(updated March 16, 2020)

Northwest Missouri State University is commemorating Women’s History Month with a series of activities that include lectures and exhibits featuring women, as well as its annual recognition of “Influential Women of Northwest.”

Northwest will host “The Silver Lining,” an exhibit showcasing the work of multidisciplinary artist Chintia Kirana through March 27 at the Olive DeLuce Fine Arts Building. Women’s suffrage displays will be in the lower level of Valk Center, the B.D. Owens Library and the J.W. Jones Student Union March 1 through March 31. Biography cards of suffragists and voting rights activists will also be on display in the Student Union and Owens Library March 1 through March 31.

The Northwest community is invited to nominate female students, faculty and staff at Northwest who have positively influenced lives and made outstanding contributions to the University community. Nominations for Northwest's annual recognition of “Influential Women of Northwest” must be submitted by noon Monday, March 16, by visiting www.nwmissouri.edu/diversity/whm/.

Associate Professor of History Dr. Elyssa Ford, who is helping organize Women’s History Month activities at Northwest, notes her grandmother was 3 years old before even her great-grandmother was allowed to vote in 1920. Ford knows many have similar stories.

“This was the pretty recent past, and we often forget how long women had to fight for the right to vote,” Ford said. “What started in 1848 took until 1920 to happen, and almost none of the original suffragists who we know – like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, or even Susan B. Anthony – lived to see women’s suffrage pass at the national level.

“This also is an important local story because there were groups formed for women’s suffrage here in Maryville and well-known speakers, including Stanton and Anthony, spoke in town. Even Northwest students invited a suffrage speaker to come to campus in the 1910s.”

National Women’s History Month was founded in 1987 when the U.S. Congress declared that it be celebrated each March. A presidential proclamation is issued annually to honor the achievements of American women.

The activities are sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Missouri Gold, the Women’s History Month Advisory Board, Academic Success and Retention, as well as the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences; the Department of Language, Literature and Writing; and the Department of Fine and Performing Arts.

For more information about Women’s History Month activities at Northwest, contact Ford at ebford@nwmissouri.edu.