Laura Clay
| Laura Clay | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 9, 1849 White Hall (Richmond, Kentucky) |
| Died | June 29, 1941 (aged 92) Kentucky |
| Occupation | Suffragist, orator, politician |
Laura Clay (February 9, 1849 – June 29, 1941), co-founder and first president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, was a leader of the American women's suffrage movement. A powerful orator, she was active in the Democratic Party and had important leadership roles in local, state and national politics. In 1920 at the Democratic National Convention, she was the first woman to have her name placed into nomination for the presidency at the convention of a major political party.
A daughter of Cassius Marcellus Clay and his wife Mary Jane Warfield, Clay was born at their estate, White Hall, near Richmond, Kentucky. The youngest of four daughters, Laura was raised largely by her mother, due to her father's long absences as he pursued his political career and activities as an abolitionist. Clay was educated at Sayre School in Lexington, Kentucky, Mrs. Sarah Hoffman's Finishing School in New York City, the University of Michigan, and the University of Kentucky.
Clay's parents divorced in 1878, leaving Mary Jane Clay homeless after she had managed Whitehall for 45 years. This inequality galvanized Clay's older sisters, Mary, Annie, and Sallie into joining the women's rights movement, and Laura followed.
In 1888 Clay and Josephine K. Henry founded the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, of which Clay served as president until 1912. She was succeeded by her cousin Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. The organization lobbied successfully for a range of legislative reforms, such as protecting married women's wages and property, requiring state women's mental hospitals to have female doctors on staff, inducing Transylvania University and Central University to admit women students, raising the age of marriage consent for girls to 16 from 12, and establishing juvenile courts. They also inspired the University of Kentucky to build its first dormitory for women.
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