Gov. Lurleen Wallace addresses an audience at the dedication of Lake Lurleen in Tuscaloosa County in 1967. (Alabama Department of Archives and History) Alabama’s legislature voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment on September 8, 1953, thirty-three years after ratification by three-fourths of the states gave women in the United States the right to vote. During debate in the US Congress in 1919, the amendment faced strong opposition in Alabama. Senators Oscar W. Underwood and John H. Bankhead argued that control of voting rights should belong to the states. Anti-suffrage organizations, including the Alabama Woman’s Anti-Ratification League, campaigned against ratification. On September 22, 1919, the Alabama legislature passed a joint resolution rejecting the amendment. Despite this opposition to suffrage, some Alabama women claimed a place in politics by running for public office long before the state endorsed their participation at the polls.
On the national level, Gov. Bibb Graves appointed his wife, Dixie Bibb Graves, to fill a vacancy in the US Senate from 1937 to 1938. The first woman elected to a statewide office in Alabama was Sibyl Pool, who served as secretary of state. Gov. Chauncey Sparks first appointed her to the position in 1944, during her second term in the House of Representatives. Pool then ran for a full term as secretary of state and defeated Dan Thomas for the position in 1946. Following her example, more women entered races for statewide office in the 1950s and 1960s. So many women won election to the offices of secretary of state, state auditor, and state treasurer that they became known as “the ladies’ offices.” By the time Lurleen Wallace became Alabama’s first female governor in 1967, women held almost half of the constitutional offices.
A common argument against women’s suffrage was that women should focus on the home and the preservation of traditional family life. In the 1960s women running for statewide office used their experience in the home as evidence of their qualification for public service. For her 1966 state treasurer campaign, Agnes Baggett distributed litterbags printed with the slogan, “YOU KEEP ALABAMA CLEAN AND I’LL HELP KEEP THE CAPITOL CLEAN.” An image on the litterbag showed Baggett in an apron, sweeping up trash, with the caption, “Housewifey Politician.” The campaign for cleaning up the capitol was successful, and Baggett’s later campaigns continued to use the homemaker theme. Additionally, Baggett touched on the housekeeping nature of politics in a 1962 speech for the Democratic Women’s Luncheon. She argued that politics is actually the housekeeping of democracy, and she illustrated that women were instrumental in advancing child welfare and public health initiatives in Alabama.
Currently, two women hold statewide office in Alabama, and twenty women hold positions in the state legislature. (There are ten statewide elective executives and 140 seats in the state legislature.) According to a survey conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, Alabama ranks forty-sixth in the country for women serving in the state legislature.
A common argument against women’s suffrage was that women should focus on the home and the preservation of traditional family life. In the 1960s women running for statewide office used their experience in the home as evidence of their qualification for public service. For her 1966 state treasurer campaign, Agnes Baggett distributed litterbags printed with the slogan, “YOU KEEP ALABAMA CLEAN AND I’LL HELP KEEP THE CAPITOL CLEAN.” An image on the litterbag showed Baggett in an apron, sweeping up trash, with the caption, “Housewifey Politician.” The campaign for cleaning up the capitol was successful, and Baggett’s later campaigns continued to use the homemaker theme. Additionally, Baggett touched on the housekeeping nature of politics in a 1962 speech for the Democratic Women’s Luncheon. She argued that politics is actually the housekeeping of democracy, and she illustrated that women were instrumental in advancing child welfare and public health initiatives in Alabama.
Currently, two women hold statewide office in Alabama, and twenty women hold positions in the state legislature. (There are ten statewide elective executives and 140 seats in the state legislature.) According to a survey conducted by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, Alabama ranks forty-sixth in the country for women serving in the state legislature.
Author
Dorothy Fouche is head of the government records collections at the Alabama Department of Archives and History. She holds an MA in public history with a concentration in archival management from Middle Tennessee State University and an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
This feature was previously published in Issue #120, Spring 2016.
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