Soothing the “Savage Hearts of Man”: Women's Suffrage

Historian Dr. Elyssa Ford will focus on how rural women in Missouri played an important role in the suffrage movement. Adults and teens are welcome at this program celebrating Women's History Month!

Join the Missouri Humanities and Rolling Hills Library for this special presentation with Dr. Ford, associate professor of history at Northwest Missouri State University.

Though often ignored by the national and eastern organizations, women’s suffrage groups in the Midwest learned by the late 19th century that rural areas also must be targeted to win the hearts and minds of the electorate...From Kirksville in the far northeast to Maryville in the far northwest, rural communities engaged in suffrage discussions, invited national speakers who bewitched–and sometimes enraged–local audiences, and supported their own suffrage workers... [A] small group of young, rural women engaged with the suffrage movement and... were shaped not just by the national suffrage discussion but by the local and often heated suffrage debates within their community.   (https://shsmo.org/speakers-bureau/speakers/elyssa-ford) 

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