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Marching
In Their Footsteps
January 6 4 PM
- 6PM
 On
Thursday, January 6, from 4 to 6 p.m., celebrate the
start of a new year with us at a free wine-and-cheese
reception for the opening of Windsor’s League of Women
Voters’ exhibition, Marching In Their Footsteps,
commemorating the 90th anniversary of the League and the
right of women to vote in the United States. The
exhibition, prepared by Windsor League of Women Voters
members Marilyn Boehm, Heidi Kelsey, and Pat Reardon, is
the newest in a series of shows at the Society curated
by community members. Using some materials featured in
a larger exhibition developed by the League of Women
Voters of Greater Hartford, the exhibit showcases
photographs of national and local suffragists, sheet
music and journal covers, posters, reproductions of
banners, and Windsor voting statistics. It honors the
women and men who paraded, picketed, marched, and
lobbied for three generations after the 1848 Women’s
Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, to make the
19th Amendment to the Constitution become a reality in
August 1920.
You will learn that in September 1915, the Windsor Businessmen’s
Association hosted a debate on woman’s suffrage at Town Hall. Mrs.
Thomas N. Hepburn (Katharine Hepburn’s mother) of Hartford, CT,
representing suffragists, debated Mrs. Frank J. Goodwin of Westfield,
New Jersey, who represented the Connecticut Association Opposed to
Suffrage. We know only that the debate attracted far more women than
businessmen. You will see the impact of the 19th Amendment on Windsor
voter rolls. In 1918, Windsor cast 790 votes in Connecticut’s
gubernatorial race. In 1920, 1459 Windsor citizens cast their votes for
governor, 550 of them women.
The exhibition’s colors are purple, gold, and white, all colors
associated with the suffrage movement. Purple was a symbol of justice
and dignity; gold or the light green sometimes used, stood for courage
or hope; and white symbolized purity. Marching In Their Footsteps will
be on view through the month of January.
On
Thursday, January 20, at 7 p.m., Windsor Historical Society and Windsor
League of Women Voters jointly sponsor “Votes for Women: A Brief History
of Our Right to Vote” by Dr. Laurel A. Clark, Assistant Professor of
History at the University of Hartford. Cost for the lecture is $6
for adults; $5 for students and seniors; and $4 for Windsor Historical
Society and League of Women Voter members. |