IPARA APAR@ ` aTEXT ` SDiggs, Annie LePorte1848╨1916reformer and politicianBorn on February 22, 1848, in London, Ontario, Annie LePorte moved with her family to New Jersey in 1855. In 1873, after completing school, she went to Kansas, where in September of that year she married Alvin S. Diggs of Lawrence. In the late 1870s her interest in the temperance crusade drew her into her first acquaintance with politics. In August 1881 she helped form the nonpolitical Kansas Liberal Union among radical and free thinkers of various stripes. A few months later, during a visit to Boston, she was elected a vice-president of the Free Religious Association, succeeding Lucretia Mott. During 1882 Diggs and her husband published the short-lived Kansas Liberal from their home. During the 1880s she worked for woman suffrage and was active in the developing agitation for cooperative association among farmers and workers. She wrote a column on Farmers╒ Alliance news for the Lawrence Journal for a time and then became an associate editor of the Alliance Advocate. She played a central role in transforming the Kansas Farmers╒ Alliance into a political body, the People╒s (later Populist) party, and became one of its most effective speakers and organizers. She was active at the national Populist conventions in Ocala, Florida, in December 1890, at Cincinnati in May 1891, and at Omaha in July 1892, and she was a principal feature of Populist election campaigns in Kansas in 1894 and 1896. In these campaigns she was associated with Mary E. Lease, whom she generally disliked and distrusted. In 1894, as vice-president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, she helped manage an unsuccessful campaign for a woman suffrage amendment to the Kansas constitution. In May 1897 she was elected president of the Kansas Woman╒s Free Silver League, and as part of the silver movement╒s takeover of the Populist party she helped effect the Populist╨Democrat fusion ticket for the 1898 election. From that year to 1902 she held the post of state librarian under the fusion state administration. In 1899 she became president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association. Her control of the fusion convention of 1900 earned her the epithet ╥Boss╙ Diggs from leaders of the regular Democrats. In 1902 she traveled to England to attend the International Cooperative Congress as the representative of the Western Cooperative Association of Kansas City. She remained abroad for two years, sending back articles and letters to newspapers on reform movements in Europe. In 1905 she was elected president of the Kansas Woman╒s Press Association. In 1906 she suddenly moved to New York City, and thereafter she took no part in political affairs. She published two books, The Story of Jerry Simpson, on her fellow Kansas Populist, 1908, and Bedrock, 1912. She lived in Detroit from 1912 until her death on September 7, 1916. ₧styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 8 !I ç !I ▐ ö !I ÿ 5¬ Ö !I ╒ !I π !I ╜ !I ═ !I !I !I ∩ !I ▐ ⁿ !I
