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The League of Women Voters of Arlington was established by a coalition of 17 founding members in January 1944, and for more than 80 years has been a force in the county’s civic life.
But more than two decades earlier, another group with similar aims had been founded in the county.
Called the Organized Women Voters of Arlington, it coexisted — perhaps, at times, a little uneasily — with the League of Women Voters, until going out of existence in the early 2020s.
Unlike the League of Women Voters, which is a national organization with local affiliates, Organized Women Voters of Arlington was an exclusively home-grown entity. Additionally, while league membership arguably tilts a little left on the political spectrum (while retaining a nonpartisan structure), the Organized Women Voters of Arlington appears to have been somewhat more conservative throughout most of its history.
Archives of the Organized Women Voters of Arlington can be found in the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library. Dating back to the start of the organization in 1923, they give an indication of what hot-button issues were being discussed at the local level a century ago.
Below are some of the details of the Organized Women Voters of Arlington from its earliest years, starting with some background on the fight for suffrage.
Women get the vote in Virginia
Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution came in time for women voters across the nation to participate in the November 1920 election at the federal, state and local levels.
Virginia was among the states that had not supported the constitutional amendment. In 1920, its ratification was voted down in the General Assembly by margins of 24-10 in the Senate and 66-22 in the House of Delegates.
The legislature would not get around to approving the measure until the 1952 legislative session, at that point doing so purely on a symbolic basis.
As for women in elected office across Virginia in the early- to mid-1900s? Their ranks were limited, although after Arlington moved to the five-member County Board in the 1930s, some women did win election locally. The first was Elizabeth Magruder, who served from 1932-47 and chaired the body in 1938, 1940 and 1947.
At the state level, six women — all Democrats and all educators — had been elected to the House of Delegates between 1923 and 1933, although none were from Arlington.
A two-decade drought then began, with no women serving in the lower house of the legislature between 1933 and 1954.
The first woman state senator did not arrive until the early 1980s, when Republican Eva Scott won election.
Virginia’s first female statewide office-holder was Democratic Attorney General Mary Sue Terry, elected in 1985 and re-elected in 1989. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears became Virginia’s first female lieutenant governor after her election in 2021. And Virginia is almost assured to get its first female governor in its more than 400-year history in January, given that Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger are the major-party candidates for the post in the Nov. 4 election.
Keeping voters in touch with candidates
Women across Virginia had been voting for a just half a decade in 1925, and the Organized Women Voters of Arlington wanted them (and the entire electorate) to be aware of their ballot choices.
At the Sept. 23, 1925, executive committee meeting, it was noted that all candidates for local seats in the House of Delegates had been invited to appear at the Oct. 21 organization meeting, to be hosted by Calvary Methodist Church.
Given the segregationist policies rigidly enforced across Virginia at the time, it may be no surprise that the Organized Women Voters of Arlington appears to have been an all-white organization in its early decades. At the October 1925 club meeting, the president noted that she had been asked to deliver remarks at a local “colored-women’s organization” about election issues. Permission was approved by club members.
School Board modernization
One might think that when it came to a School Board, one would be enough for Arlington. But until the early 1920s, Arlington had three — one for each magisterial district (Washington, Jefferson, Arlington) in its government by Board of Supervisors.
In 1925, the Organized Women Voters of Arlington believed the county should go back to its previous form, with one School Board for each of the districts. Its leadership wrote to Superintendent Fletcher Kemp, requesting this.
In a letter of March 19, 1925, the superintendent replied that a change in state law in 1922 allowed for, and in some cases mandated, consolidation of school boards into one per locality.
He suggested the organization consider lobbying state lawmakers for more flexibility to return to the old format, as “the law for this provision can be changed only by the General Assembly.”
Why the organization felt the desire to return to one School Board per magisterial district is unknown, as its archives from 1925 typically contain only the responses to its letters, not copies of the original letters themselves.
On another front, the organization also had asked Kemp to find a way that at least one woman would be a member of the county School Board at all times.
