A centennial celebration of both the 19th Amendment and the League of Women Voters is in full march.

Just one of the many events planned for the year includes a traveling exhibit curated by LWV of Kansas which focuses on civic engagement as well as the history of the suffrage movement in Kansas. “Celebrating the Centennial of the 19th Amendment: Women Vote Learning from the Past; Imagining the Future”  reached our state’s Capitol today, where it will temporary reside before moving to the historic Brown v. Board of Education site on January 17. January 22 will be your last chance to view the exhibit here in the capitol city at the YWCA.

Through this exhibit, League of Women Voters of Kansas, and its Centennial Celebration Committee, is committed to honoring the passage of the 19th Amendment by educating Kansans about the historic women’s right to vote movement and celebrating the movement’s successes, while acknowledging the struggle continues.

The Centennial Celebration of the 19th Amendment recognizes the significance of woman’s suffrage which, when ratified in 1920, affirmed the citizenship of more than 26 million women and granted them a mechanism to empower themselves, their families and their communities. The suffrage movement also gave birth to the League of Women Voters with the first local League established in Wichita, KAN in 1919. Wichita also had the first national President of the League of Women Voters, Mrs. Jane Brooks.

The exhibit is FREE and open to the public

DEC 22 – JAN 11 @ Kansas Museum of History

JAN 13 – 17 @ Capitol Building
Hours: 8a – 5p

JAN 17 – 20 @ Brown v. Board of Education
Hours: 9a – 5p

JAN 22 @ YWCA
Hours: 9a – 4p

*Special Network Lunch: January 22 from 11:45a – 1p
EMPOWERING VOTERS, DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

Join the YWCA for a celebration of the 100th anniversary of both the 19th Amendment and the League of Women Voters with special guest speaker Joan Wagnon. Learn more about women’s suffrage in Kansas and the importance of civic engagement through the LWV traveling exhibit which will be on display. Tickets are $10 for YWCA donors / $12 for community members. LEARN MORE + REGISTER

Board of Education National Historic Site will host the League of Women’s Voters of Kansas’ traveling exhibit from January 17, 2019 through January 21, 2019 at 1515 SE Monroe Street Topeka, Kansas 66612. This exhibit tells the story of how women gained the right to vote in Kansas in 1912 and nationally in 1920.

The exhibit features QR codes on select exhibit panels, giving the viewer more information on the stories being shared. These stories include a look at racism as an underlying factor throughout the suffrage movement, leaders at the time including the growth in the number of Black women journalists like Carrie Langston Hughes of Lawrence, and Lilla Day Monroe, one of Topeka’s leading citizens during the early part of the twentieth century. Monroe became the first woman to practice before the Kansas Supreme Court.

The story of how women gained the vote in Kansas in 1912 and nationally in 1920 is a fascinating reflection of American attitudes towards women and its Civil War history.  These suffragists formed unlikely coalitions to achieve a political end—the right to vote. Southern states struggled to ratify the 19th amendment in the Jim Crow South where the existing power structure was already threatened by the addition of Negro men as voters—and now, by the addition of black women to the voting rolls.

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