Election Special
Hattie
continued from page 9
“It appears that Hattie and Emerson
did not have children, but we have not
determined if there are any friends or
family who would like to be involved.
And we are historians so we’re always
looking for a better photograph or a
more accurate story.”
So far, only one photograph of Hattie
Redmond has been located. The most
recent news story about Redmond, is
from 1941. The Oregonian reported
that Redmond had sued John F. Ebele
for $15,000 after his car hit her on S.E.
Powell Boulevard at 33rd Avenue.
Redmond is described in the Bosco-
Milligan Foundation’s 1997
‘Cornerstones of Community,’ as a jan-
itor at the Federal Building. Her 1913
voter registration card says she was a
hairdresser. What’s beyond doubt is
that she was a leader in the movement
for equal rights.
“The important thing is that obviously
African American women were battling
both racism and sexism,” says Kimberly
Jensen, the Western Oregon University
professor who is vice president of the
Oregon Women’s History Consortium,
which runs the Century of Action proj-
ect.
“Their work is very significant. They
organized among five churches and
they had links to the National Associa-
tion of Colored Women’s Clubs. So
they were very much aware of the suf-
fragist movement here in Portland, but
also they were linked to the national
movement.”
Then as now, activists had to work to
build support for their cause.
“At the Aug. 1 meeting of the Central
Campaign Committee, the group
announced that it had doubled its
membership and that ‘the editor of
their paper, The Advocate, favored the
movement,’” writes Professor Jensen
in her Oregon Historical Quarterly arti-
cle about suffragist Esther Pohl
Lovejoy and the 1912 campaign, “Nei-
ther Head nor Tail to the Campaign.”
Getting supporters to meetings wasn’t
always easy.
“Mrs. Redmond says that while there
were 2,500 women of voting age in
the city, Just 14 women attended the
meeting,” The Oregonian reported,
Sept. 17, 1912. “She attributed this
largely to the influence of their hus-
bands and ignorance of the benefits to
be derived from the franchise.”
Black Women Key to 1912 Victory
The law that gave the vote to Oregon
women did pass in 1912. The margin
was small, 52 percent in favor, com-
pared to just 37 percent when the
same issue was on the ballot in 1910.
Jensen argues that the victory came
about because the movement built a
coalition that crossed race and class
lines. Black Portlanders and also the
Chinese American community, were a
key part of that strategy.
In fact, Black women had been push-
ing hard for voting rights from the
earliest days of the women’s suffrage
movement. In 1872, along with
women across the nation, Mary Beatty
and Abigail Scott Duniway turned out
to the polls and tried to vote. Beatty
was described in news reports as a
“colored” woman.
But racism became more of a problem
toward the turn of the century and
Black women were excluded from
working with White suffragists.
Duniway rejected confrontation in
favor of winning over powerful male
voters with humor and gentle persua-
sion. The new generation embraced
in-your-face activism and coalition
building.
“In Portland, women argued that they
needed the vote to promote legislation
to build clean communities and to
ensure pure food and milk,” Jensen
says.
Food safety was an important issue.
Page 10 The Portland Skanner May 9, 2012
Esther Pohl Lovejoy, a doctor and from
1905-1909 Portland’s City Health Offi-
cer, complained that, “for several years
the women of this city were unable to
secure any protection” when “hun-
dreds of little children” died from “an
impure milk supply.”
Pohl Lovejoy’s own son Freddy was
just 7 years old when he died from
drinking “tainted milk.”
“Having the vote meant you could
have your say on a whole range of
issues,” Dilg says. “It gave them a tool
that women didn’t then have, to make
their voices known.”
Did Other Barriers to Voting Exist?
Finding out about the lives of people
of color living in Portland 100 years
ago is challenging. Jan Dilg and Kim-
berly Jensen say that to the best of
their knowledge, Black women were
voting after 1912.
Professor Darrell Millner at Portland
State University says Black men were
voting from 1870. That’s the year the
15th Amendment was enacted, ban-
ning voting restrictions on race
grounds. Millner says Black women
were voting from 1912, eight years
before the passage of the 19th amend-
ment gave women across the nation
the right to vote.
Proving that Redmond herself proba-
bly did vote, Terry D. Baxter a
Multnomah County administrator,
located a photograph of Hattie Red-
mond’s voter registration card, filed in
1913.
Yet Oregon has a murky history of
racial discrimination. From its earliest
days, exclusion laws prevented Black
Americans from settling or owning
property in the state. And it was not
until 1927 that the ban on Black resi-
dents was removed from the
constitution.
Efforts to end discrimination in public
places were rebuffed as late as 1950,
when a move to outlaw discrimination
in public places throughout the city of
Portland was defeated. Beatrice Can-
nady, the journalist and co-editor of
‘The Advocate,’ lobbied Salem on the
issue as early as 1919. Decades later,
after a campaign by the Portland
NAACP with support from Sen. Mark
Hatfield, Oregon’s Public Accommoda-
tions Law was passed in April 1953.
If you have a connection to Hattie Red-
mond or any information to offer,
Century of Action wants to hear from
you. Email fo@centuryofaction.org If
you have any photographs, writings or
family stories about the first Black vot-
ers, The Skanner News would love to
hear from you.