Other Significant Suffragists

The following information includes important people in the Suffrage Movement who are not depicted in the mural.

Frances Watkins Harper (1825 – 1911)

Francis Harper, an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, and teacher and was one of the first Black women to be published in the United States.  She may be best remembered for her poetry such as Bury Me in a Free Land and novels such as Iola Leroy which focused on injustice faced by Black Americans. She was a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women with Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell. She worked alongside of her white sisters in the Suffrage Movement.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823 – 1893)

The first Black woman to be a publisher in North America, Ms. Cary published The Provincial Freeman. She called for Black Americans to immigrate to Canada. She earned a law degree from Howard University in 1883 and organized her own suffrage organization for Black women, the Colored Women’s Progressive Franchise Association.

Daisy Adams Lampkin (1888 – 1965)

Named Woman of the Year in 1947 by the NAACP, Lampkin had started suffrage meetings in her home in 1912 and continued to work for several Black women’s suffrage organizations. She dedicated her life to supporting women’s and civil rights. “You cannot be neutral,” Lampkin once said. “You must either join with us who believe in the bright future or be destroyed by those who would return us to the dark past.” Lampkin was the first woman to be elected to the national board of the NAACP and served as field secretary for the organization for several years.

Naomi Anderson (1843 – 1899)

At age 12, Naomi Anderson was considered such a talented poet that she was admitted to a previously all-white public school. She is known for her work with the Temperance Union and spoke in public in support of women’s suffrage—a rare occurrence in those times, Anderson’s poems were often published in major newspapers. Her best-known work is the 1876 Centennial Poem in which she called for equal rights for Black Americans. She was praised for her suffrage work in California by Susan B. Anthony.

Nellie Griswold Francis (1874 – 1969)

The only Black student in her class, Francis gave a speech at her high school graduation in 1891 about the need for equal rights for African Americans. She was a suffragist, civil rights activist, and community organizer. She wrote an anti-lynching bill that became a Minnesota law in 1921. She is one of 25 women honored for their roles in achieving the women’s right to vote in the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol in St. Paul.

Jovita Idàr (1885 – 1946)

As a Mexican American teacher, Idàr saw horrible conditions of her Mexican American students and left teaching to become a reporter. In 1911, Idar and her family organized a conference in Laredo in support of unions, criminal justice, women’s rights, and bilingual education. Also, in that year she became the first president of La Liga Femenil Mexicanista and fought for Mexican American civil rights and education—including enfranchisement rights. 

Hallie Quinn Brown (1850 – 1949) 

Brown knew the power of Black women and urged anyone who heard her to let it flourish. Read her remarks from 1889 and you might believe she saw the future or at least had the capacity to call it into being: “I believe there are as great possibilities in women as there are in men. . . We are marching onward grandly. . . We love to think of the great women of our race—the mothers who have struggled through poverty to educate their children.