Fletcher replied that he would bring the matter to the attention of the county’s Electoral Board, which at that time made appointments to the School Board. That body in 1925 consisted of Kemp, Dr. Walter Monroe (chair) and Commonwealth’s Attorney William Gloth.
Interestingly, a century after making the request that at least one member of the School Board be female, today’s five-member elected body consists entirely of women for one of the very rare times in its history.
The first female deputy sheriff in Virginia
Organized Women Voters of Arlington was responsible for the appointment of the first female deputy sheriff in state history.
In an oral history with former organization president Sue Renfro, the story was told in full. She is referring to Sheriff Howard Fields, who served from 1924-44:
“At the first meeting there was a Sheriff Fields that came to speak to the ladies since they were having the vote. And he promised them that he would do something for them, so they asked him, would he be willing to make an appointment [appoint a woman, and he replied] “Well, yes, under the circumstances.”
So then they had the election. Sheriff Fields won, and he just seemed to forget about appointing a lady. And the ladies decided that they should go and inspect the jail.
So they made several trips to inspect the jail, and finally it was reported that the sheriff looked up one day and saw the committee coming again to inspect the jail and decided that he might just appoint one of them, and he appointed Mrs. Pauline Duncan.
She was the first deputy woman sheriff in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Many decades later, Arlington would also become the first jurisdiction in Virginia history to have an elected female sheriff, Beth Arthur.
On another public-safety issue, Organized Women Voters of Arlington in 1925 lobbied for a woman to be present during all physical exams when women were brought in for questioning at the jail.
Pressing Commonwealth’s Attorney Gloth on the issue in early 1925, the organization received a reply that the matter was being looked into.
“I assure you that Judge Brent appreciates your communication, and you may be assured that any suggestions from the ladies in this county will be cheerfully considered,” Gloth wrote.
The effort had an effect, according to later meeting minutes, as steps were taken to ensure that there was another woman present during searches.
Dealing with stray dogs
One of Arlington’s hot-button issues in 1925 apparently was a proliferation of stray dogs roaming the streets.
At the April 17, 1925, meeting of the Organized Women Voters of Arlington, a delegation was established under the leadership of Mrs. Ruby Simpson. The group was directed to visit members of the Board of Supervisors to discuss establishment of a dog pound.
On March 9, 1925, the three-member Board of Supervisors took action of a sort. It directed the county attorney to take up the matter of stray animals with the Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries Department.
The three county supervisors that year were E.C. Turnburke (chair), W.J. Ingram and Edward Duncan. Arlington had been governed by a three-member, district-based Board of Supervisors since 1870, and would continue to have that form of government until the current county manager form was established in the early 1930s.
Apparently the supervisors’ request that state officials look into the issue hadn’t eliminated concerns. At the Sept. 23, 1925, executive committee meeting, members of the Organized Women Voters of Arlington made a request that officials come to a future meeting to discuss the state’s tag law, the muzzling of dogs and “the disposal of stray dogs.”
The next month, recently re-elected organization president Rodgers announced she had appeared before supervisors on the dog issue.
The organization didn’t limit its lobbying efforts to the Board of Supervisors on the matter. The group also reached out to the Clerk of Court.
A March 18, 1925 response from the clerk of court to the organization only included the initials “W.H.D.” on the letter, apparently referring to William H. Duncan.
Duncan acknowledged the nuisance of dogs running wild, but said he had no power to act.
“I have no voice in matters of this kind; however, I am in sympathy with this movement and will be glad to assist as far as I can,” Duncan wrote the organization.
A more systematic approach to the question of stray animals would come in the early 1940s with the establishment of the Animal Welfare League of Arlington.
Before leaving the dog issue, it’s worth circling back on what eventually happened to Duncan. In 1932, while still in office, he was forced to resign and was arrested in a scandal that involved county Treasurer E. Wade Ball and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of missing county-government funds.
Not welcome in state group?
In 1926, apparently some bad blood had emerged between the Organized Women Voters of Arlington and the Virginia Federation of Women’s Clubs.
