United States
I am a historian who teaches in the California Community College system. I write on the history of women's suffrage and women's rights, particularly in the nineteenth century American West.
Pieces I've Written
On the morning of September 6, 1870, Wyoming women prepared themselves for a momentous day-the first election since the Territorial Legislature had passed the world's first woman suffrage bill. Among the voters were women from Wyoming's Black communities. They were the first Black women in U.S. history to vote.
Jennifer Helton draws back the curtain to discuss her investigation into Black women voters in Wyoming, 1870.
The first woman to serve in the Wyoming legislature, Mary Godat Bellamy laid the groundwork for future generations of women in politics. Inspired by the first generation of Wyoming's suffragists-such as her childhood babysitter Esther Morris-Bellamy devoted her life to women's rights and reform movements. Read more about Bellamy's remarkable life.
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Celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment with this special book focused on the fight for women's rights. Developed in collaboration with the National Park Service, Women Making History contains 13 new essays offering fresh insights on the complex history of the women's suffrage movement and the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
"Essential for understanding the larger picture of woman suffrage . . . A masterpiece of collective scholarship, Equality at the Ballot Box is . . . original, seminal and unreservedly recommended."-Midwest Book Review " Equality at the Ballot Box makes an important contribution to western women's history and the history of woman suffrage.
Rebecca J. Mead, Jean Ford and James W. Hulse, "The First Battle for Woman Suffrage in Nevada: 1869-1871-Correcting and Expanding the Record," Jennifer Helton, "So Great an Innovation," in Jill Mulvay Derr, "Eliza R. Snow and the Woman Question," in Lola Van Wagenen, "In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise," in Madsen, Thomas G.
Jennifer Helton is Assistant Professor of History at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. She has written on the history of the woman suffrage movement in the west for a variety of outlets, including High Country News, WyoFile, and the National Park Service.
One hundred and fifty years ago today, Gov. John Allen Campbell signed the bill that granted the women of Wyoming Territory full political equality - the right to vote and to serve in public office. With the stroke of his pen, Campbell made Wyoming into what 19th century suffragists called "The First True Republic."
2019 marks the 150 th anniversary of the passage of Wyoming's woman suffrage law. Wyoming's women were voting and holding public office decades before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Indeed, the successful implementation of woman suffrage in Wyoming and other western states was critical to the nationwide success of the women's movement for voting rights.
On Sept. 6, 1870 - Election Day - officials in Wyoming were concerned. The previous year, a violent mob in South Pass had attempted to prevent African American men from voting. And since then, the territorial Legislature had granted full political equality to its women citizens.
On 10 December 1869, John Allen Campbell, the Republican governor of Wyoming Territory, signed the bill that made Wyoming the first government in the history of the United States to grant full voting rights to its women citizens. Introduced by Democrat William Bright and passed by Wyoming's all-Democratic legislature, the law was a critical step on the road to the Nineteenth Amendment.
Pieces in Which I am Quoted
By the time most American women finally secured their constitutional right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, most women in Western states had been voting for years, even decades. The newly formed Western states, unencumbered by the institutions and traditions of the East, and hungry for new settlers, demonstrated a progressivism that led the nation.
Written and directed by Caldera Productions and co-produced with Wyoming PBS. With the national campaign for a women's suffrage amendment stalled, the thinly populated Wyoming Territory in 1869 became the first democracy in the modern world to recognize a woman's unqualified right to vote.
Even though women in Wyoming were allowed to vote, run for office and get involved in politics back in 1870, it took much longer after that for women of color to get elected. The first Black woman to get elected to office in Wyoming was Elizabeth Byrd.