Abbreviation TESA Founded at Houston, Texas | Formation 1903 Extinction 1919 | |
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Successor Texas League of Women Voters Type Non-governmental organization | ||
The Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) was an organization founded in 1903 to support white women's suffrage in Texas. It was originally formed under the name of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) and later renamed in 1916. TESA did allow men to join. TESA did not allow black women as members, because at the time to do so would have been "political suicide." The El Paso Colored Woman's Club applied for TESA membership in 1918, but the issue was deflected and ended up going nowhere. TESA focused most of their efforts on securing the passage of the federal amendment for women's right to vote. The organization also became the state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After women earned the right to vote, TESA reformed as the Texas League of Women Voters.
Contents
History
TESA was first formed under the name of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) in 1903 and which lasted in 1905. During this period, the group was led by Annette, Elizabeth and Katherine Finnigan of Houston. Suffrage clubs from Galveston and Houston sent individuals to the founding convention in 1903. Annette Finnigan was the first president of TWSA. The organization worked, unsuccessfully, to have a woman appointed to the Houston school board. When the Finnigan sisters left Texas in 1905, the group became inactive.
A resurgence of interest in women's suffrage took place when Anna Howard Shaw toured Texas in 1912. Mary Eleanor Brackenridge and Finnigan, who had returned to Houston in 1909, formed local suffrage groups in 1912. Brackenridge was responsible for renewing the statewide group in 1913. In April of that year, one hundred Texans met in San Antonio to reactivate the TWSA. Finnigan had returned to Texas and was heavily involved in restarting the group. In 1914, Finnigan was elected president of the group again. She began to correspond with Texas legislators about including a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage. Continuing the effort, in 1915, Finnigan and others focused their efforts on lobbying legislators and came within only 2 votes short of achieving the vote for women that year.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham became president of TWSA in 1915. When she took the presidency, there were 21 local chapters of TWSA and about 2,500 members. By 1917, they had 98 local chapters. Cunningham led TWSA in adopting the precinct by precinct organizing strategy developed by New York City suffragists. Under her tenure, TWSA received support from the Federation of Women's Clubs, the Texas Farm Women, Texas Press Women and the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
TWSA adopted the name of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) in 1916.
In 1917, the headquarters of TESA were moved from Houston to Austin. When Governor James E. Ferguson, an opponent of women's suffrage, was indicted on various charges including embezzlement in 1917, Cunningham "joined the efforts to impeach him." Also in 1917, as the United States entered World War I, TESA used the momentum of patriotism to point out how women contributed to the war effort. During World War I, Cunningham urged members to create victory gardens, purchase thrift stamps and urged members to contribute the war effort in many different ways. Cunningham was quick to point out that immigrants, especially German-Americans, were allowed to vote, but men sent off to war were "disenfranchised" and mothers and wives were not able to support the men in their lives.
Cunningham, along with other suffrage groups across the state, worked to get women the right to vote in primary elections in 1918. In seventeen days, TESA and other suffrage organizations registered around 386,000 Texas women to vote.
TESA lobbied federal representatives to support the federal amendment. In June 1919, Texas became the first state in the South to ratify the federal suffrage amendment. Both senators and ten out of eighteen House members were in support of the amendment.
On October 10, 1919, TESA reorganized as the Texas League of Women Voters with Jessie Daniel Ames as the first president.