This brochure was the creation of Mary Ann Burch, chair of the Frankfort Suffrage Women Cemetery Project. Burch wanted to identify and honor the women suffrage leaders buried in the Frankfort Cemetery by placing a small bronze plaque on their gravesites. The brochure supports a tour of Frankfort Suffragists' burial sites that took place on August 21, 2021, as part of a day-long Women's Equality Day Celebration.
Rose E. Edwards Sower was an active member of the Franklin County Equal Rights Association, and she held many different offices in the Kentucky Equal Rights Association. In 1916 she was appointed the Kentucky member of the Publicity Committee for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was also a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Author: Bessie Taul Conkwright
Title: Women Hold Jubilee Meet
Publication: Lexington [Ky.] Leader (January 7, 1920): 2.
Title: Mrs. J.G. South. [Between and Ca. 1920] Photograph.
Publisher: Bain News Service, Publisher. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2014709848/>.
Here's a list of people we've identified so far in the iconic photo of Kentucky Governor Edwin P. Morrow signing the Kentucky legislature's ratification of the 19th Amendment passed on June 6, 1920. Library of Congress, Lot 5543, https://www.loc.gov/item/97510716/. Suggestions for corrections to our guesses are heartily welcomed.
Christine Duncan Bradley South (20 December 1879 - 20 February 1957) of Frankfort was the president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association from 1916-1919. She was the daughter of Kentucky governor William O. Bradley and Margaret Duncan Bradley. In 1919 she was elected KERA 1st Vice President and she also chaired the political science committee of the Kentucky General Federation of Women’s Clubs. She led the campaign to start citizenship schools for women in every Kentucky county.
Even though the Kentucky Equal Rights Association had organized the largest suffrage parade ever in the state on May 6, 1916, and they had a glittering array of women lobbyists at the Democratic State Convention held in Lexington May 24th, the Democratic Party of Kentucky still refused to endorse a woman suffrage plank.
According to a May 1916 press release published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Kentucky Equal Rights Association appointed a Suffrage Plank Committee for the Republican Party under the leadership of Virginia Lee Hazelrigg O'Rear of West Liberty. O'Rear was the wife of Edward C. O'Rear, formerly the Chief Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals who had resigned to run in a failed bid for governor in 1911. They were living at this time in Frankfort.
Title: Women Prepare Platform Fight,
Publication: Courier-Journal [Louisville KY] (16 May 1916): 3
I love the political game and I think the time has come when women will have the power to turn the tide and stop many of the calamities that seem pending. (Wood County Reporter, September 2, 1920)
