'100 Years of Change': Oberlin exhibit connects women's suffrage to today's voting rights fight

OBERLIN — The fight for universal voting rights isn't over, and Amanda Manahan is hoping a traveling exhibit ties the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the modern day. "Ohio Women Vote: 100 Years of Change" opened Tuesday at the Oberlin Heritage Center's Monroe House and runs through Sept. 19. It features 12 informational panels crafted by the Ohio History Connection. Some bear quotes from the women who fought for their right to vote, including familiar local faces. Lucy Stone was an 1847 graduate of Oberlin College who wrote abolitionist speeches and organized the first national Women's Rights Convention in Massachusetts. Mary Church Terrell was another early Oberlin graduate, the daughter of former slaves. She fought for women's suffrage, even picketed outside the White House to send a message to President Woodrow Wilson, and in 1909 was one of the founding members of the NAACP. The Heritage Center has created Oberlin-specific panels honoring local women who were influential in both the suffrage movement and in political office. "We want people to be able to see how this history connects to today," said Manahan, museum education and tour coordinator at the Oberlin Heritage Center. "That's what we're all about. But we also want people to think about how these issues were thought about historically." The U.S. electoral system still denies voting rights to millions of people, she said — not everyone has a voice. "I think that's something America needs to come to terms with," Manahan said. Interactive portions of the "100 Years of Change" exhibit ask visitors to think about the next frontiers in voting rights: whether the legal voting age should be lowered from 18 to 16, whether the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico be granted statehood and whether voting rights should be restored to convicted felons. The exhibit also reflects anti-suffrage ideas, such as an 1870 op-ed in the Lorain County News titled "Don't Believe in Suffrage." The letter claims to speak for 140 married women who opposed the idea of being allowed to vote: "We feel that our present duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities," and are content that men "represent us in the corn field, the battlefield and at the ballot box, and we them in the school room, at the fireside and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot box, to be thus more full and impartial than it could possibly be were all women allowed to vote," it said. Manahan said the letter is a reminder that the fight for voting rights wasn't without its debates and stiff opposition, and it suffered periods of stagnation and defeats through the years. "Some women didn't agree that African American men should get the right to vote before white women," she said. "So you had a lot of racial issues at play, a lot of social equity issues … Just like there is a spectrum today in political thought, there was a spectrum then that I don't think has been explored very often." Contact Jason Hawk at (440) 329-7122 or news@lcnewspapers.com.