Wyoming State Archives

The Wyoming State Archives collects, manages, and preserves public records from Wyoming state and local governments that have long term administrative, legal, and historical value.

When Wyoming became the 23rd state to ratify the amendment, on January 24, 1973, supporters decorated Esther Hobart Morris’s statue at the Wyoming Capitol with flowers. The amendment has yet to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

Some delegates drawing up a new state constitution in 1889 feared that, once Wyoming’s statehood came before Congress, continuing to allow women to vote would jeopardize Wyoming’s chances of becoming a state. And they were right.

Estimates of the numbers of women who voted in the principal towns of Wyoming Territory, and a review of the methods used to make those estimates.

A look at the law, an anecdote from the election and some population statistics.

Not only was Wyoming Territory the first government in the world to pass a law allowing women unrestricted voting rights—the territory and state can claim a number of other firsts as well. See the list for dozens more firsts for Wyoming women.

According to newspapers at the time, Louisa Swain, 70, of Laramie, was the first woman in Wyoming Territory to cast a vote under the new law granting full suffrage to women.

Dr. Willie Black, Chancellor of the Black Student Alliance in 1969, on the Black 14

In October 1969, University of Wyoming Head Coach Lloyd Eaton dismissed 14 black football players from his team when they donned black armbands to protest certain policies of Brigham Young University. The incident stirred controversy in Wyoming and throughout the nation. Here, Dr. Willie Black, who was the chancellor of UW’s Black Student Alliance at the time, shares his recollections of those events, and broader thoughts on race and politics in the United States and the world.