Purdue Archives’ new exhibition tells story of suffragists

A new exhibition, “Not Given but Earned: Women’s Fight for the Vote,” is opening today (Aug. 23) showcasing rare and original materials from the vaults of Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. The exhibition includes rare books, papers, manuscripts, photographs and artifacts that document key aspects of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement from its beginnings to suffragists’ continued activism even after the right to vote was won. The items focus on Hoosier and Purdue women’s involvement.

Highlights include:

• A first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” considered one of the first feminist texts.
• The papers of Paulina Merritt, an early Hoosier suffragist who petitioned senators and men’s clubs to promote women’s right to vote and was a colleague of May Wright Sewall.
• Original drawings by John T. McCutcheon, an 1889 Purdue alumnus and artist for the Chicago Tribune, that depict key events in the women’s suffrage movement.
• Articles and pamphlets from Amelia Earhart’s papers documenting her advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment, which was drafted by suffragists in their continued pursuit of equal rights.

This exhibition is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday, and runs from Aug. 23 through Dec. 10. It is located in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education (HSSE) Library inside Stewart Center.

For more information, contact the curator, Katey Watson, the France A. Córdova archivist, at watso217@purdue.edu.