At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, Ellis Meredith of Denver walked up to Susan B. Anthony with a proposition. Meredith was the primary architect behind a campaign to give Colorado women the right to vote. She was convinced that if Colorado approved women’s suffrage, much of the West would
follow suit, and it would send a message to the rest of the nation.
The daughter of a suffragist and newspaper editor, Meredith was busy advocating for women’s suffrage through her column in the Rocky Mountain News, “Women’s World.” She used her column to push all matters of suffrage, including equity, issues with registration, and democratic apathy. She urged Americans to vote, arguing “Election day is a kind of recurrent Fourth of July, when we sign afresh our Declaration of Independence.”
Anthony was moved by Meredith’s words and sent organizer Carrie Chapman Catt to Colorado to travel the state, helping to organize for the successful ballot initiative that same year. In her column, Meredith called it “Our Thanksgiving Day” that on November 7, 1893, Colorado women won the right to vote. It was the first time in the history of the United States that women won the vote through a popular referendum.
After Colorado’s successful campaign, Meredith continued to beinvolved in Denver politics and elections. She was the first woman to cover the state legislature at the Colorado State Capitol for the newspaper, and in 1902 was appointed to the Denver City Charter Convention, which drafted Denver’s first charter. She served as the Denver Election Commissioner from 1910 to 1915. As the move towards a suffrage
national amendment continued to gain momentum, Meredith joined the national movement. In 1917 she left Denver for Washington D.C. to work at the Women’s Bureau of the Democratic Party.
Explore More
Read more about Ellis Meredith from the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
Read more about Meredith’s campaign for the vote, including letters that some of her correspondents would probablywish you weren’t reading, from The Colorado Magazine.
Author Bio
Alison Salutz is the Director of Community Programs at Historic Denver.