Hoosier Suffragists

Speaker Marsha Miller, Librarian, Gender Studies, President, American Association of University Women

Women’s Equality Day commemorates the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, two simple sentences, which gave all women the right to vote in all elections, two simple sentences that represented 72 years of struggle and activism. Women’s Equality Day has been proclaimed by all Presidents since Richard Nixon. In 1973, Representative Bella Abzug (Dem. NY) and her co-sponsors, including Indiana Senator, Birch Bayh, were able to have passed a House Joint Resolution (first introduced in 1971) proclaiming August 26 as the day to celebrate this historic event, right in the middle of the attempt to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. On-campus programming, spearheaded by Gender Studies, focuses not just on women and voting but also equal rights covering a wide range of topics, both historical and current. During 2018, programming is highlighting the suffrage and voting rights of African-American women as well as Hoosier suffragists.