In recognition of women’s suffrage, the women of KWO encourage all women to use this right and get out to vote. The journey to women’s suffrage was a long battle. A main driving force for women’s suffrage in Connecticut was the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA), founded in 1869 by Isabella Beecher Hooker and Frances Ellen Burr. Besides its goal to persuade the Connecticut General Assembly to ratify the 19th amendment, giving women in Connecticut the right to vote, its members also participated in the national fight for women’s suffrage through national protests and demonstrations. Before women gained suffrage, the CWSA helped to pass local legislation giving women more rights. In May and June of 1919, the nineteenth amendment was passed in the US Congress. To ratify the amendment in the US Constitution, 36 state legislatures had to ratify it, which occurred on August 18, 1920; Connecticut was not one of the original 36 states to ratify the amendment, but it did become the 37th state to ratify the amendment on September 14, 1920.
The 19th amendment ensured that women’s voices would be heard. Today we celebrate this milestone through the voices of local women, expressed in their visual art. The women’s suffrage movement could not have been successful without collective action, and so it is important now, when we cannot come together in person, to come together virtually as a community in commemoration of women’s suffrage.