Karin Sisk portrays Aiken's spitfire of a suffragist, Eulalie Salley

Mar. 26—About the time that Aiken's Eulalie Salley was 7 years old, there was a great divide among the leaders of women's suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were urging for a national change that would give the vote to both women and Black men at once, while Lucy Stone advocated for change state by state and with the vote given to women only after it had been granted to Black men.

This context of varied approach to women's suffrage is one that Karin Sisk used to frame her story of the spitfire of a woman named Eulalie Salley, suffragist, Realtor and one-time boxer.

Sisk lives in Aiken and has been heavily involved with the League of Women Voters for almost 15 years.

Her performance March 19, "A Conversation with Eulalie Salley," was part of Augusta Museum of History's celebration of Women's History Month. Her one-woman show encapsulated the life and work of Salley while also giving this woman's efforts the context of those who came before her and, later, who worked alongside her.

Sisk broke from her role of Eulalie Salley to work with a timeline that started with Abigail Adams telling her husband, John, "don't forget about the women"; and that advanced toward the 15th amendment and the debates between Stanton and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The 15th amendment gave Black men the right to vote, and "that was something that was very difficult for white women swallow," said Sisk.

That timeline had the mark of 1920 and the 19th amendment that gave women the right to vote.

"There was so much upheaval in the legislature that he had to go out the window to escape the wrath of many of his fellow legislators," said Sisk of former Tennessee state Sen. Harry Burn. The story has it that Burn's mother wrote him a letter just before the legislature voted, and that his mama told him to "be a good boy" and vote in his mother's interest.

Of guaranteeing women the right to vote, Sisk said that those who led the fight came at it from different angles, and "it took all of these different kinds of approaches to make it work, it wasn't just one."

"I think what's important to think about is a lot of us are for or against something and working on these things politically, or even in the home or office," she said. "These things happen that we want, but we have different ways of going about it and sometimes it takes various ways of going about it because let's face it, we ourselves are convinced by different ways and different approaches."

In her eyes: Sisk tells the story of Eulalie Salley

Eulalie Chafee Salley was born in Augusta in 1883. She lived through the pomp of the Jazz Age and the hard times of the Depression, the gilded age of industry and two world wars. She was witness to the early modern Civil Rights movement that ran between the races as hers ran between the sexes.

She died in March 1975, just six years after South Carolina ratified the 19th amendment in symbolic legislation.

"It was a child custody case in 1910 that just got my dander up. And many other women at the time, too," said Sisk, in her role of Eulalie Salley.

Former U.S. Sen. Benjamin Tillman, from Trenton, had had his children deeded over to him when his wife fell ill, and the case became a national cause célèbre. "Children belonged to their daddy just like cattle on the farm," said Sisk.

In her fight for women's suffrage, Eulalie Salley founded the Aiken County Equal Suffrage League in 1912 and seven years later was elected president to the state's League — the same League she'd joined years prior and to which she reportedly sent "the best dollar I ever spent" in response to a newspaper advertisement. That was a move that got her husband, former Aiken Mayor Julian Booth Salley's, "dander up," Sisk said.

Fundraising for the League acquainted Eulalie with real estate.

She was resourceful. She'd gone up in an open plane to drop leaflets on Aiken that urged women's suffrage. She took boxing lessons and put on a prizefight as a Gold Dust Twin. Those gunning for the right to vote had to "raise a ruckus," said Sisk.

That ruckus required money.

South Carolina had no woman Realtors at the time. Real estate was a business that would give Salley the name, "First Lady" of South Carolina Realtors 44 years after receiving her license in 1915.

Business didn't detract Salley from the fight for women's rights.

When the 19th amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote, Salley helped to form the South Carolina League of Women Voters.

Though it was law of the land throughout the U.S. once Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it — by that one vote of Sen. Burn's, reportedly made at the behest of his mother — in August of 1920, certain of the states, including both South Carolina and Georgia, did not formally recognize it until much later.

Former South Carolina Gov. Robert McNair signed the bill for ratification on July 1, 1969. According to Sisk, Eulalie Salley spoke to the legislature, telling the lawmakers, "It's about time, boys."

Georgia, the first state to reject the 19th amendment when it was introduced in 1919, ratified it on Feb. 20, 1970.