South Dakota History published my article on Woman Suffrage in 2020. It is now available to read online at: A Century Celebration: Woman Suffrage in South Dakota (1868-1918).

“The Women Voted.” The [Rapid City] Republican city convention endorsed the women candidates for the school board nominated by a woman’s meeting held last week, and, with the assistance of the woman vote, elected five out of eight school trusties, two of them being women. About one-fourth of the women in the city voted.

School elections like the one held in Rapid City in the spring of 1890 gave South Dakota women their first but limited opportunity to participate in public voting. Guaranteed by the South Dakota Constitution of 1889, women’s right to vote on school matters was but one step forward in a long quest for full enfranchisement that began with the introduction of the first woman suffrage bill in 1868. Over the next fifty years, suffragists struggled through a number of unsuccessful campaigns to advance arguments that would persuade voters to expand the electorate. Inexperience, infighting, and powerful enemies contributed to their failures.

Finally, in 1918, with the endorsement of both major political parties, weakened opponents, and a persuasive “good citizen” argument, women secured their voting rights through a state constitutional amendment, making South Dakota the sixteenth and final state or territory to approve full woman suffrage. Two years later, the United States would make equal suffrage the law of the land with the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.2