All Women Cannot Be Heroes

This chapter traces efforts to recruit and mobilize suffragists in the far corners of the state, away from the traditional powerhouses of northern and central Kentucky. It describes tactics encouraged by state and national leaders such as paid organizers, strategic placement of conventions, and reduced requirements for membership. Despite Laura Clay's best efforts and her insistence that her Kentucky Plan for membership recruitment would help NAWSA win “the argument of numbers,” suffrage remained a highly controversial issue in the state's rural communities and the movement would always struggle to grow there.