News Room: Announcements

New Online Exhibit on Women’s Suffrage to Launch on First Friday (6/5)

Margaret Vale, niece of President Woodrow Wilson, represents Alaska in a 1915 suffrage parade in New York City.
Image courtesy Library of Congress

Juneau- The Alaska State Museum’s online exhibit Alaska’s Suffrage Star opens at 4:30 PM on Friday, June 5 as part of the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council’s Virtual First Friday. The exhibit is viewable at https://lam.alaska.gov/suffrage-star.

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, political cartoons, and kid’s activities. 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 Alaska State Museum produced the exhibit to commemorate the centennial of the 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution, which in 1920 extended the right to vote regardless of sex.

This online exhibit is a companion to the traveling exhibit that the Alaska State Museum organized. The traveling version of Alaska’s Suffrage Star will be on exhibit during 2020 at the Haines Sheldon Museum, the Nolan Center in Wrangell, the Carrie McLain Museum in Nome, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Libraries, the Wasilla Museum, and the Skagway Public Library.

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.