As with other correspondence in the file, the original letter from the Arlington organization is lost to history. But a response from the state organization penned Oct. 4, 1926, shed some light on the problem, which stemmed from the state group’s annual banquet that previous May.
“I regret that the impression that your club was unwelcome at the luncheon found lodgement with any of your members,” the state group’s leadership wrote in a letter to president Catherine Rodgers.
Nothing in the archives gives an indication if the two organizations made up and found common ground.
Building the Civic Federation
In 1926, the Arlington County Civic Federation was just a decade old, and hoping to expand its reach into the ecommunity.
The Organized Women Voters of Arlington, a member of the federation, was among those asked to help.
R.E. Plymale wrote to the organization’s president, asking the Organized Women Voters to divide into two groups that would compete in a membership drive focused both on their organization and the Civic Federation as a whole.
“Let them tackle every individual they meet,” Plymale wrote to Catherine Rodgers, presumably speaking figuratively.
Those willing to pay a $1 membership fee to the Civic Federation could choose to be assigned to any member organization, including the Organized Women Voters, or become part of a member organization that needed a membership boost.
The Arlington County Civic Federation was partnering with the D.C. Federation of Citizens Association on the membership drive.
A year before, in 1925, the Organized Women Voters of Arlington noted the lack of women on the Civic Federation’s entertainment committee. A resolution had asked that body that “a woman who is musical” be added to the committee roster.
Powered by the Potomac?
In 1927, Organized Women Voters of Arlington was asked to lend its support to a Civic Federation proposal in support of discussion about generating hydroelectric power using the flow of the Potomac River.
It was not a novel concept, as water had been used to generate power for more than a century.
Upstream — in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. — a hydroelectric station had been constructed in 1925 at the site of since the 1890s had been a pulp mill and before that had been used by the U.S. Armory. It would remain in operation until the 1990s.
But if the plan up for consideration by the Civic Federation included a major dam of the river for massive power generation, that concept never got beyond the discussion stage.
A 50th-anniversary celebration
Skipping forward, the Northern Virginia Sun in March 1973 had front-page coverage of the 50th-anniversary luncheon of the Organized Women Voters of Arlington.
The event, held at Washington Golf & Country Club, seems to confirm the conservative leanings of the organization at that point in its history.
The keynote speaker was Mills Godwin, who had served as Virginia’s governor as a Democrat from 1966-70 and was seeking another term, this time as a Republican, in the 1973 general election.
Also featured at the luncheon were Rep. Joel Broyhill (R-10) and a number of other Republicans who were serving, or had served, in elected office.
In the 1990s and beyond
Organized Women Voters of Arlington rolled through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Despite the overall tilt of the group, prominent Democratic elected officials such as County Board member Ellen Bozman, Del. Mary Marshall and state Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple were members. Democrats like Treasurer Frank O’Leary and Del. Patrick Hope presented programs to the group.
The group continued to have well-attended meetings, often at the Alpine Restaurant on what was then Lee Highway and now is Langston Blvd.
But the organization suffered a double-whammy in 2020, beginning with the Covid pandemic that upended much of civic life.
In September 2020, the death of Nancy Renfro proved another blow. Renfro, a longtime educator, had served 23 years as president.
Equally active in the organization was Nancy Renfro’s sister, Jane Renfro. In 2019, the Renfros had donated much of the archival material to the county library system, where it is available to researchers.
In a 2022 article by local historian Charlie Clark, he sought clarification from Jane Renfro about the political inclinations of the membership.
“We made no distinction between liberals and conservatives, though members had their own perspectives,” she replied. “There were no extremes, but as an age group, we tended to the conservative side.”
In Clark’s analysis, it was a combination of the pandemic and an aging membership that ended what he termed “one of our most influential women’s groups.”
“The nonpartisan Organized Women Voters were not the sort who marched on the Capitol,” he wrote. “But through regular luncheons with prominent speakers, the group over the decades weighed in on some of Virginia’s major transitions, including school desegregation and civil rights.”
Thanks to the Charlie Clark Center for Local History at Arlington Central Library and the Library of Virginia for access to archival materials.
