SAN ANTONIO – It was inequity in pay between her and her male colleagues that set pharmacist-turned-activist Minnie Fisher Cunningham on a mission to help Texas women get the right to vote in the early 1900s.
Cunningham helped create the Texas Equal Suffrage Association and served as the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters.
She worked hard, forming critical political relationships and building grassroots support, which helped her accomplish her mission 100 years ago this month.
Cunningham was part of a team, who met with then-President Woodrow Wilson, that successfully encouraged him to release a statement leaning toward suffrage.
Cunningham was the first woman in Texas to run for U.S. Senate in 1928.
She then worked for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gave her the nickname “Minnie Fish.”
She would later go on to run for office herself and spend the rest of her life advocating for women’s rights.
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