Elizabeth Piper Ensley

Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1848-1919), was an American suffragist.[1] She was born in the Caribbean, and moved to Boston in the 1870s, where she became a teacher in a public school.[1] She then taught at Howard University with her husband.[2] In the 1890s they moved to Denver, Colorado.[1] There Ensley joined Denver's relief efforts for the poor and the homeless.[1] She also joined the campaign to put a women's suffrage amendment on the November 1893 ballot in Colorado.[1] She was the treasurer of the Colorado Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association, and beginning with a fund of twenty-five dollars, helped gain the money necessary for the campaign.[1] The suffrage amendment was approved in 1893.[1]

She organized the Colorado Colored Women's Republican Club to teach black women why and how to vote.[1] She also helped found the Women's League in 1894, and she founded the Colorado Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACW) in 1904.[3] The NACW led community and educational programs, including the George Washington Carver Day Nursery.[1] Ensley was the only black member of the board of the NACW.[1]

Ensley wrote about Colorado's first election in which women voted (which occurred in 1894) in the Woman's Era, which was the national publication of the NACW.[3]

She is buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "WOW Museum: Western Women's Suffrage - Colorado". Theautry.org. Retrieved 2015-10-24.
  2. 1 2 "Denver cemetery's data "very valuable" to state". The Denver Post. 2005-12-23. Retrieved 2015-10-24.
  3. 1 2 "Women of the West Museum: The LoDo Mural Project". His.com. Retrieved 2015-10-24.
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