William H. Bright's Contributions

William H. Bright was a strong advocate for women’s rights. William H. Bright wrote a bill for women to have the right to vote at the age of 18. He was originally from Virginia and had served in the Union Army. In 1868 Bright took his family to South Pass City, Wyoming, where he opened his own saloon. William H. Bright was a legislature in Carter county and president of the council when he introduced the Women’s Suffrage Bill. William H. Bright thought that if negroes could vote then his wife and mother and all other women should be included as well. Some say the idea of women voting was a start of a joke. Either way, the right for women to vote was the start of many new beginnings not just for women, but for equal rights for everyone willing …show more content…
In 1870, Esther Hobart Morris was the first woman to hold justice of the peace. Estelle Reel was the first woman in the United States elected as Wyoming's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Wyoming was recognized as the Equality State due in large part to these and other important historical firsts. Other firsts for women included the election of Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman elected governor of a U.S. state, in 1925. Nellie Davis Tayloe was born in 1876 in St. Joseph, Missouri. Her family moved to Omaha, Nebraska where she became a kindergarten teacher and taught for a short time before meeting her husband. She met William Bradford Ross, a young lawyer in Tennessee. They were married in 1902 and lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming where they had four sons. While Nellie tended to her home and family, William practiced law. William ran for political office and was elected governor in 1922. In October 1924, he died. Because his death bordered so close to the general election, Wyoming law required that his successor be elected. Democratic leaders nominated his wife Nellie. She ran against Republican Eugene J. Sullivan of Casper and won. Nellie had the attention of the residents of Wyoming to be the first to elect a woman governor. After all Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote. Nellie was nominated again for reelection in …show more content…
Mine workers would strike to try to get higher pay. The mine workers who were upset by Chinese refusing to join the miners’ strike for better pay, and the Union Pacific for allowing the Chinese to work for a great profit, attacked and killed their Chinese coworkers and wounded others, including burning their homes on September 2, 1885. The coal miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had struggled to come together as a labor union and strike for better working conditions for years. But at every point in events, the powerful railroad company had gotten the better of them. Searching for a cover up of the incident, the miners blamed the Chinese. The Chinese coal miners were hard workers that were originally brought to Rock Springs to be employed in place of others who were on strike. The Chinese were uninterested in the union. The miners were angry because the company decided to allow Chinese miners to work in the richest coal beds so decided to take matters into their own hands at Rock Spring’s small Chinatown. When the Chinese miners saw the angry coal miners approaching, most of the Chinese ran for the hills. Some of the Chinese coal miners failed to get away in time and were brutally beaten and murdered. A week later, U.S. troops escorted the surviving Chinese back down from the hills into the town to return to what was left of their homes and return to work. The angry miners that attacked the Chinese