The Governor of Wyoming, John Osborne, chastised the Greystone Club of Denver, Colorado, in a speech on March 13, 1894.
Wyoming has long been known as the Equality State for granting women the right to vote in 1869, long before the rest of the country. Upon Colorado’s adoption of female suffrage in 1894, the Wyoming Governor John E. Osborne was invited to speak during a celebration at the Greystone Club in Denver. He was surprised to find not a single woman in the audience at the event, and wasn’t afraid to speak up about it.
“Their absence would indicate a serious oversight on the part of the club in making up their programme, as well as a discourteous failure to recognize those whom you have so recently made your equals,” Governor Osborne said. “The representatives of Wyoming, your predecessors in the great ballot reform movement, are here to greet those who have been freed from an unmerited bondage and not those who have but performed their duty in proclaiming that freedom.”
“Wyoming’s Greeting to Colorado” is found in the public papers of Governor Osborne, published in 1894. Visit this document and many more via the State Publications Digital Collection.