Mary Elizabeth Clyens Lease (1853-1933), American lecturer, writer, and politician, gained national fame during the Populist crusade for reform in the 1890s. She was a zealous agitator for equality and opportunity.

Mary Elizabeth Clyens was born in Pennsylvania of Irish parents. She was reared and educated in Allegany County, N.Y. The family moved to Kansas, probably in 1870, at which time Mary Elizabeth was in Osage Mission, Kans., teaching in a parochial school. She married Charles L. Lease, a pharmacist, in 1873. The couple soon moved to Texas, where three of their four children were born. Returning to Kansas in the early 1880s, the family settled in Wichita.

In 1885 Lease was admitted to the bar and entered public life speaking on behalf of the Irish National League with a flaming tirade on the subject of "Ireland and Irishmen." In 1888 she spoke before the state convention of the Union Labor...