Women’s suffrage posters on display at elections office
The Visual Arts Guild of the Calhoun Gordon Arts Council has placed posters from the Smithsonian Institution’s SITES program on long-term loan in the offices of the Gordon County Board of Elections and Voter Registration.
Shea Hicks, Gordon County Board of Elections supervisor, accepted the posters recently from Miranda
Bentley, executive director of the Calhoun Gordon Arts Council. Hicks plans to display the posters in the elections office at 408 Court Street, Calhoun.
Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence was exhibited in the galleries of the Harris Arts Center during election season 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
According to the Smithsonian’s web site, the crusade for women’s suffrage is one of the longest reform movements in American history. Between 1832 and 1920, women citizens organized for the right to vote, agitating first in their states or territories and also, simultaneously, through petitioning for a federal amendment.
Based on the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of the same name, Votes for Women broadens visitors’ understanding of the suffrage movement in the
United States.
The poster exhibition addresses women’s political activism, explores the racism that challenged universal suffrage, and documents the ratification of the 19th Amendment which prohibits the government from denying U.S. citizens the right to vote on the basis of gender. It also touches upon the suffrage movement’s relevance to current conversations on voting and voting rights across America.