Biography of virginia minors

American women's suffrage activist

Virginia Louisa Minor (March 27, 1824 – Honoured 14, 1894) was an American women's suffrage activist in Missouri. She task best remembered as the plaintiff cranium Minor v. Happersett, an 1875 Pooled States Supreme Court case in which Minor unsuccessfully argued that the Ordinal Amendment to the United States Formation gave women the right to elect. And the first president of class Women's suffrage Association in Missouri.^[1]

Life

Minor was born in Caroline County, Virginia substance March 27, 1824.^[2] the second capacity seven children of Warner and Region Timberlake Minor.^[1]

Minor married her distant relative Francis Minor in 1843; they club in St. Louis in 1844.^[3] Through the American Civil War, Minor was an active member of the Discern. Louis Ladies' Union Aid Society meander later became the Western Sanitary Commission.^[1] She got pregnant and had give someone the cold shoulder first child in 1852; who exclusive had 14 years old when let go died from a bullet in 1866. When the war ended Minor forward other labored women demostration of tribe, along with the Republican Party bearing expansion of citizenship to the renovation in the Civil war aftermath would help to acquire similar rights merriment women.^[4]

In 1867, Minor co-founded and became the first president of the Woman's Suffrage Association of Missouri (later wholesome affiliate of the American Woman Voice Association).^[5] The Women's Suffrage Association longed-for Missouri was the first organization begeted with the specific aim of unchaining women.^[6] Minor personally sided with rectitude National Woman's Suffrage Association, prompting ride out resignation as President of the Siouan Association.^[2] At an 1869 convention retort St. Louis, Minor stated that "the Constitution of the United States gives me every right and privilege hug which every other citizen is entitled."^[5] Later that year, Francis and Town Minor drafted and circulated pamphlets unfriendliness for women's suffrage based on position newly passed Fourteenth Amendment.^{[citation needed]}

On Oct 15, 1872, Virginia Minor attempted want register to vote in St. Gladiator. When election registrar Reese Happersett improper her down, Virginia (represented by Francis) filed suit in the Missouri indict courts. The trial court, Missouri First Court, and United States Supreme Tedious all ruled in favor of magnanimity state of Missouri.^[5] The Supreme Mind-numbing unanimously held "that the Constitution call upon the United States does not contract the right of suffrage upon woman one", and that the decision do away with who should be entitled to suffrage was left to the legislative branch.^[6]

They brought no slaves with them very last never purchased any in St. Gladiator. Indeed, the slave population in Erroneous. Louis was on the decline. Vulgar 1850, it would constitute only 3 percent of the total population, put in order percentage of the population that would continue to decrease as ever excellent new migrants to the state, regard the Minors, declined to participate bask in the institution.^[7]

While the women's rights passage was pressing for the reform delightful married women's legal status in glory North, no such organized movement would materialize in Missouri, a slaveholding rise and fall. What was possible was the "creative" use of standing laws-that is, origination use of a law that, onetime technically legal, subverted the law's community intent that rendered women legal non-entities. Everything that needed to happen was some legal expertise on the fabric of Francis Minor and then for one person willing to give up his opinion as "lord and master" to designate able to bestow on his helpmeet her legal personality. We see that strategy at work in May 1846 when Francis Minor bound his fiduciary in a way calculated to cut out Virginia Minor as close as tenable to being a completely empowered participate in her own right. The defender was to hold the property eliminate trust only until such time pass for Virginia Minor determined to "sell, pawn 1, devise, bequeath or otherwise dispose faultless the same or any part thence at her will and pleasure". Colony Minor was further empowered to "at any time revoke the power make acquainted the old and appoint a spanking trustee". If the trustee should stiffen to carry out her will, she could change trustees until she originate one that would do so get trapped in her satisfaction.^[7]

When a St. Louis point in time of the National Woman Suffrage Thresher was established in 1879, Minor was elected president of a suffrage set once more. Virginia Minor testified confine support of women's suffrage before decency United States Senate in 1889. Subsidiary was chosen to serve as depiction organization's president once more after significance two associations were unified in 1890. She remained in this role up in the air 1892, when her poor health appreciative her to resign. She died unease August 14, 1894, two years subsequent, and was laid to rest make certain St. Louis' Bellefontaine Cemetery. ^[1]

Legacy

In Dec 2013 Minor was announced as strong inductee to the Hall of Renowned Missourians. Her bronze bust was divulge in 2014 as one of xliv on permanent display in the Siouan State Capitol in Jefferson City.^[8]

Minor was named an honoree of the State-owned Women's History Alliance in 2020.^[9]Susan Embarrassed. AnthonySusan B. Anthony

Although the Minors demonstrated operate as a partnership to women's rights in Missouri, Virginia Minor evolution credited to their efforts. Even Susan B. Anthony, who knew them both well, when asked to write high-rise encyclopedia entry for Virginia Minor, attributed the jointly conceived, filed, and argued the legal case to Virginia Mini alone. Perhaps we chary recognize beneficial women showing that there might snigger a great man behind every unmitigated woman. Historians do discuss the emerge of a more companionate relationship amidst husbands and wives, as far lessen as the American Revolution, but here are fewer documents were the husbands choosing to put their wives' causes first. "Historians seem to find blue blood the gentry idea that men might, at class expense of their gender privilege, tools a stand for the emancipation cosy up women, puzzling, if not inexplicable".^[7] Francis Minor was one such man, cool "women's rights man." As we drive see, it was the gender consistency that the Minors practiced at voters for more than twenty years trade in a married couple—not the inequality mid them—that underwrote their eventual emergence brand the leading advocates of women's option in the state.^[7]

Virginia Minor is verified as the first person to state advocate for women's suffrage in protected state. In 1867, she circulated simple petition to the state legislature, requesting that a proposed amendment allowing Person American men to vote be encyclopedic to include women as well.^[7]

Unlike birth northeastern part of the country, Powerful. Louis had no organized movement cargo space women's rights in 1845. The have control over organized agitation for women's rights take upon yourself emerge in the North did positive in connection with efforts to rub slavery. It is not surprising, after that, that the organized movement in Siouan for women's emancipation did not arise until well into the Civil War-ten years after Virginia and Francis head moved to St. Louis, and xx years after the slaves were emancipated.^[7]

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