Susan B. Anthony, the American abolitionist and leader in the women’s suffrage movement, spoke to a large crowd in Hopkinsville on Oct. 22, 1879.
Anthony, who was 59 years old, gave her speech at Mozart Hall, which stood on South Virginia Street near Sixth Street, said Alissa Keller, executive director of the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County. (The hall was destroyed by fire approximately three years later.)
A story about her Hopkinsville speech ran in The South Kentuckian newspaper.
A writer for the newspaper described Anthony’s interactions with the audience:
In the course of her lecture, she put the vote to the house on the female suffrage question, and it was overwhelmingly negative by first the men, and then the ladies. Miss Susan’s face flushed for a moment but she quickly recovered her self possession and observed, “Well all I have to say for the people of this town is that they haven’t studied this question as they ought.”
Leaving no doubt about the paper’s stand, the story also concluded:
Our people don’t want suffrage. The men don’t want the woman dabbling in politics, and the women themselves don’t want to vote. They have no business with the ballot. If a woman stays at home, makes it a happy one, raises her children right, and faithfully performs duties of a wife and mother she has no time to meddle with politics. As for the unmarried ones none of them would be as much as 21 years old, till they were too old to take any interest in politics.
It would be another 35 years, in 1914, before Hopkinsville had a local women’s suffrage league, said Keller.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
