Mark your calendars for Tuesday, August 18, at 7 p.m., when exhibition curators Libby Neidenbach and Madeline Drace will host a live Zoom discussion of "Yet She is Advancing" on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification. Hear about the making of the exhibition and discuss the history of the suffrage movement in Louisiana with the show's creators. Registration is now open, and admission is free.
One hundred years ago, the passage of the 19th Amendment expanded the vote to American women, but Louisiana did not formally ratify the law until 50 years later. A new virtual exhibition from THNOC, "Yet She is Advancing": New Orleans Women and the Right to Vote, 1878-1970, covers the struggle to ensure suffrage for all women over a near 100-year period of our history.
The tension between progress and tradition, equality and prejudice in Louisiana was perhaps most keenly felt in New Orleans, where wealthy white women organized to win the vote for themselves but ignored or intentionally neglected the suffrage of women of African descent. After 1920, African American women continued to fight for access to the ballot until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended the discriminatory practices that prevented black Louisianians from exercising their constitutional right to vote.