Mary Taylor, center, leads a march celebrating the 99th anniversary of women's suffrage, joined by Emily Race, Kelli Bowling, Summer Ervin and Mayor Todd Barton Monday in downtown Crawfordsville. The march kicked off a series of events marking the suffrage centennial in 2020.
League of Women Voters member Gail Pebworth, center, receives a card with the lyrics of a woman's suffrage anthem from Myra Dunn Abbott Monday outside the Montgomery County Courthouse. Monday was Women's Equality Day, marking the date when the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect.
Brock Ervin speaks at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial Monday at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
Members of the Crescendos perform at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial Monday at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
Helen Hudson, president of the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, speaks at the kickoff event for the women's suffrage centennial Monday at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
North Montgomery High School student Mae Dees speaks during the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial as Helen Hudson looks on Monday at the Crawfordsville District Public Library. Dees has been working to get classmates involved with the League.
Retired teacher Mary Lou Dawald speaks at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial Monday at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
Mary Taylor prepares to sing Monday at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
State Rep. Sharon Negele, R-Attica, waits to begin marching Monday at the Montgomery County Courthouse. Negele authored the bill establishing the state's Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission.
Women in Network co-chair Summer Ervin speaks Monday at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
Mayor Todd Barton speaks Monday at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
Pace Dairy site leader Tracy Mobley speaks Monday at the kickoff celebration for the women's suffrage centennial at the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
League of Women Voters members Sheridan Hadley, left, and Margy McCafferty wave before a march to commemorate women's suffrage Monday outside the Montgomery County Courthouse.
A crowd of people, some wearing white hats and dresses like those donned by women suffragists, marched from the courthouse Monday evening on the 99th anniversary of the constitutional amendment that gives women the right to vote nationwide.
“We will vote! We insist! We are women suffragists!” marchers chanted as they paraded down the sidewalk, echoing a battle cry from the movement.
The march, held on Women’s Equality Day, kicked off a series of events leading up to next year’s centennial of the 19th amendment sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County. The national League also celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020.
The march ended at the Crawfordsville District Public Library with a program featuring songs and historical accounts from the era.
After decades of activism and failed attempts to establish women’s full voting rights into law, the amendment took effect on Aug. 26, 1920. The push to secure enough states for approval came down to Tennessee, where the vote ended in a tie.
A 24-year-old male lawmaker broke the impasse by switching his vote after his mother wrote him a letter urging him to “be a good boy” and support the bill.
“Thank heaven for mothers and dutiful sons,” said State Rep. Sharon Negele, R-Attica, speaking to a full room in the library’s basement.
Negele authored the bill establishing the state’s Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, which was signed into law this spring. The commission will organize and promote activities to celebrate the anniversary.
Indiana was home to women who became prominent voices in the movement. Zerelda Wallace, the “Ben-Hur” author’s stepmother, told a panel of all-male U.S. senators they had “attempted to do an impossible thing” to “represent the whole by one-half” in addressing social issues.
In Crawfordsville, which became known in the press as the “headquarters for the Woman Suffrage movement in Hoosierdom,” pioneering woman physician Dr. Mary Holloway Wilhite led suffrage conventions and hosted movement figures Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at her home. The League is raising funds to install a state historical marker honoring Wilhite near Wabash College.
As part of the celebration, the League is highlighting minorities who were part of the movement. When the amendment became law, it granted only white women access to the voting booth. Women of color and Chinese-Americans of both sexes had to wait years longer before they could vote.
“So making sure all citizens have equal rights is an ongoing process… one that I think everybody who’s sitting here has said, I believe in that, right? That’s what America’s about?” League president Helen Hudson said.
In officially proclaiming Monday Women’s Equality Day in Crawfordsville, Mayor Todd Barton called for educating children, especially girls, about the cause.
“We have to make sure they understand that if they have that right and they don’t exercise it, it’s really no good,” Barton said.
Local women’s choir Crescendos and singer/actor Mary Taylor performed suffrage anthems and local phonograph collector Tim McCormick played an original recording
by early-20th century vaudeville actress and singer Anna Chandler.
Other events marking the centennial including a series of women’s suffrage presentations and book discussions beginning next month at the library. Special exhibits are also planned at the Carnegie Museum of Montgomery County and the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum.
Groups can book a narrated slide show of a trip to Seneca Falls, known as the birthplace of the U.S. women’s rights movement, and abolitionist Harriet Tubman’s home. Next June, the League will stage a reenactment of women attempting to vote illegally.
