Josephine K. Henry - Fighter for Women's Rights

Josephine K. Henry - Fighter for Women's Rights. . Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry, a vocal advocate for Kentucky women in the 1880's and 1890's, was born in Newport and spent her adult life in Versailles. She worked in the Kentucky Equal Rights Association and National Women's Suffrage Association for equal rights for women, especially in the areas of suffrage, property rights, protection of minors and co-guardianship for mothers., A prolific writer and powerful speaker, she lobbied the Constitutional Convention of 1890 and subsequent legislatures demanding women's rights. Her greatest accomplishment was the passage of the Married Women's Property Act, known as the Husband and Wife bill, in 1894., When she was 16 Henry moved from Newport to Versailles and taught at Versailles Academy for Young Ladies. She married Capt. William Henry, to whom she referred as an "uncompromising suffragist" for his dedication to her causes. She worked alongside Laura Clay who said it was unlikely there was another Kentucky woman who had "devoted so much study and attention to the status, legal and political, of the women of the state.", After her only child Frederick was killed in a train crash, Henry threw herself into her work; writing tracts, articles, editorials, poetry and two small books. She became an agnostic who saw religion as a repressor of women. Active in the Free Thought Movement, she wrote for the Lexington Blue Grass Blade and other freethought publications. She expressed views which were radical for her time in her books Marriage and Divorce and Women and the Bible. She served on the revising committee for Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Women's Bible, authoring two commentaries. , Henry was the first woman in Kentucky and the South to run for state office. She was the 1890 Prohibitionist candidate for Clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and received nearly 5,000 votes. She was nominated in 1894 for State Superintendent of Public Instruction and was discussed as a possible presidential candidate in 1900., Henry died at age 85 in 1928. Her life can best be summed up in her own words: "What I have written I have written, and if one thought I have expressed will start a rill for thought in the minds of women and men, who love their fellows, and desire justice and happiness for them, and will nerve their hearts to help right these wrongs, my reward will be great indeed...", Captions , [Left]: Josephine Henry described herself as "...the Woodford County woman who is always wanting new laws and who is making such a hard fight to get the ballot." , [Right]: Henry wrote and published extensively. Many of her articles were reprinted in papers around the country. She wrote on women's property laws and suffrage, the new constitution, the inequities of religion toward women and the problems of marriage and divorce. Many of her ideas were far ahead of her tie and created controversy.