Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1847-1919) was an African-American suffragist instrumental in the fight for equal suffrage in Colorado. She was a founding member of the Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association of Colorado in 1893. As treasurer of the association, she maintained its finances through the campaign for suffrage.

Before moving to Colorado, she lived in Boston, where she established a circulating library and became a public schoolteacher. In 1882 she married Horwell N. Ensley and they moved to Washington DC to join the faculty at Howard University. Later they moved to Mississippi, where she was on the faculty at Acorn University. In the early 1890's, the Ensleys moved to Denver.

She founded the Colored Women's Republican Club and was one of the founding members of the Women's League of Denver in 1894. In the same year, with the help of new African-American women voters, Joseph Henry Stuart was elected one of Colorado's first African-American legislators and helped to pass an important civil rights bill, and in December 1894 she wrote about the work of colored women in the election in an article entitled "Election Day" in The Woman's Era (the official publication of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

In 1904, she founded the Colorado Association of Colored Women's Clubs, an organization formed from the African American women's clubs of the state.^[1]^[2]

References[edit]

^ Rounsville, Sarah. "Elizabeth P. Ensley: Suffragette and African American Women's Club Leader". Intermountain Histories. Brigham Young University. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
^ Jameson, Elizabeth; Armitage, Susan Hodge (1997). Writing the range : race, class, and culture in the women's West. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press. p. 374. ISBN 0-8061-2929-8.

External Links[edit]

"Elizabeth Piper Ensley: Activist". Colorado Virtual Library. History Colorado. Retrieved 29 September 2022. She helped fight for black women's rights during a difficult time.
Blake, Lee. "Elizabeth Piper Ensley". Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the SouthCoast. New Bedford Historical Society. Born in New Bedford to parents who had been enslaved, educator Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1847-1919) was an active leader in African American women's clubs and the women's suffrage movement in Colorado. She played a major role in gaining that state the right to vote years before the passage of the federal amendment.
"Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1847 - 1919)". Denver Public Library. Retrieved 29 September 2022. Elizabeth was born the child of a former slave and spent her life fighting for women's suffrage and the rights of African Americans.

[1] Rounsville, Sarah. "Elizabeth P. Ensley: Suffragette and African American Women's Club Leader". Intermountain Histories. Brigham Young University. Retrieved 28 September 2022.

[2] Jameson, Elizabeth; Armitage, Susan Hodge (1997). Writing the range : race, class, and culture in the women's West. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press. p. 374. ISBN 0-8061-2929-8.

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