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Minnie Fisher Cunningham (March 19, 1882 – December 9, 1964) was the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters, and a suffrage politician who worked for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the vote. A political worker with liberal views, she became one of the founding members of the Woman's National Democratic Club in 1924. In her position overseeing the club's finances, she helped the organization purchase of its Washington, D.C. headquarters, which is still in use. Cunningham was descended from wealthy plantation slaveholders who had moved to Texas from Alabama. By the time she was born in 1882, the family fortunes had been dissipated by the Civil War and Reconstruction, forcing her mother to sell vegetables to make ends meet. She holds the distinction of being the first female student of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston to earn a Graduate of Pharmacy degree. As a member of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Cunningham helped persuade Senator Andrieus Aristieus Jones of New Mexico, chair of the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, to introduce the amendment for a vote. Cunningham was part of a team who met with President Woodrow Wilson in the Oval Office, successfully coaxing the President into releasing a statement expressing a leaning towards suffrage.〔 When Texas Governor James E. Ferguson actively opposed the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Cunningham formed a coalition that helped impeach the governor. She was active for decades in both national and Texas state politics. In 1928, Cunningham became the first woman from Texas to run for the United States Senate. She supported the New Deal policies and programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and sought to uplift the status of the disenfranchised in the country. Cunningham saw the connection between poverty and nutrition, and worked for government legislation to require nutrient enrichment of flour and bread. Cunningham's 1944 Texas gubernatorial candidacy against incumbent Coke Stevenson garnered her second place in a field of nine candidates. To meet the expenses of running a county campaign office for John F. Kennedy's presidential race, she sold used clothing. ==Early life and background== Minnie Fisher was born the seventh of eight children to Horatio White Fisher and his wife Sallie Comer Abercrombie Fisher on March 19, 1882 in New Waverly, Texas, on land that would become known as Fisher Farms. Sallie Comer Abercrombie was the only child of John Comer Abercrombie and Jane Minerva Sims Abercrombie, who had moved to Texas in the 1850s from Macon County, Alabama to become one of the largest land holders in Walker County. Minnie's paternal grandfather William Phillips Fisher had moved to Walker County from Lowndes County, Alabama and was the owner of 92 slaves. Minnie's father Horatio had been the owner of 72 slaves and was elected to Texas State Legislature in 1857. When Civil War broke out, Horatio raised a cavalry company for the Confederate States Army. On furlough during the war, Horatio married Sallie. Of their eight children, seven survived to adulthood.〔McArthur, Smith (2005) pp.8,9〕 Waverly had been settled in Walker County in 1835 by an Alabama plantation owner named James W. Winters. When San Jacinto County was formed in 1870, Waverly became a part of the new county. The Houston and Great Northern Railroad was denied right-of-way through Waverly, and instead laid tracks ten miles to the west in Walker County where it placed Waverly Station. Many from the original Waverly were attracted to the locale, and it became New Waverly. The Waverly in San Jacinto became known as Old Waverly. The war and reconstruction stripped Horatio and Sallie of their wealth, and they were forced to move in with Sallie's parents. It was at the Abercrombie plantation where Minnie and her siblings grew up. By that point in time, slave labor had been replaced by sharecroppers. The children were home schooled by Sallie until 1894. The family business became selling produce to railroad workers, eventually expanding to marketing the produce in Houston. Sallie used the proceeds of the produce business to finance formal schooling for her children.〔McArthur, Smith (2005) pp.10,11,12〕 Minnie received her spiritual grounding from the Methodists and was instrumental in helping found a Methodist church in New Waverly. After the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Minnie and her mother Sallie held a fund raising effort in New Waverly. Her political interests stemmed from her father. Although she passed the state teacher certification examination, Minnie chose medicine as her field of study. She enrolled at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston School of Pharmacy. In 1901, Minnie became her alma mater's sole female to earn a Graduate of Pharmacy Degree. She found employment in Huntsville, but earned less than half the wages of her less-educated male co-workers. Minnie would later cite this experience as her motivation in elevating the status of women.〔McArthur, Smith (2005) pp.14,20,21,22〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Minnie Fisher Cunningham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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