Louisiana Leaders: Notable Women in History

Born in Greenville Tennessee and moving to New Orleans after the Civil War, Elizabeth Saxon worked with Caroline Merrick as a pioneer in the Louisiana women's suffrage movement. She was one of the first women in the South to write, speak, and agitate for reforms of labor laws for women and children. It was her interest in reform that led her to work for suffrage, because she saw the need for women's votes in order to affect change.

Saxon successfully presented the first petition to the state's constitutional convention's suffrage committee in 1879 and along with Caroline Merrick won limited success. For the next twelve years she spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage, toured with Susan B. Anthony to advance the movement, and organized over fifty chapters of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in various states.

Once back in New Orleans, Saxon organized an attack against the Harman Ordinance, an ordinance that would provide for licensing of prostitutes that would in her view make the licensing Dr. Harman much money and would not curb prostitution. She believed it was an evil that should be eliminated by moral not legislative means, and would this ordinance give police the authority to suspect any working women of prostitution. The ordinance was defeated to much acclaim and Saxon continued to involve herself in various reform and civic activities.