“Childless, short-haired communists”

Jane McCallum was featured in an exhibit about women’s suffrage at this year’s State Fair of Texas. Texas, I was pleased to discover, was the first state in the South to ratify the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920.

McCallum, a suffragette, lobbied the men in the Texas legislature, the exhibit explained.

“The fact that she had four children helped counter the contention of many legislative opponents that all suffragettes were ‘childless, short-haired communists.’”
–Joy