization to represent a state in the South. Similar to the AWSA, the KWSA encouraged men to be members and that "No
Soon after Kansas granted women the right to vote in municipal elections, Kentuckian Mary E. Britton put aside the racial differences that had torn apart the women's suffrage groups during the 1860s and spoke of her new-found commitment to the cause. She bravely spoke before her teacher colleagues - men and women - at a statewide conference at a church in Danville on July 7, 1887. In this speech, she explains her change from her activism in fighting for "human rights" to fighting for women's rights was a recent one. She argues for the full empowerment of women as co-equal with men and in