WOMEN’S RIGHTS CELEBRATED IN VALLEJO
Naval and Historical Museum unveils Smithsonian poster exhibit
Women have always made monumental accomplishments world-wide and that fact was on full display Saturday at the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum.
Partnering with the League of Women Voters, the museum unveiled a new poster exhibit on Saturday called, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence,” which is a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery.
The story of women’s suffrage is a story of voting rights, of inclusion in and exclusion from the franchise, and of a civic development as a nation. The poster exhibit from the Smithsonian celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and explores the complexity of the women’s suffrage movement and the relevance of this history to American’s lives today.
The museum has had a few large traveling exhibits in the past from the Smithsonian, but when this smaller poster tour display became available, Jim Kern, the museum’s executive director, jumped at the chance to have the display in Vallejo.
“It’s not huge, but it’s very well done,” Kern said. “I’m glad to have it here. The nice thing with these smaller poster displays is that when the Smithsonian gives it to you, it’s yours. So if we want to have this display up for a few months, we can do that.”
Kern explained that originally the exhibit was going to be on display for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amend
ment, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that made it impossible to have on a timely basis. However, Kern believes the issue to be a very important one and decided to have the display a year after the anniversary.
The executive director said one of the things he found very interesting about the display is that the women’s suffrage movement and the abolitionist movement basically ran parallel and there was always talk at the time of which was more important. One of the posters shows a map of the United States and which states were for women’s rights and which ones weren’t.
“It wasn’t as black and white as you’d think,” Kern said. “Some people wanted to have women’s rights based off a state-tostate system, while others wanted it to be a constitutional right.”
President of the Solano County League of Women’s Voters Carole Paterson said what most people don’t know about women’s rights is that it goes back a lot more than just 100 years.
“It’s not like this started in 1900 and became a law in 1920,” Paterson said. “This goes back to the 1700’s and the Revolutionary War. Back then, everything you did you turned over the husband. I think of all the courage women had, especially Black women who were so strident and would go to jail to support the cause. Yes, it’s only been 100 years, but something that takes a long time and has as much tenacity in its fight, that means something and people have proved they will stick with it. That’s the real backbone of this.”
Paterson said over the years the 19th Amendment had it’s flaws.
“The curious thing about the amendment was some of the language for it was so vague so it left ways for courts to be able to change it to either strengthen or weaken their position,” Paterson said. “The courts were very easily able to find loopholes and weaken women’s rights.”
Paterson said that despite the pandemic, the League of Women Voters were able to persevere and today focuses on three things — the study of inclusiveness, climate change as well as voter rights and education.
The exhibit room also had displays involving successful women in Vallejo who now have schools named after them (Annie Pennycook, Grace Patterson, etc) as well as women inventors.
Kern also gave a lot of praise to the Soroptimist International Of The Americas, Inc.
“The museum has always gotten a lot of support from them and because of that support we were able to make this exhibit a lot easier,” Kern said. “So that means the Smithsonian exhibit goes in and fits well with the rest of the history of the museum.”
The Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum is on 734 Marin Street and is opened Tuesday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m..
For more information on the exhibit visit https:// vallejomuseum.net.