Women's Rights in Wyoming

Travel with Bennett-Watt and learn about women's rights in Wyoming.

Women's Rights in Wyoming Male: To many Wyoming maybe the cowboy State. To others the equality escape has more significance. On the other side of the State in Cheyenne the capital, Wyoming State Treasurer Cynthia Lummis. Cynthia Lummis: So Wyoming is the first government in the world to grant women the right to vote. That happened in 1870. A woman named Louisa Swain cast the first ballot in Laramie Wyoming. And Wyoming has continuously since that time granted women the right to vote. And so even though the Constitution was amended I believe in about 1920 we beat that by fifty years. Wyoming had a first woman governor of any State, Nellie Taylor Ross in the late 1920’s. She succeeded her husband in office who had died and then run for re-election and was defeated. But she still gives service as Governor, filling out his unexpired term. We currently have the first woman president of our State Senate. So that took a much longer time April Brimmer Kunz is her name. She’s from Laramie County from Heron, China. A woman named Verda James from Casper was our first woman Speaker of the House. We currently have our first woman on the Supreme Court here in Wyoming so lots of States beat us to that. Her name is Marilyn Kite. Esther Hobart Morris was very significant in women’s suffrage, first woman Justice of the Peace. We also had here in Wyoming the first woman bailiff and the first woman to be subpoenaed to serve on a jury. All those women were based in Laramie, Wyoming as well. Female 1: What is it about Laramie, Wyoming that brings the women out from cover? Cynthia Lummis: I don’t know if it was because there were lots of educators in Laramie or whether there was just a shortage of men in Laramie that cause it to be selective in women suffrage but that was a hot bed of women firsts in Wyoming. In Jackson, Wyoming, Jackson Hall had the first all woman city council and that has an interesting story behind it as well. Female 1: So what were the men doing while the women were running for office? Cynthia Lummis: I don’t know if they were ranching, banking or engaged in some other activity to build the state but there were so few people in Wyoming that it took literally every one to make it function well. Male: Basically, while the men were out taming the West, in many cases the women were running it.