West Virginia

In a ten-day fight worthy of a movie, West Virginia provided crucial ratification to the 19th Amendment that enfranchised all American women.  Voters elected a woman to the legislature at the next opportunity.

Courtesy of The West Virginia Blue Book, 1924.

Anna Johnson Gates (1889-1939)

    The daughter of James T. and Isabel Spruce Johnson, Anna attended Kanawha County public schools until going on to the Montgomery Preparatory School and a Parkersburg business school.  She returned to Kanawha county and Charleston, the state capital, and soon developed a solid business and civic life. Anna Johnson married Harry Gates, and after his premature death, wed his brother, Harry Gates, in 1915.  He also died young, and Anna Johnson Gates was a widow most of her life.

    Active in the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, which had begun nationally in 1890, she also was a founder of the Charleston Business and Professional Women’s Club and the Women’s Democratic Executive Committee; those groups formed in the early 1920s.  While earning her living as an apartment manager, she volunteered for the Red Cross during World War II, and he male colleagues respected her enough that she became the secretary for the powerful Charleston Board of Affairs. 

    Democratic friends convinced Gates to run for a seat in the House of Delegates in the first election that was possible, in 1922.  She did not file until the final day, however, and the campaign was controversial.  Opponents accused her of breaking the law when she continued as a volunteer voter registrar after filing her candidacy – but because voting was new to West Virginia women, she thought it was important to register as many as possible. Citizens in the state’s at-large system agreed, and she won the fifth-highest vote for one of Kanawha County’s six legislative seats. 

    Her freshman term was successful, as five of the thirteen bills she sponsored were adopted. Her priorities included the establishment of public health clinics, the designation of Thanksgiving and Christmas as school holidays, improvement of women’s legal rights, alteration of marriage license requirements, and Mother’s Pensions,” the era’s term for what now is called “welfare.”  Charleston also benefited from her work for a public library, building codes, and protection of animals.

    She rose to chair the House Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and General Improvements, another first for the state’s women, and was a delegate to the Chicago Democratic convention that nominated Franklin Delano Roosevelt for president in 1932.  Anna Johnson Gates still was active in politics when she died in her 59th year.