For our March #ChronAmParty, we want to spotlight a newly digitized pro-Suffrage paper, The Beatrice Daily Express, and a Suffrage paper — some would argue THE Suffrage paper — The Woman’s Tribune.
We have in the past digitized almost the entire run of the Omaha Bee. As a competitor to the Omaha World and the Omaha Herald, precursors of the Omaha World-Herald, the Omaha Bee provides a great insight into the early days of Nebraska’s most populous city. Its controversial founder Edward Rosewater espoused an anti-Suffrage stance. See Wyoming Is Not Benefitted and the April 1, 1894 editorial signed by Rosewater entitled Against Woman Suffrage. After Rosewater’s death in 1906, the Bee moderated somewhat, occasionally running pro- and anti-Suffrage news and editorials side by side, such as this Votes for Women column, featuring articles from the Omaha Woman’s Suffrage Association and the Nebraska Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
To counterbalance the Suffrage coverage in the Bee, and more accurately reflect the robust debate surrounding voting rights in Nebraska, we have recently added The Beatrice Daily Express, which was firmly pro-Suffrage (see Woman’s Suffrage Is at Last an Accomplished Fact). The paper also featured a running column entitled Woman’s World, featuring famous women both nationally and internationally. See examples of “Woman’s World” columns about Scottish paleontologist Marie (May) Ogilvie Gordon and Clara Barton.
The Daily Express famously turned over its publication to women for a week in 1905. “Six Beatrice Women Will Edit the Express All Next Week,” was the headline. The article reads: “Beatrice women are not only good and beautiful; they are intellectual, too. Not because we are tired; not because we have the rheumatism; but because we defer to the ambitious, thinking women of our city, we have opened our editorial columns, and next week six well known and prominent ladies of Beatrice will edit The Express.”
It also prominently featured news about The Woman’s Tribune and its founder Clara B. Colby. (See “Woman Suffragists” and an article on the Nebraska State Woman’s Suffrage Association from the Beatrice Daily Express.) The Woman’s Tribune was founded by Colby in Beatrice, Nebraska and was published from 1883 to 1909. In May 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton proclaimed The Woman’s Tribune the best suffrage paper ever published. In its inaugural issue, The Woman’s Tribune reports of its founding, “At the N. W. S. A. convention in Grand Island, May 9 and 10, 1883, it was decided that the suffragists of the state must have a paper.”
With the motto “Equality Before the Law”, the paper featured articles written by and about prominent suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Fuller. It published from Washington, D.C. during important events in the Suffrage movement, before moving with Colby to Portland, Oregon in 1906. Although Clara did not live to see the 19th Amendment ratified, her Woman’s Tribune was instrumental in pushing America toward the goal of voting rights for women.