100 years of voting rights for state’s women

o What: “Road to Equality: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in the Northwest,” a new exhibit at the Clark County Historical Museum.

o When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. The exhibit is expected to run for the next 18 months.

o Where: 1511 Main St., Vancouver.

o Cost: $4; $3 for seniors and college students with identification; $2 for children 6-18; free for children 5 and younger. Anyone who has been laid off due to the recession will receive free admission to the museum through Aug. 28 in conjunction with the “Putting People to Work” exhibit. The museum hosts a free Museum After Hours event from 5-9 p.m. the first Thursday of each month through November. The event includes a lecture at 7 p.m.

o Information: http://www.cchmuseum.org, 360-993-5679.

This year marks the centennial of women achieving and keeping the right to vote in Washington, but the work toward that victory began in the 1840s.

The right to vote is something many women worked most of their lives to obtain, said Eileen Fitzsimons, Clark County Historical Museum research historian.

The museum’s new exhibit, “Road to Equality: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in the Northwest,” explores the suffrage movement and pays homage to key female figures in Northwest history. The exhibit also focuses on the role of women in the work force during World War II and in the Civil Rights Movement.

“We’re looking back and thinking about how these women persevered for all these decades,” Fitzsimons said.

“Road to Equality,” which spans 1848 to the late 1970s, takes the place of the “Boomer!” exhibit, which the museum had featured since summer 2008. “Road to Equality” opened June 24 and is expected to be on display for the next 18 months.

The exhibit will be the first time the museum has used a cell phone audio tour program called Guide by Cell. People will be able to call a number on their cell phones and get information about the exhibit and leave feedback. It doesn’t cost museum patrons anything other than cell phone minutes to use the service.

The audio guide will help museum-goers as they navigate “Road to Equality,” an exhibit organized by decade, with period clothes and kitchen appliances offering glimpses into women’s lives since the late 1800s.

The political history lessons, though, begin with 1848, the year of the first women’s rights convention, which took place in Seneca Falls, New York. The exhibit then discusses the westward migration of the suffrage movement, led by women such as Abigail Scott Duniway.

Duniway is one of several historical figures honored at the exhibit with large cardboard cutouts in their likeness. There are cutouts of contemporary figures such as retired Washington state representative Val Ogden, as well.

Women such as Duniway worked for decades to achieve the right to vote, but it almost happened as early as 1854. A women’s suffrage amendment was introduced in the Washington Territorial Legislature that year and failed by only one vote.

The challenge was that women needed men to vote on their behalf, Fitzsimons said.

“They had to persuade men to vote to give them the right to vote,” she said.

They were successful in 1883, but women’s suffrage was revoked by the Washington Territorial Supreme Court just four years later.

Getting a taste of political freedom only to have it snatched away must have been difficult, Fitzsimons said.

“Women started voting, they started running for local offices, like school superintendent. It must have been really disappointing to have that all come to nothing after four years,” said Fitzsimons, a 63-year-old Portland resident.

The Washington Legislature reenacted the suffrage law in 1888, but women lost the right to vote again the next year.

With all that women went through to get and keep the freedom to vote, which finally happened in Washington in 1910, it’s a right more people should exercise, Fitzsimons said.

“I think we have an obligation as women to exercise our political gifts,” she said.

To that end, the exhibit features a voting booth where people can weigh in on whether the Equal Rights Amendment is still needed. The amendment, which would guarantee women equal rights under federal, state and local law, was first proposed in the 1920s but has yet to be ratified by enough states to change the U.S. Constitution.

Suffrage is a major focus of the exhibit, but it’s just one of several issues explored. “Road to Equality” also looks at the role of women in heavy industry during World War II.

“Women really were the backbone of a lot of manufacturing, especially here at Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver,” Fitzsimons said. “As the draft went along and men were sent off to war, there was obviously a manpower shortage. Women filled that gap.”

The exhibit covers the time after the Rosie the Riveter era — when men returned from war and women faced a job shortage and pressure to return to being homemakers — then moves into the Civil Rights Movement. Suffragists had aligned themselves with abolitionists before the Civil War, and many women were similarly supportive of the fight against racism in the 1950s and ’60s.

To give people an idea of the media of this time period, the exhibit features a television playing a loop of commercials from the 1950s,’60s and ’70s.

“Road to Equality” is more sparse than the “Boomer!” exhibit, and that’s by design.

“We’re really asking people to think about the movement and all the effort that women put into getting the right to vote,” Fitzsimons said, “to reflect on something we may take for granted.”

Mary Ann Albright: maryann.albright@columbian.com, 360-735-4507.