Tag: Lenna Lowe Yost

Yost, Jones, and Brown Led Fight for Suffrage in West Virginia

One hundred years ago, women won the right to vote.  

The activists who led West Virginia’s suffrage movement faced more than sexism. Despite political setbacks, personal tragedies, and bad roads, they persisted.

Here are just three of those mighty women: a lifelong champion for women’s rights and education, Marion County resident Lenna Lowe Yost attended and later received an honorary doctorate from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She was the mother of a toddler in 1905 when she joined the West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association. After a bitterly disappointing referendum on the women’s vote in 1916, she rallied the group to success four years later.

Harriet B. Jones, born five years before the Civil War, was West Virginia’s first licensed female doctor, practicing in Wheeling. Active in the state’s suffrage movement from its beginning in 1895, she also ran a hospital, fought for women’s place in higher education, worked for children’s welfare, and served in the West Virginia House of Delegates.

Izetta Jewel Brown was an actress, Preston County dairy farmer, political candidate, and WPA administrator during the New Deal. She headed West Virginia’s chapter of the National Women’s Party. She lived to be ninety-five and, in her eighties, lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment.

This message is produced­­­­ by the Kanawha Valley chapter of the National Organization for Women with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council.

May 7, 1972: Activist Lenna Lowe Yost Dies at 94

Activist Lenna Lowe Yost died on May 7, 1972, at age 94. The Marion County native and West Virginia Wesleyan College graduate had become involved in women’s issues as a young adult. For 10 years, she was president of the state chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU, as it’s known, principally opposed the consumption of alcohol but also supported social reforms for women.

During the 1910s, Yost became a leader in the West Virginia suffrage movement. She headed the state’s Equal Suffrage Association and lobbied both the West Virginia Legislature and Congress to adopt the 19th Amendment, which, in 1920, gave women the right to vote nationally.

Yost was the first woman to hold a variety of positions in the West Virginia Republican Party, and she directed the women’s division of the national Republican Party from 1930 to ’34. She represented the United States at two international congresses against alcoholism and lobbied to have the Federal Prison for Women built at Alderson. She also was the first woman to serve on the State Board of Education and on the West Virginia Wesleyan board of trustees. 

May 7, 1972: Activist Lenna Lowe Yost Dies at 94

  Activist Lenna Lowe Yost died on May 7, 1972, at age 94. The Marion County native and West Virginia Wesleyan College graduate had become involved in women’s issues as a young adult. For 10 years, she was president of the state chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU, as it’s known, principally opposed the consumption of alcohol but also supported social reforms for women.

During the 1910s, Yost became a leader in the West Virginia suffrage movement. She headed the state’s Equal Suffrage Association and lobbied both the West Virginia Legislature and Congress to adopt the 19th Amendment, which, in 1920, gave women the right to vote nationally.

Yost was the first woman to hold a variety of positions in the West Virginia Republican Party, and she directed the women’s division of the national Republican Party from 1930 to ’34. She represented the United States at two international congresses against alcoholism and lobbied to have the Federal Prison for Women built at Alderson. She also was the first woman to serve on the State Board of Education and on the West Virginia Wesleyan board of trustees. 

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