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As the November 2012 Presidential election draws near, American voters are faced with many issues to deliberate and decisions to be made. Precisely 100 years ago, only American men were allowed to cast their votes for the next president. While women across the country would have to wait until 1921 to be considered eligible voters in national elections, women in Oregon were granted equal suffrage in state elections in November 1912, making this year’s election the Oregon women’s suffrage centennial.

The campaign for women’s suffrage in Oregon began as early as 1870, and the issue was raised on the Oregon ballot six times (1884, 1900, 1906, 1908, 1910, and 1912), more than any other state (Jensen). The most prominent leader of the Oregon suffrage movement  was Abigail Scott Duniway (1834-1915), best known for her suffragist newspaper, The New Northwest, published in Portland, Oregon from 1871-1887.

Duniway was born in Illinois and came to Oregon via the Oregon Trail with her family in 1852. After the long journey, she and her husband settled on a farm in Albany where she opened a millinery shop. As a female business owner, Duniway was frustrated that she was required to pay taxes, yet she was not allowed to vote. Additionally, she heard stories of abuse and disenfranchisement from many other women, and she decided to start campaigning for equal suffrage. Duniway moved her family to Portland in 1871, where she began to publish The New Northwest, advocating for women’s rights, human and workers’ rights, and equal suffrage.

Duniway’s brother, Harvey Scott, was also in the newspaper industry, although he did no favors for his sister. Scott was the editor of the Portland Oregonian from 1866 to 1872, and he generally opposed Duniway’s stance on political, economic, and social issues. The siblings would argue back and forth through their respective newspapers, thus influencing their subscribers either for or against equal suffrage. If it had not been for Scott’s far-reaching editorials in the Oregonian, the issue of women’s suffrage in Oregon might have passed long before 1912.

After years of persistent lobbying and rallying support for equal suffrage across the state and all over the Pacific Northwest, Duniway finally saw her dream become reality. On November 5, 1912, the men of Oregon voted 52% in favor of granting Oregon women the right to vote. At the age of 78, Duniway authored and signed Oregon’s Equal Suffrage Proclamation on November 30, 1912, and she has since been known as “Oregon’s Mother of Equal Suffrage.”

As we cast our votes this year, let us remember that Duniway  and countless women in Oregon, the Pacific Northwest, and across the United States campaigned tirelessly to achieve the equal voting rights that we enjoy today.

Works cited:

Jensen, Kimberly. “Woman Suffrage in Oregon.” The Oregon Encyclopedia. Oregon History and Culture. Portland State University. 2008-2012.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program is excited to announce the addition of Portland’s historic suffragist newspaper The New Northwest to our free online collection of digitized and keyword-searchable content at Historic Oregon Newspapers!

For sixteen years, between 1871 and 1887, The New Northwest blazed a progressive and iconoclastic trail, bringing much-needed attention to controversial issues such as suffrage, worker’s rights, temperance, racial inequality, civil liberties, immigration, and human rights.  The paper advocated tirelessly for the equal rights of American Indians and Chinese immigrants even as the general press remained openly hostile to such causes.  Most famously, the paper was instrumental in agitating for the nascent women’s suffrage movement in the Pacific Northwest.

In addition to its influential and highly political journalistic content, The New Northwest also served as a significant publisher of quality literary content.  Poems, serialized fiction, and literary non-fiction reflecting the newspaper’s progressive political stance were published alongside regional and national news.  Following a change in ownership in 1887, the paper continued for another two years as a purely literary journal.

The uncommonly forward-thinking agenda of this firebrand newspaper was coordinated under the guidance of Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon’s “Mother of Equal Suffrage”.  Duniway saw The New Northwest as an instrument of social change, a tool for the “[e]nfranchisment of women and full emancipation of speech, press and people from every fetter of law or custom that retards the free mental and physical growth of the highest form of humanity.”

Though women’s suffrage in Oregon was not to become a reality during the run of The New Northwest, Duniway would continue to fight tirelessly for the cause.  In 1912, following a lifetime of struggle, Duniway was asked by Governor Oswald West to author and sign the Oregon Proclamation of Equal Suffrage.  This historic and hard-won victory was sealed when Duniway registered, at the age of 79, as the first female voter in Multnomah County.