On this day in Alabama history: Women’s rights leader dies
The Alabama Equal Suffrage Association (AESA), consisting of members of Selma and Birmingham suffrage organizations, joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association to lead the fight for white women's right to vote in Alabama. The state legislature would not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, but in 1920 suffrage was achieved and the AESA was dissolved. (From Encyclopedia of Alabama, courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)
July 8, 1960
Elizabeth “Bessie” Moore, 93, died in a Florida nursing home July 8, 1960, and was buried in the Broken Arrow Community Cemetery in Alabama. Forty-six years earlier, she was president of the Coal City Equal Suffrage Association and represented Coal City at the second Alabama suffrage convention. Moore delivered a convention lecture entitled “Woman and Changing Conditions.” The Demopolis native at an early age moved with her family to St. Clair County, where she would live until retiring in the 1930s. She helped found Broken Arrow Baptist Church, where she taught Sunday school for nearly 60 years.
Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.
