Alaska's Suffrage Star Exhibit

Alaska’s Suffrage Star on exhibit at the Skagway Public Library through November!

Yes, you can come see it in person, inside the building!

Monday through Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 1pm-5pm.

Alaska's Suffrage Star exhibit shares the history of women’s suffrage in Alaska, explaining how local and national activism helped Alaska women citizens achieve the vote in 1913.

That year, the first bill ever passed by the Alaska Territorial Legislature granted voting rights to women citizens. Only in 1924 did all Alaska Native women become eligible voters, because it was only then that the federal government granted US citizenship to Native Americans.

The exhibit features reproductions of historic photographs, illustrations, and political cartoons. It highlights Alaska women voting rights activists from the 1910s and 1920s, including:

• Nellie Cashman, entrepreneur, miner, and the first woman to vote in a territorial election in Alaska
• Cornelia Hatcher, temperance leader who led the successful effort to enact Prohibition in Alaska
• Lena Morrow Lewis, socialist organizer & the first Alaska woman to run for federal office in 1916
• Tillie Paul, Tlingit educator & tribal historian who was arrested for assisting a Tlingit man to vote
• Harriet Pullen, entrepreneur, encourager of women voting

The Alaska State Museum produced the exhibit to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, which in 1920 extended the right to vote to American women throughout the country.  

Sponsored by the League of Women Voters Alaska, the League of Women Voters Anchorage, the Fairbanks Branch of the American Association of University Women, and the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives, and Museum.

With special thanks to the Skagway Museum for their assistance transporting the exhibit.