Laura Clay

Laura Clay grew up in a household where injustice was not tolerated. The daughter of prominent Kentucky abolitionist Cassius M. Clay, she followed in her father’s footsteps as an activist. As founding president of the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, she led the organization’s successful drives for repeal of Kentucky laws that circumscribed women’s property rights. This drawing is part of a series documenting the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s forty-fourth annual convention for McLure’s Magazine. Clay thought of her suffrage work as sacred, declaring, "[T]his work is God’s cause and He is the leader of all our campaigns." Clay’s commitment to states’ rights was at times difficult to reconcile with her support of the national association, as she supported state suffrage for white women only. She complained bitterly in published articles about the organization’s concentration of power in New York, targeting convention leader Dr. Anna Shaw, as well as Carrie Chapman Catt.