Texas suffrage and voting rights history includes leaders whose work reached far beyond 1920.
Jessie Daniel Ames
Of Georgetown was the founding president of LWV Texas, leading the organization from 1919 to 1923 and shaping its early focus on voter education. She went on to direct national anti-lynching efforts in the South, founding the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching in 1930 — a campaign of white women persuading white women that, by design, excluded Black women from membership, even as it helped drive a sharp decline in lynchings over the following decade.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham
Was the League’s first executive secretary nationally and a driving force behind the 19th Amendment’s passage, both in Texas and in Washington. A pharmacist by training, she later became the first Texas woman to run for the U.S. Senate, in 1928.
Christia Adair
fought for suffrage in Kingsville but was turned away from the polls after the 19th Amendment passed because she was Black. She redirected her energy into the NAACP, becoming a Houston civil rights leader, and was among the first Black women to vote in a Texas primary after Smith v. Allwright struck down the white primary in 1944.
Oveta Culp Hobby
was elected LWV Texas president in 1931. She went on to become the first director of the Women’s Army Corps and the first U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Eva Carrillo de García
A nurse, missionary, and civil rights activist, was active in the League and helped found Austin’s Ladies LULAC chapter in the late 1930s.
Barbara Jordan
Elected to the Texas Senate in 1966, was the first Black state senator since 1883 and the first Black woman from the South elected to the U.S. Congress. She later helped extend the Voting Rights Act’s protections to Hispanic voters.
