We Demand Women’s Suffrage Traveling Exhibit @ Bluefield Library
We Demand: Women’s Suffrage in Virginia, a free exhibition from the Library of
Virginia running Monday, April 10th to Saturday, May 20th at the Bluefield Library, commemorates the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted women the right to vote. On November 2, 1920, nearly 80,000 Virginia women, both black and white, eagerly went to the polls to vote in what the nation viewed as a remarkable event—the first time that women in every state exercised the right to vote.
We Demand presents the full, but little known, story of the campaign for woman suffrage in a key southern state where traditional views about women (and much else) held
sway. Despite the challenges they faced, Virginia suffragists created an effective state organization, the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, that coordinated the efforts of scores of local chapters located not only in urban areas but, surprisingly, in remote and rural areas of the state as well. Indeed, they succeeded in their original objective of persuading the General Assembly to propose a woman suffrage amendment to the state constitution.