McNear: Women’s right to vote provoked heated debate in Mendocino County

Women’s suffrage in California was a decades-long fight. Suffragettes spoke, wrote and petitioned for the right to vote long before the subject first appeared on a statewide ballot in 1896. 

African American activist Naomi Bowman Anderson was a leading voice in the early fight for women’s suffrage in California, speaking to churches across the Bay Area of the importance of Black women obtaining the right to vote. Ida Harper and Clara Shortridge Foltz were also notable suffragettes. The 1896 Amendment was voted down 55.4% to 44.6%.