'Sphere of Usefulness': New Mexico and women's suffrage

About 150 women gathered to march through Santa Fe on Oct. 21, 1915. As hundreds watched, they drove and walked from the Chamber of Commerce on Palace Avenue past Lincoln Avenue through the Plaza and onto Water Street. They went around the capitol, past the old Palace, and finally to the home of Sen. Thomas Benton Catron.

There, these women hoped that Catron would hear their pleas for voting rights and return to Washington, D.C., and his post on the Senate Chair Woman Suffrage Committee with a more enlightened perspective. Ultimately, they wanted Catron to support the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, finally giving women the right to vote. Catron, though, was unimpressed.
“All these suffragists had come to New Mexico, these are nationally known suffragists, and they came to New Mexico to appeal to Catron,” says Dr. Meredith Machen, past president of the League of Women Voters of New Mexico. These national suffragist organizations also wanted local voices to make an impression, not just with Catron but with their fellow New Mexicans. Emma St. Clair Thompson of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage recruited Nina Otero-Warren and Aurora Lucero-White Lea to speak at the event. For her part, Otero-Warren came from a successful family with deep roots in New Mexico and was the most important suffragist in the state. Lucero also had a distinguished lineage: Her father was secretary of state in New Mexico. Later in life, Lucero-White Lea became a professor of Spanish at Highlands University.

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And see related article on p. 8 of the June Voter by Meredith Machen, LWVNM Centennial Chair

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