Korean Lunar New Year: Seollal Crafts and GamesKorean Lunar New Year: Seollal Crafts and Games

The Staten Island  Museum is OPEN with Limited Hours. Visit this great exhibit online or in person at the Staten Island Museum. Women of the Nation Arise Staten Island Museum.

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Women of the Nation Arise Staten Island Museum. Women in the United States won a long-fought national victory in 1920 when the 19th Constitutional Amendment establishing their right to vote was ratified. Women in New York had earned that right in a state referendum in 1917. Staten Island’s role in the fight for woman suffrage was both innovative on a national level and uniquely suited to the community from which it came. Women of the Nation Arise! presents stories of Staten Island suffragists focusing on four tactics they used in the decades-long struggle for political change before they could vote: education, organization, agitation, and publicity. As the site of the first flight for woman suffrage in the United States, Staten Island provided a distinctive setting for suffrage activism.

One hundred years later, this exhibition also critically examines the woman suffrage movement as a complex web of imperfect strategies. Suffragists often leveraged racial, economic, ethnic, and geographical biases to advance their cause. In doing so, the movement both divided and unified women in building consensus in their efforts to win the right to vote.

The ratification of the 19th Amendment was a major milestone in American Democracy. The law added millions of women to the rolls of American voters, but it did not secure voting rights for all citizens. Efforts to ensure and expand access to the polls continued beyond 1920 and to this day. We celebrate the achievements of local suffragists acting on the grassroots level to create the momentum necessary for regional and national change. Their steadfast perseverance to achieve self-determination set a new standard for civic responsibility that still astounds and challenges us today.

The Woman Voter publication cover

The Woman Voter, Oct. 1914
Women Arise SI Museum Collection of Staten Island Museum View Document

Women Arise SI Museum: Click here for more about the Exhibit and Museum