Frances Munds

Frances Lillian Willard Munds (June 10, 1866 – December 16, 1948) was an American suffragist and leader of the suffrage movement within Arizona. After achieving her goal of statewide women's suffrage, she went on to become a member of the Arizona Senate more than five years before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted the vote to all American women. She lived in Prescott, Arizona and represented Yavapai County in 1915. She was a Democrat.

Early life Munds was born Frances Lillian Willard in Franklin, California, on June 10, 1866, the eighth child of Joel and Mary Grace Vinyard Willard. Frances Willard's her maternal grandfather was Colonel James Russell Vineyard, a Wisconsin Territory and California politician. Her paternal grandfather was Alexander Hamilton Willard (1777–1865) who had been a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, In Nevada, Willard's had limited educational opportunities, but desired further education. Frances joined Prescott's Monday Club, where she met Pauline O'Neill (1865–1961).

Suffrage efforts In 1898, Munds was elected secretary for the Territory of Arizona Women Suffrage Organization. In 1901, she assumed the leadership of the Arizona suffrage association. This marked a change from the practices of earlier suffrage leaders, such as Josephine Brawley Hughes, who had shunned the Mormon community. This outreach enabled the organization to lobby Mormon members of the territorial legislature to support legislation supporting women. In 1903, Munds and O'Neill persuaded Arizona Democrats to tie up pending legislation until a suffrage bill passed, and the 1903 territorial legislature passed a bill granting women the vote. However, although Territorial Governor Alexander Brodie had told suffrage leaders he would not go against the legislature, he vetoed the bill. The proposed plank was defeated before it could be added to the constitution.

Following Arizona's admission to the Union on February 14, 1912, a meeting of the State of Arizona Women Suffrage Organization unanimously elected Munds the organization's president. She initially refused to accept the position, but acquiesced on the condition the position be renamed chairman, and that she be allowed to reorganize the state organization.

Upon her entry to the state legislature in 1915, Munds said, "true blue conservatives will be shocked to think of a grandmother sitting in the State Senate." She chose not to run for a second term in the legislature, but in 1918 was persuaded to run for Secretary of State, a run which was unsuccessful.

On May 4, 2024, a statue of Munds, created by sculptor Stephanie Hunter, was unveiled in Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza. In the statue, Munds is holding an America flag with a ballot box at her feet.