The Lugar Series Suffrage Celebration

Join us for the Lugar Series Suffrage Celebration on January 15th, 2020 at the Indianapolis Propylaeum! This will be a special evening where we will commemorate the suffrage movement and the 19th amendment allowing women the right to vote with Sally Perkins’s performance of Digging in Their Heels.

Almost seventy years passed between the first calls for women’s voting rights and the passage of the 19th Amendment. Indiana women organized, marched, petitioned and sometimes resisted. There were ups and downs along the way, including two major wars and a brief moment in 1917 when it seemed the state would beat the nation in the race for women’s suffrage—an exciting summer when Indiana women flooded the polls before the franchise was snatched from them again.

In 1920, Hoosier women’s continuous and tireless work paid off and their goal was realized.On January 16, the Indiana General Assembly approved the national amendment for women’s suffrage; then, at last, on August 26, the U.S. Congress approved the final paperwork ratifying the change to the Constitution. Read more on the Indiana’s Womens Suffrage Centennial website here.