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, "Mississippi of the West" By the 1950s, some journalists were calling Nevada the Mississippi of the West. An
accurate description because Nevada had no official statewide policy of segregated
schools, separate sections of buses, and separate restrooms and water fountains. The
discrimination in Nevada was real but it was erratic and not institutionalized by law.
Anne Martin Pioneer for women's rights in the early twentieth century. Born in 1875 in a Carson River
town called Empire near the capital city. Educated at Stanford University and at the
University of Nevada in the 1890s. Martin's father was a wood merchant and one-term
state senator who had left her an inheritance. Took up the cause of women's suffrage in
her mid-30s. The key group dedicated to this cause was the Nevada Equal Franchise
Society. Martin emerged as the leader of this society and its effort to amend the
constitution to extend voting rights to women. Which was done in 1914. Martin regarded
her life as a failure and died thinking she had been forgotten by history despite being the
first woman to run for the U.S. Senate.
Sadie D. Hurst The first woman elected to the Nevada legislature. She was an assemblywoman who
represented Washoe County in 1919.
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Was a reoccurring issue in Nevada politics. This simple recommendation, passed by
Congress in 1971, would merely have placed language in the Constitution that no person
could be denied equal rights on the basis of sex, but it created a blizzard of
misunderstanding and controversy because of a perception that it might diminish the
status of women rather than assure their rights on the same basis as men's. Nevada
debated and declined to ratify in 1973, 1975, and again in 1977. Even though the Equal
Rights Amendment failed in Nevada, the debate and publicity surrounding it led to
important changes in the law which benefited women. (After heavy lobbying against the
proposal by conservative women, some business interests, and the Mormon Church, the
measure failed in a 1978 election by a 2 to 1 margin.)
Indians and education Indian children were generally not accepted in the public schools of Nevada until the
1920s, and occasional effort to open Indian schools failed. Senator William M. Stewart
played an important role in establishing the Stewart Indian School south of Carson City in
the 1890s, but often the price of rudimentary education was the separation of children
from their widely scattered families. (In the 1920s, Indian children were allowed to attend
public schools, and in the 1940s Native Americans began to see somewhat better
legislation as the state recognized the validity of Indian marriages, repealed laws
prohibiting the sale of alcohol to Indians, and allowed the use of peyote in Native
American religious ceremonies.)