New Exhibit on Women’s Suffrage Opens at the Nolan Center
July 1 - August 7
The traveling exhibit "Alaska’s Suffrage Star" opens at the NOLAN CENTER on JULY 1, 2020 at 1pm.
The exhibit shares the history of women’s suffrage in Alaska, explaining how local and national activism helped Alaska women citizens achieve the vote in 1913. That year, the first bill ever passed by the Alaska Territorial Legislature granted voting rights to women citizens. Only in 1924 did all Alaska Native women become eligible voters, because it was only then that the federal government granted US citizenship to Native Americans.
The exhibit features reproductions of historic photographs, illustrations, and political cartoons. It highlights Alaska women voting rights activists from the 1910s and 1920s, including:
The traveling exhibit has been enhanced by the Wrangell Museum collection. The exhibit is a walk through time highlighting women, industry and politics. Explore the beginnings of important women’s organizations in Wrangell such as the Alaska Native Sisterhood and Wrangell Women’s Civic Club. Visit items utilized by Wrangell ladies over 100 years ago, like our 1910’s treadle sewing machine and a beautiful Edwardian era mourning dress.
The exhibit is scheduled to appear at museums or libraries in Haines, Anchorage, Wrangell, Nome, Wasilla, Homer, and Cordova.
The League of Women Voters Alaska, the League of Women Voters Anchorage, the Fairbanks Branch of the American Association of University Women, and the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum sponsored the exhibit.
The exhibit shares the history of women’s suffrage in Alaska, explaining how local and national activism helped Alaska women citizens achieve the vote in 1913. That year, the first bill ever passed by the Alaska Territorial Legislature granted voting rights to women citizens. Only in 1924 did all Alaska Native women become eligible voters, because it was only then that the federal government granted US citizenship to Native Americans.
The exhibit features reproductions of historic photographs, illustrations, and political cartoons. It highlights Alaska women voting rights activists from the 1910s and 1920s, including:
- Nellie Cashman, entrepreneur, miner, and the first woman to vote in a territorial election in Alaska
- Cornelia Hatcher, temperance leader who led the successful effort to enact Prohibition in Alaska
- Lena Morrow Lewis, socialist organizer and the first Alaska woman to run for federal office in 1916
- Tillie Paul, Tlingit educator and tribal historian who was arrested for assisting a Tlingit man to vote
The traveling exhibit has been enhanced by the Wrangell Museum collection. The exhibit is a walk through time highlighting women, industry and politics. Explore the beginnings of important women’s organizations in Wrangell such as the Alaska Native Sisterhood and Wrangell Women’s Civic Club. Visit items utilized by Wrangell ladies over 100 years ago, like our 1910’s treadle sewing machine and a beautiful Edwardian era mourning dress.
The exhibit is scheduled to appear at museums or libraries in Haines, Anchorage, Wrangell, Nome, Wasilla, Homer, and Cordova.
The League of Women Voters Alaska, the League of Women Voters Anchorage, the Fairbanks Branch of the American Association of University Women, and the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum sponsored the exhibit.
~ Click here for the full online version of the exhibit ~
During the exhibit we will be featuring special screening matinees (movies, documentaries, recorded lectures):
