Utah Women of the 19th Amendment Series Part 2: Emily Sophia Tanner Richards

Born at South Cottonwood in Great Salt Lake County on May 13, 1850, Emily Sophia Tanner arrives in an era when Utah women need a champion. At this time, Utah is still a territory and its people are still recovering from the mass exodus from Missouri.

Tanner may have been unusual in that from the time she is young her mother provides her with her strong opinion that women deserve the same rights as men. Given this environment, it is no surprise that Tanner grows up believing in suffrage for women. When she is 6 years old, she moves to Salt Lake City, Utah to attend school where one of her teachers is Sarah M. Granger Kimball, a proponent of the suffrage movement. Tanner also meets Franklin S. Richards who she marries when she is age 18, becoming Emily Richards.

Richards' suffrage beliefs are further honed when the young couple moves to Ogden the next year to

Emily and Franklin S. Richards

live with her in-laws who are both outspoken believers in women’s rights. In 1870 Utah becomes the next territory to grant voting rights to women. However, Richards is only 20 and is greatly disappointed that she is too young to vote in this first important election. But, she is pleased that unlike the rest of the nation, it seems as though there may be very little for women suffragettes to do in Utah. Little does she know what is in store for Utah. 

By 1882, Richards’ husband has finished law school and is asked to move to Washington D.C. – taking his young family of 5 children – to lobby the US Congress for statehood.

In D.C., Richards meets many of the important women in the national suffrage movement such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anna Howard Shaw, and Carrie Chapman Catt. Richards is aware, as are other prominent Utah women, that the federal government is displeased with the Mormon practice of polygamy.  In a strategic move, these Utah women, including Richards, present a memorial of Utah women to President Cleveland hoping to positively influence the nation’s view of the Mormon people. However, their efforts are not rewarded and the following year in 1887, the Edmunds-Tucker Act is passed, taking away the right to vote for Utah women, with the hope that this will stop the practice of polygamy. Though the Richards’ are monogamous, they support the practice, believing that polygamy is a divinely-instituted doctrine. 

Richards redoubles her efforts to fight for women’s rights by continuing to attend national suffrage meetings. In 1888, as a member of the LDS Church’s Relief Society General Board, Richards asks the Church leadership for permission to start a Utah chapter of the National Women's Suffrage Association. Successful in her bid, she and Margaret N. Caine organize the Utah chapter in 1889. Caine becomes its first president while Richards establishes many local suffragette associations throughout Utah. A gifted public speaker, Richards is asked to speak at several world fairs in Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta, and at other national women’s meetings. She becomes the face of the LDS Church at the time Utah is moving toward statehood.

Richards works with her husband to ensure that equal rights for women are included in the proposed state constitution. In 1896, when both statehood and equal rights for women are granted, Richards hosts many of the national suffrage leaders including Susan B. Anthony as they come to celebrate Utah’s victory. Of this success Richards says: 

“Women have a chance in the Utah constitution to show their capacity for government, and help mold the institutions of society. The work is but begun; the cause is in its merest infancy. That which remains to be done opens up before us in an almost endless vista. In a faraway promised land we behold a perfected state wherein the heart and hand and intelligence of woman contribute their full share.”

To further this vision, Richards assists in organizing the League of Women Voters in Utah, continues to be active in the national suffrage movement, and lives to see the 19^th amendment ratified.

(Researched and written by Kathryn Latour, member of the JRCLS WIL and Media Committees)