06/10/2026
125 years ago, Wetumpka native Frances Griffin became the first woman to address an Alabama legislative body when she spoke to delegates at the 1901 constitutional convention. In a speech that lasted for more than thirty minutes, Griffin admonished the delegates to make a constitutional provision for women's suffrage. An 1860 graduate of Judson College in Marion, Griffin had been an educator in Montgomery public and private schools for many years before becoming an organizer for the Women's Christian Temperance Union. She later shifted her advocacy to the cause of women's suffrage, eventually serving as president of the Alabama Woman Suffrage Association, a precursor to the Alabama Equal Suffrage Association.
It was in this role that Griffin made her speech to Alabama lawmakers on June 10, 1901. Griffin listed the many ways Alabama's women had contributed to the growth and health of the state, underscoring the unfairness of their lack of voting rights. She passionately dismantled prevailing arguments against suffrage; responding to the claim that franchised women would lose the "silent influence" of moral authority in their homes, she quipped, “Have you ever heard of a man asking to be disenfranchised to increase his influence?"
"The man without a vote is a subject, not a citizen; the woman without a vote is an inferior, not an equal," she said. "Disenfranchisement is no great kindness to women. It is cruelly unjust and makes their burdens heavier."
Griffin's rousing speech impressed but failed to sway the convention's delegates, but Griffin continued advocating for women's suffrage to groups across the country until her death in 1917.
Today, just steps away from the Capitol chamber where she made her speech, Griffin's portrait is on display at the Archives, and a bronze relief sculpture of the historic scene is featured at Alabama Bicentennial Park on Dexter Avenue.
