The League of Women Voters of Kansas will move its 19th Amendment exhibit to the Great Bend Public Library next week, where it will be on display Monday through Friday. There will be a closing reception for this exhibit from 1-2 p.m. on Friday, December 20.

Janice Walker from the Great Bend League of Women Voters explained that the seven-panel traveling exhibit is a mobile museum explaining the history of the women’s suffrage movement.

Beginning with Clarina Nichols in the late 1800s, women in Kansas fought for decades to ensure their inclusion in civic life. Kansas was on the leading edge as women could vote in all elections in Kansas in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment extended that right to the rest of the country.

The exhibit also traces the history following 1920, including the influence of African-American and Native American women, who had an integral part in the process even as the right to vote did not include them until much later. Illustrating the difference women’s involvement in the political process has made in the lives of all Kansans through the present day, the exhibit’s final panel issues a call to action to vote in every election.

This exhibit has been shown at Barton Community College and has been at the Great Bend Public Library this week. After the closing reception at the Great Bend Public Library on December 20, the exhibit will return to Topeka.