Ida Mae Thompson (1866 – 1947) was an American suffragist. She was active in the

Equal Suffrage League of Virginia The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia was founded in 1909 in Richmond, Virginia. Like many similar organizations in other states, the league's goal was to secure voting rights for women. When the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratifie ...

and later worked for the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

's Historical Records to obtain and archive records from the suffrage movement in Virginia.

Biography

Thompson was born on November 7, 1866, in

Drakes Branch, Virginia Drakes Branch is a town in Charlotte County, Virginia, United States. The population was 530 at the 2010 census. Geography Drakes Branch is located southeast of the center of Charlotte County at (36.992958, −78.601714). Virginia State Rou ...

. In 1886 the family moved to Richmond. Thompson supported herself as a typist and stenographer. In 1913 Thompson began working at the Richmond headquarters of the

. She served as headquarters secretary and took care of the day-to-day responsibilities of the office manager; ordering supplies, arranging rent payments, speaker schedules, event planning, and organization mailings. Thompson took on more planning duties, along with

Edith Clark Cowles Edith Clark Cowles (1874 – 1954) was an American suffragist. She was one of the founders of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. Biography Cowles was born on August 27, 1874 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was the sister of Adele Goodman Cl ...

, in the running of the Richmond office when the president,

Lila Meade Valentine Lila Meade Valentine (born Lila Hardaway Meade; February 4, 1865 – July 14, 1921) was a Virginia education reformer, health-care advocate, and one of the main leaders of her state's participation in the woman's suffrage movement in the United S ...

, was ill. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 Thompson became active in the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia's successor organization, the Virginia

League of Women Voters The League of Women Voters (LWV or the League) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan political organization in the United States. Founded in 1920, its ongoing major activities include registering voters, providing voter information, and advocating for vot ...

. She first served as executive secretary of the Richmond LWV and then executive secretary of the Virginia LWV. Thompson assisted Cowles with her contributions to the chapter on Virginia to ''

History of Woman Suffrage ''History of Woman Suffrage'' is a book that was produced by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper. Published in six volumes from 1881 to 1922, it is a history of the women's suffrage movement, primar ...

'', published in 1922. In the 1930s, during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

Thompson continued working for the LWV, but took another job as a clerk for the

U.S. Department of Labor The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It is responsible for the administration of federal laws governing occupational safety and health, wage and hour standards, unemploym ...

National Re-Employment Service. In the mid-1930s Thompson added another job as a clerk and researcher for

's Historical Records project to assemble historical documents pertaining to suffrage in Virginia. In 1936 Thompson contacted former members of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia requesting any records, papers, stories and ephemera documenting the woman suffrage movement in Virginia. She had mixed results, with some members having disposed of their records and others being able to locate the historical items requested. Thompson herself had the records she kept from the Richmond headquarters, which she donated. The collected material became the ''Equal Suffrage League of Virginia Records'' housed at the

Library of Virginia The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and i ...

. The collection consists of 31 boxes of primary documents from the suffrage movement in Virginia on the local and state level including materials from the

National American Woman Suffrage Association The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National ...

(NAWSA) and the LWV along with the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. In 1938 Thompson, who never married, moved into the Home for Needy Confederate Women (now the ''Stan and Dorothy Pauley Center'' on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond). She died on July 24, 1947, in

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Ida Mae 1866 births 1947 deaths People from Virginia American suffragists