Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/15

 

In 1902 Miss Frances Griffin of Verbena sent to the national suffrage convention the following report as president of the State suffrage association: "Two clubs in Alabama, in Huntsville and Decatur, are auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The State president did some aggressive work within the year, speaking in many different towns before women's clubs and at parlor meetings. She devoted much time to work of this character in Montgomery, hoping to bring to bear sufficient influence upon members of the Constitutional Convention to secure some concessions for women citizens. The results were bitterly disappointing, for it not only refused to grant suffrage to tax-paying women but it gave to the husbands of tax-payers the right to vote upon their wives' property! Women in the larger towns are taking an interest in municipal and educational affairs. Some have been placed on advisory boards in State institutions, such as the Girls' Industrial School, the Boys' Reform School and others. All this means a gradual advance for the suffrage sentiment, a general modifying of the anti-sentiment."

There were also short reports for 1903 and 1904, which, while showing no practical, tangible results of the efforts of that earnest pioneer worker, are interesting as evidences of the backward, unprogressive spirit against which the women of Alabama have had to contend. These reports mark the end of the first period of suffrage activity in the State, which had been maintained by a few devoted women. The new era was ushered in by the organization in Selma in 1910 of an Equal Suffrage