Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Living the Legacy 1848-1998. Western Women's Suffrage. Women of the American West led the nation and the world into the struggle for female voting rights, known as the "suffrage movement. " This remarkable suffrage success story began in 1869, when Wyoming Territory approved full and equal suffrage for scarcely one thousand women. Contagious excitement for women's rights spread quickly across the Rocky Mountain landscape. "This Shall be the Land for Women! " cheered western journalist Caroline Nichols Churchill upon Colorado's stunning victory by popular vote in 1893.
Indeed, the West soon came to symbolize political equality and opportunity as a result of women's enfranchisement--awakening the nation in its steady eastward march toward political freedom for women and all citizens. Today in the year 2000, most of the world's women enjoy the right to vote, yet a handful of nations still deny this basic right of citizenship. Women's suffrage succeeded in the West for reasons as diverse as the people and places of the West itself. Susan B. Anthony Center. Wednesdays in Mississippi.