Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so.
Governor J. A. A. Burnquist opened the 1919 Minnesota legislative session on January 8 with his inaugural address, expressing his desire to send a memorial to the US Senate in support of the federal woman suffrage amendment. The US House of Representatives had passed the amendment the previous January.
The majority of Minnesota suffrage supporters, following the lead of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, clearly favored seeking the federal amendment. They recognized the difficulty of getting such a controversial state constitutional amendment passed by public vote, though a small number of suffragists continued to push for a state amendment.
On January 9, Representative Charles H. Warner of Aitkin introduced a state constitutional suffrage bill. The House passed the bill ninety-six to thirty but it failed in the Senate by a margin of nineteen votes. Senators Frank L. Cliff of Ortonville and James E. Madigan of Maple Lake sponsored a similar bill in the senate that never reached a vote.
In response to the governor’s address, Representative Theodore Christianson, Jr. of Dawson introduced a concurrent resolution to Congress to approve the federal woman suffrage amendment on January 13. The House of Representatives adopted the resolution on January 22 by a vote of 100 to 28. The senate passed the resolution the next day with a vote of forty-nine to seven. Governor J. A. A. Burnquist signed it two days later. In spite of this effort, the US Senate voted down the federal suffrage amendment by just one vote on February 10.
Perhaps anticipating this, Representative Christianson introduced a bill on January 23 granting women the right to vote for presidential electors, regardless of the outcome of the federal suffrage amendment. The bill did not give women the right to vote for state, county, or municipal offices, which would only come with full federal suffrage. Both bodies of the legislature passed the bill.
The state senate considered two other pieces of legislation pertaining to female voting rights. One bill proposed extending woman suffrage to primary elections. A second bill offered women “the right to vote for certain offices and on certain propositions and matters pertaining to women.” Both bills were postponed indefinitely.
On May 21, the US House of Representatives passed the Nineteenth Amendment resolution a second time by a vote of 304 to 90. The US Senate followed suit on June 4, with a vote of fifty-six to twenty-five. Suffragists nationwide turned their efforts to lobbying state governments to gain the three-fifths majority of states needed for federal ratification.
In Minnesota, supporters met on the steps of the state capitol on June 9 to celebrate the the congressional victory and to encourage state lawmakers to meet in a special session to ratify the amendment. An estimated 1,500 women braved pouring rain to attend the event, which featured parades and speeches by Governor Burnquist, Maria Sanford, Senator Ole Sageng, and others.
Governor Burnquist was reluctant to call a special session for the suffrage amendment until he felt assured that enough states were committed to meet the thirty-six-state approval requirement. By early August, he was confident of success and called for a special session to begin September 8.
On the first day of the special session, both the House and Senate passed the suffrage bill by a total vote of 180 to 11, ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Jubilant suffragists held a parade to the capitol where they served a chicken dinner to thank legislators for their support, followed by a women’s banquet at the St. Paul Hotel. Suffrage leaders witnessed the governor’s signing of the bill on September 12.
It would be nearly a year before federal ratification of the amendment took place. Though it technically allowed all women to vote, barriers like literacy tests and poll taxes continued to keep many women of color disenfranchised in the decades to come.