These SLO County women were first at polls in 1920s: ‘The greatest thing we can do is vote’
Women voted nationally for the first time a century ago after the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It was a hard-fought battle. Decades of activism followed the Civil War to the dawn of the Roaring Twenties.
Famed suffragette Susan B. Anthony traveled the nation to advocate for women’s right to vote and even spoke in San Luis Obispo in 1896.
It would be decades before women would be elected to office.
To be elected requires an economic and cultural independence that was not available at the flip of a voting lever in 1920.
It took generations achieve these public service firsts. The following were the first women elected or appointed to their respective positions locally, and including one California-wide election:
1962 — Margaret M. McNeil, San Luis Obispo City Council
1976 — Carol Hallett, California State Assembly
1981 — Melanie Billig, San Luis Obispo City Mayor
1982 — Ruth Brackett, San Luis Obispo County Supervisor
1992 — Teresa Estrada-Mullaney, San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge
1992 — Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator
1995 — Andrea Seastrand, U.S. House of Representatives
2003 — Deborah Linden, San Luis Obispo City Police Chief
Reporter Ann Fairbanks wrote this election feature on Oct. 7, 1988, when the presidential race was between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. The following story is edited for length.
SLO women marched proudly to polls in 1920
Frances King doesn’t have to worry about Tuesday’s deadline to register to vote.
She’s been registered since 1920, the year women won the right to vote.
“I was all excited, because there was no telling what could happen,” King recalled. “Maybe I’d be president someday. And that’s really the truth.”
Now a 92-year-old resident of Hllhaven Care Center in San Luis Obispo, King was 21 when the 19th Amendment was passed.
“My mother was in the suffragette movement,” King said. “She was like me. She would listen to everything and thought that women getting the vote was the best thing that ever happened.”
King first registered in Salida, Colorado, as a Republican. She cast her first vote for Warren Harding and hasn’t missed a presidential election since.
“I think the greatest thing we can do is vote, because you feel like you’re part of the government,” King said.
“I’m just a poor, old, sick person at the hospital, but I just feel I’m as big as the rest of them and I have the right.”
Gathered in the nursing home lounge with four fellow residents — all early beneficiaries of the suffragette movement — King held up a little piece of paper.
“I’ve always been faithful to vote,” she said. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve voted for.”
King read off the names: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon.
“I think Roosevelt was wonderful,” King said. “He seemed like we could feel his service.”
The worst?
“I shouldn’t say, but I think it was Richard Nixon. The things that he did. And then he quit the presidency.”
Her choice this time around?
“I’ll vote for the new man,” King said. “but I really think one ought to be president and the other vice-president.”
Should Michael Dukakis be president, then, and George Bush vice-president?
“They could take turns,” she suggested, prompting laughter from her fellow residents.
Here’s what they had to say:
• Stella Janes:
“I first registered to vote in 1916, before the amendment was ratified,” said 97-year-old Stella Janes.
“Some of the states gave women permission to vote sooner and Washington was among them.
“I voted for Woodrow Wilson — his second term — but I registered Republican. I’ve always made it a policy to not vote for the party but the man.”
• Loretta Goodnight:
Loretta Goodnight was too young to vote the first time women won the right, but she remembers accompanying her grandmother to the polls in 1920.
Goodnight, now 87, first voted in 1924.
Elected vice-president in 1923, he became president when Harding died. Goodnight helped elect him to a full term.
• Florence Freyler:
Born in Butte, Montana, 88 years ago, Florence Freyler was about 21 when she first voted.
“My father wasn’t in favor of it very much,” she recalled. “He didn’t believe in women’s rights.
“But I think it’s our right and it’s up to all of us to help make our government a little bit better.”
A lifelong Democrat, she said she plans to vote for her party in November.
• Bobbie Barzen:
“This is the closest I’m going to get to a Democrat,” Bobbie Barzen quipped as she rolled her wheelchair next to Fryler’s.
Barzen is a Republican.
“I had to be one of the first to vote,” she said. “It was in Dallas, Texas. The Big D.”
How old was she?
“I don’t know. I guess I was old enough to vote.”
How old is she now?
“I really don’t know. I’ve told so many lies,” she joked. “I’ll be 93 if I live until the 28th of this month.”
Does she remember who she voted for the first time?
“Heavens no,” Barzen said.
“I’m trying to figure out who to vote for now.”
This story was originally published October 10, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
