Perrin Thompson kisses her ballot for luck and does a little dance before dropping it into a drop site outside of the Multnomah County Elections Division in Portland, Ore., Nov. 8, 2022. That year, all three major candidates for Oregon governor were women.
Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB
This election season, we’re looking back at the fight for women’s suffrage. When Oregon became a state, only white men could vote. Women worked for more than four decades to get men to vote for their rights.
Racism hampered the movement, as many white women didn’t want to work with women of color in their activism. Black women formed their own groups and pushed hard for ballot access. Only then did the movement have enough momentum to succeed.
Oregon women won the right to vote in 1912, eight years before women’s suffrage became a national law. Many barriers kept women of color from voting until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Nearly 80 years after women won the right to vote in Oregon, the state finally elected its first female governor, Barbara Roberts. In 2022, the three major candidates for Oregon governor were all women.
You can watch the Oregon Experience documentary about women’s suffrage in Oregon here.
Listen to all episodes of The Evergreen podcast here.