Eugene’s Shelton McMurphey Johnson House unveiled an exhibit on Feb. 18 to honor the struggle for women’s suffrage and equal rights in the United States during the centennial year since women won the right to vote nationwide. The exhibit, called “The Work That Was Done,” will be on display until June 19.
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920. Its ratification granted the legal right to vote to all women nationally. However, the struggle for suffrage began long before that.
As visitors walk from room to room on the first floor of the SMJ House, they follow a timeline of significant events in the history of the women’s suffrage movement. Events on the timeline stretch from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in the United States, through the ratification of the 19th Amendment and beyond.
Accompanying the timeline are posters about the anti-suffrage movement, music of the era, racism within both the suffrage and anti-suffrage movements, suffragists’ treatment in prison, women of color suffragists and more.
On the museum’s higher floors, there are displays with information on the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century, the suffrage movement in popular culture and the ongoing struggle for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
SMJ House Executive Director Leah Murray designed the exhibition and said she wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible because “our education system is severely lacking in this area.”
Murray said when she began her research, she knew very little about the suffrage movement and wanted to include as much that she had learned as she could. She credits that lack of knowledge as a motivator to include lesser known or acknowledged aspects of the movement like the racism of some suffragists or the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
The exhibition at the SMJ House is only one portion of a year-long celebration of women’s equality, according to a press release by the SMJ House. Other aspects of the year’s celebration will include events both in the SMJ House and throughout the community.
Events will include a traveling book club, an art installation and movie showings. In an interview, Murray mentioned the importance of holding events in public to continue conversations about equality. “I didn’t want this to be just another exhibit,” she said.
