If you flash back 100 years or so, you’ll note that Washington women handily won the right to vote. First, it won lopsided votes in the all-male bastion of the Legislature, passing in February of 1909, and then the men voters of Washington passed it 2-to-1 at the next general election, in November of 1910.

But to hear historian Shanna Stevenson tell it, becoming America’s fifth state to adopt women’s suffrage was far from a picnic.  At a “brown bag” forum at the Secretary of State’s office, she recounted a long bare-knuckles battle that included unfriendly courts, opposition from saloon interests, feuding feminists, and reversals of fortune before it finally all come together.

Stevenson notes that women were voting during some of the years that we were a territory, back when only Wyoming and Utah allowed it, but that the courts scuttled it on a technicality. A public vote failed in 1898, and battles continued apace. Stevenson says Washington women, aided by Susan B. Anthony, the Grange, the unions and others, were tireless in lobbying the Legislature and the voters. They used everything from pies to savvy media campaigns to press their point – and eventually prevailed.

Washington became the first state in the 20th Century to pass women’s suffrage, a full 10 years before the 19th Amendment passed. Since then women have done increasingly well at ballot-box success, becoming the first and only state to have women in the governor’s mansion and both U.S. Senate seats.

Stevenson is coordinator of the Washington Women’s History Consortium created by the Legislature in 2006, and works within the Washington State Historical Society. The society is currently running an acclaimed exhibit at the Tacoma museum, and Stevenson says “Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices” includes a treasure trove of fascinating materials, including a court opinion that erased women’s suffrage at one point with the simple insertion of the word “male” in the opinion.