HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — When you think of the women’s suffrage movement, Susan B. Anthony likely comes to mind.
But you may be surprised to learn how women here in Harris County – wives and daughters of Confederate soldiers – also mobilized to help get thousands of women to the polls when they were finally granted the right to vote.
The details were only recently uncovered by the Houston Suffragists Project, a group of genealogists.
Rae Bryant said one of the homes that make up The Heritage Society Museum at Sam Houston Park was a big part of the local movement.
“In 1886, John Finnegan purchased this house and two of his daughters started the suffrage movement in Texas in 1902,” said Bryant.
It was in that home that sisters Annette and Elizabeth “Bessie” Finnigan met with other high society women to discuss the idea of being able to vote.
Bryant said that slowly, the women began to understand that voting was a vehicle for social change, like enacting stricter child labor laws and ensuring food safety.
Meanwhile, Black women in Harris County also began to organize.
“They would meet in churches and their social groups,” Bryant said.
When the 19th amendment was ratified in August of 1920, communities were ready.
But in Texas, it didn’t mean a smooth journey to the polls.
A major hurdle? The state’s poll tax.
“In 2020, the amount it would have cost was about $25 dollars to vote,” Bryant said.
For minorities and impoverished women, Bryant said this would have kept them from voting.
She said attorney Hortense Ward, the first woman to pass the Texas State Bar, went to court and challenged the Texas constitution 9 days before the general election – and she won.
“But [Harris] County officials were not enthusiastic about rural, working women and Black women voting.”
Bryant said they secretly asked poll workers to turn women away who didn’t have a poll tax receipt.
But prominent women in the community signed a petition and went before a judge again – one day before the election – winning a second hearing.
On November 2, 1990, thousands of Harris County women lined up to vote.
Black women voted at the DeGeorge grocery store, which was located at Milam and Clay.
“They stood in line, and their men surrounded them because they were afraid of being attacked,” said Bryant. "This was a chance for a woman who was born in bondage, to vote for free.”
In all, 14,000 women voted in Harris County.
Around 6,000 of the voters were Black women.
Bryant said if you’re a Texan, a Houstonian, a woman – or all of the above – this is local history that makes people proud.
“You are walking on the path that women have been walking on for 175 years.”
To learn more, visit https://houstonsuffragists.org/ and https://www.heritagesociety.org/.