JACKSON, Wyo. — Join History Jackson Hole and Teton County Library at the Jackson Hole History Museum on Thursday, June 12, at 6 p.m. for “Wyoming Women’s Political History: It’s Complicated.”
This free event is part of the Rest of the West Series co-presented by Teton County Library and History Jackson Hole and has been made possible with partial funding by Wyoming Humanities and Teton County Library Foundation. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m. at 175 East Broadway Ave.
Virginia Scharff – Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History and former Director of the Center for the Southwest at the University of New Mexico, as well as University of Wyoming graduate – will tell four stories that reveal both women’s courage and determination to defend and expand democracy, and their sometimes unexpected and contradictory motives and consequences of their actions.
From the 1869 territorial establishment of women’s voting rights, to the national fight for women’s suffrage, to the election of Nellie Tayloe Ross as the first woman Governor in 1924, Wyoming women have been in the vanguard of American women’s political history.
But their actions came at a cost for many women who called Wyoming home.
Wyoming women have repeatedly had to fight for their rights, and their struggles have been complicated, to say the least.
More recently, Wyoming’s former Representative Liz Cheney, an arch-conservative and rising Republican star became an unlikely lightning rod in the struggle for democracy. Each of these stories reveals the complexity of women’s historic efforts to claim their rightful place in American politics.
For more information, visit jacksonholehistory.org or call (307) 733-2414.
