[MUSIC PLAYING] On February 14, 1870, Seraph Young cast her ballot in an election in Utah. At the time, only the US territories of Utah and Wyoming had granted women the right to vote, and Seraph was the first woman in the world to vote as part of the growing women's suffrage movement. One aspect of Church history that I hope all of our members around the world know about is the fact that Utah women were the first in the nation to exercise the right to vote. Why does this matter? Suffrage is an example of women being treated as full citizens, and women thinking of themselves as full citizens, and women taking seriously the potential they have to participate in society and make society better. Latter-day Saint women learned from their early experiences with opposition and persecution that they were going to need a voice in the public sphere. So, as early as the Nauvoo period, right after they're driven out of Missouri, they participate in writing and submitting what were called redress petitions to list and name the losses and the suffering that they had endured and to try to bring that to public attention. Amanda Barnes Smith, who had survived the Hawn's Mill Massacre, was among the women who wrote a petition. I came [back] to witness the awful scene, ... the ground covered with the dead. I now leave it with this Honorable Government to say what my damages may be, or what they would be willing to see their wives and children slaughtered for, as I have seen my husband, son, and others. Amanda Barnes Smith. As they built a new city, Latter-day Saint women were also organized into the Relief Society for the first time. Joseph Smith spoke to the Relief Society about a month after it was formed in Nauvoo. He said, "I now turn the key to you ... and [you] shall rejoice and knowledge ... shall flow down from [on high]." And with this sort of endowment of power from on high that they had as members of the Relief Society, they also had a mandate to make the world better for women. When the Saints left Nauvoo, Eliza R. Snow brought the Relief Society records with her along the pioneer trail to the Saints' new home in the American West as a reminder of their prophetic commission. In those early decades in Utah, Latter-day Saint women were fully engaged in trying to build up this new society, this Zion that they were living in.

Also, in these Relief Society meetings women really came to see themselves as actors, people who could make a difference, who could identify a problem and brainstorm and work collectively to fix that problem. So, that problem might be a financial one, where they would get together to figure out some fundraising strategies, or the problem might be a political one, where they would get together and think about how best to address persecution--antipolygamy legislation, for example--that they faced. By 1870, Latter-day Saint women could see that there was a new wave of opposition forming against them, against the Church. This was based on the practice of plural marriage, which many of them participated in, and it took the form of government bills in Congress and other measures that were threatening to strip the Latter-day Saints of fundamental rights that Americans took for granted that had the potential to disrupt their families and their marriages and their living arrangements. And so, seeing this opposition coming, women like Eliza R. Snow, Amanda Barnes Smith, Sarah Granger Kimball realized that they needed to mobilize and they needed to stand up and make their voices heard. So they organized what were called indignation meetings. These were mass protest meetings where women came together and stood up and spoke for themselves and made their concerns and their objections known. Sister Snow said that the ladies of Utah had too long remained silent while they were being so falsely represented to the world and that it was high time that we should rise up in the dignity of our calling and speak for ourselves. Minutes of a Ladies' Mass Meeting, January 6, 1870. At the same meeting, Bathsheba Smith called on the assembled women to petition their governor for the right to vote. On February 12, it was granted. Two days later, women cast votes on equal terms with men for the first time in American history. Women in Utah voted for the next 17 years, until the US government, as part of its antipolygamy campaign, stripped them of voting rights once again. At this point, Latter-day Saint women are used to being a vigorous presence in the public sphere. They've been speaking for themselves. They've been writing and publishing. They've been in contact with national leaders in the women's movement. Imagine that you think it's very important that women vote. It's an important part of their destiny. It's important for the health of your nation. And imagine that you're in one of the few places in the United States in which women have the right to vote, and you as a woman exercise this right to vote for over a decade, and then this right to vote is taken away from you because of your religion. At the same time, you are a citizen of a country that supposedly guarantees you religious liberty. They were outraged. And so, even though this right to vote that they have cherished and exercised for many years has been taken away, they're determined that they're going to get it back and that they're not going to be silenced and they're not going to stop their public participation. The Woman's Exponent, which had started in 1872, had become a real vehicle arguing for women's suffrage throughout the country. So even in 1887, when they lost--definitively lost the right to vote, they still kept their voices, their arguments, their writings active. Do you not see the morning star of woman's destiny in the ascendant? There are some wise men who recognize the star and say, there is room for us both. Let us walk side by side. Emmeline B. Wells.

By 1895, when Utah's women regained the right to vote, they were ready. In the next election, Martha Hughes Cannon became the first American woman elected as a state senator. At the same time, women were finding a growing voice in the Church, as young single women, like Inez Knight and Jennie Brimhall, began to be called as missionaries for the first time. Latter-day Saint women had fought for a voice, found their voice, and used that voice to make their church and communities better.

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils. We need each married sister to speak as a contributing and full partner as you unite with your husband in governing your family. Married or single, you sisters possess distinctive capabilities and special intuition you have received as gifts from God.