Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association

The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) was an organization devoted to women's suffrage in Minnesota. From 1881 to 1920, the organization struggled to secure women's right to vote. Its members organized marches, wrote petitions and letters, gathered signatures, gave speeches, and published pamphlets and broadsheets to force the Minnesota Legislature to recognize their right to vote. Due to their efforts, the legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919.

In the 1870s, many women across Minnesota organized local women's suffrage groups. In 1875, the Minnesota legislature recognized women's right to vote in school board elections. However, many women wanted to vote in all elections. Seeing the need for a statewide agency, fourteen women formed the MWSA in Hastings in 1881. The Minnesota chapter was affiliated with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Among the founders of the MWSA were Harriet Bishop and Sarah Burger Stearns. Stearns became the organization's first president. By 1882, the MWSA had grown to two hundred members. In 1885, MWSA-president Martha Ripley convinced NAWSA to hold their annual meeting in Minnesota. This national event demonstrated the importance of the Minnesota chapter to the larger organization. It also drew the attention of Minnesota's male lawmakers.

In 1893, the MWSA convinced the Minnesota Senate to take up women's suffrage. President Julia Bullard Nelson worked with Ignatius Donnelly, a Populist state senator. The Populists regularly supported a women's suffrage plank. Nelson herself was a Populist school superintendent candidate in 1894. Nelson and Donnelly initially sought the vote for women in municipal elections. However, the Senate went further. Its members voted to remove the word "male" from the state's voting requirements. The bill passed thirty-two to nineteen. However, this change did not pass the House. That chamber did not have time to take it up before the legislative session ended. Even if it had passed the House, however, the voters of Minnesota would have had to approve it before it became law.

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