Texas has never lacked for feisty women. Think of M.A. ('Ma') Ferguson, the second female U.S. governor, wife of impeached Gov. James Ferguson.
Think of Lady Bird Johnson and Barbara Bush, advisors to their husbands and effective advocates for their causes.
Other Texas women rose to leadership more independently: Liz Carpenter, advisor to presidents; Frances ('Sissy') Farenthold, State Represen- tative and first major female Vice-Presidential nominee; State Senator and U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan, and Governor Ann Richards. They didn't all see things the same way, and neither did the earlier Texans who enabled their success.
One such pioneer, Minnie Fisher Cunningham (18821964), spanned the Progressive, New Deal, and Post-War eras. From rural Walker County, 'Minnie Fish' eventually ran for Governor and U.S. Senate, though her major contribution was leadership in a raft of organizations for women's suffrage and political reform. As a young wife, she segued from campaigns for pure milk and better sewers to votes for women.
Based at the Fisher family farm, her scope extended far beyond Texas as she worked to influence Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.
Cunningham became the first executive secretary of the National League of Women Voters (LWV).
She lobbied President Wilson for the 19th Amendment for women's suffrage and contributed mightily to Texas being the 9th state to ratify it (McArthur & Smith, 2003).
It came into effect on Aug. 26, 1920, a day now recognized as Women's Equality Day.
It may seem ironic that Cunningham (and the LWV) opposed the women's Equal Rights Amendment, first pro posed in 1922, but in their era, progressives had embraced special labor protections for women. When Congress final ly passed the ERA in 1972 as the 28th Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, Cunningham's era had passed, and the LWV had changed.
Some may be surprised that the Texas Legislature ratified the federal ERA in 1972 as the 11th state and first in the South to do so.
The same year, Texas enshrined a broader equal rights amendment in the state Constitution, thanks to 15 years of advocacy spearheaded by San Antonio feminist lawyer Hermine D. Tobolowsky and the Legislative leadership of Senator Jordan and Representative Farenthold.
Over the next 53 years, despite many changes in political leadership, Texas did not rescind its vote on the federal ERA, though five states took legally questionable steps to revoke theirs.
Though never at the forefront of women's rights, Texas did cede some early advantages to women. They won the right to vote in primary elections in 1916, a huge victory in one-party (Democratic) Texas. And women have been in a relatively strong position in property ownership due to Texas's inheritance of aspects of Spanish Civil law.
Texas is well known as a community property state, where marital earnings belong equally to husband and wife. Another early principle, that a homestead could not be seized for debt unrelated to mortgages on the property itself, kept family farms and ranches intact despite business downturns and losses.
Eastern states influenced by English Common Law originally placed a wife's property under the control of her hus- band, and the first wave of fem inist reform in the 1880s was for married women's property rights.
In contrast, the drafters of the Texas Constitution of 1845 provided a 'specific guarantee to women of the right to retain control of their property'. The current Constitution of 1876 affirms that principle.
Nevertheless, in 1956, Tobolowsky drafted legislation to safeguard women's rights to separate property. This effort led to the Texas Equal Rights Amendment being introduced in every legislative session from 1959 until its passage in 1972.
Our feisty Texas women stand firmly on the shoulders of foremothers who, from Spanish colonial times to the present, have made women an integral force in Texas public life.
As of this session, women make up a third of the Texas Legislature, a high for Texas, though below the national average.
And the national struggle continues to recognize women's equal rights in the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the ERA).
Reference: McArthur, J.N. & Smith, H.L. (2003). Minnie Fisher Cunningham: A Suffragist's Life in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
