Tanner Conley
For some faculty, like history professor Renee Laegreid, the Wyoming Women’s Suffrage Symposium celebration hits close to home.
Laegreid holds her degree in American History with an emphasis on the American West and Native American history. She is a member of the Governor’s Council for the Wyoming Women’s Suffrage celebration starting in December and is one of only two University representatives to be on the Council.
“As a women’s historian, women’s history is kind of a big thing. It helps you realize how precarious a person’s situation is if they don’t have civil rights,” Laegreid said.
She said she believes Wyoming especially should celebrate the success of Women’s Suffrage due to its reputation as “The Equality State”.
“It was unconditional suffrage.This was the law that passed in 1869 and said, ‘no holds barred’. This is also the first time that the right to vote was granted to women and it wasn’t revoked. Utah granted women the right to vote in 1870 and they had that right taken away from them,” said Laegreid. “It wasn’t just the right to vote, it was also the right for full political equality, which meant that women could hold political office and serve on juries just like men could.”
The Wyoming Women’s Suffrage Symposium will be held today and Fri. The event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the Department of History and American Studies, the School of Culture, Gender, & Social Justice, and the College of Arts & Sciences.
The purpose of the celebration is to highlight not only the successes of the movement, but also the struggles they overcame. It is often overlooked that the Women’s Suffrage movement had to compete for national attention against other famous movements of the time such as the building of the Transcontinental Railroad or the American expansion West.
“This [celebration] is a way to not just have one perspective on suffrage and why it’s so important to Wyoming,” Laegreid said.
This will be done through a series of speakers from around the nation as well as presentations by UW students and faculty. The event is highlighted by Virginia Scharff and Susan Stramberg.
Scharff is a former UW graduate who has written several articles on Wyoming and Suffrage, recently retired from the University of New Mexico, and continues to be a very active scholar in Western Women’s history. She is known for her ability to give lively and entertaining presentations.
Stramburg is one of the leaders of the women’s movement into broadcast journalism in the 1970s. She held the door open for countless women to pursue a career in journalism.
This event also serves as a precursor to the state-wide celebration of the Women’s Suffrage movement that starts in Cheyenne Dec. 10 and lasts until Sept. 6 of next year.
This is meant to symbolize the amount of time since the bill to grant women the right to vote was passed in Dec. of 1869 to when the first ballot was cast by Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie in Sept. of 1870. The event comes on the 150th anniversary of the landmark decision to become the first territory, then later state, to allow women the opportunity to vote.
