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News from the Archives

Category: People

Mar 08 2019

History Reflected Back: Part I

Posted on March 8, 2019 by Anna Holland
Man and boy in front of boxcar in Holy City, 1920s. Many barrio residents lived in converted boxcars along the Mississippi River.

Below is a reflection from Micaela Terronez, Olson Graduate Assistant, on a recent talk about her interest in the Mexican barrios of the Quad Cities at a local community gathering in Davenport, Iowa. She will be giving a version of this talk at “Workers’ Dream for an America that ‘Yet Must Be’ Struggles for Freedom and Dignity, Past and Present” March 30th 9:00 – 3:30 in Rm 101 Kollros Auditorium Biology Building East.

 

On October 28th, I spoke at the Cook’s Point/Holy City Reunion, a community gathering of former residents and descendants of two former Mexican barrios in the Quad Cities – Holy City in Bettendorf and Cook’s Point in Davenport.  I was honored to speak at this reunion because a primary reason for my current professional path stems directly from my interests in the barrios of the Midwest. When my ancestors migrated from Mexico in the early 20th century, they resided in Cook’s Point and La Yarda in Silvis, another barrio community on the other side of the Mississippi River in Illinois. Starting at an early age, I developed a curiosity for these communities from hearing the stories of my family members and marveling at old photographs adorning the walls.  

I learned that life was difficult. For example, one of the first stories I heard about segregation and systematic racism did not derive from my history books, but from my own family history. In 1952, when Cook’s Point was cleared for industrial development, my great-grandparents and others had great difficulty locating a place to call home. Few landlords and white residents wanted Mexicans in their neighborhoods. My ancestors instead purchased land in the west end of Davenport where they built several homes, and cleverly named the neighborhood Ramirezville — after the surname of the family. I also learned of the tight-knit communities, however, where friends became more like cousins, and where cousins became more like siblings. While honoring culture and memory, it was these stories that inspired and encouraged me to explore history as a student.  

Mother and children in Holy City, 1920s

I rarely learned this history in school. Why were these rich stories given just one small paragraph of my history books? One reason is a lack of knowledge and access to these experiences. As an undergraduate in college, this lack of scholarly work developed my interests in Mexican American histories and encouraged me to begin a research project on the local barrio neighborhoods of the Quad Cities. I began my research in the archives, but honestly figured I wouldn’t find much. Local Mexican migration was not a topic in the classroom, and I had never really heard of an archive dedicated to documenting these stories. So, you can imagine the shock I had when I came across the collections in the Iowa Women’s Archives through a simple Google search. My search directed me to the Mujeras Latinas Project, an initiative that began in 2005 to document Latina families and their lives.  

As I was combing through the resources online via the Iowa Digital Library, I stumbled across a familiar name – Mary Terronez.  I remembered my Aunt Mary (a sister of my grandmother) as a strong woman with wide-rimmed glasses, always sitting in the living room with a walker or cane nearby. I learned from her papers, however, that she was also an incredible activist and teacher within the Quad Cities community. I quickly realized then that I had stumbled upon the history of my people, a history that I was eager to know more about and explore. For the first time as a student, I saw history reflected back at me, and it was this experience that I wanted to create and facilitate for others within my community.  

As a prospective graduate student in the School of Library and Information Science at UI, I was interested in the Iowa Women’s Archives because of the collections highlighting these barrios and other underrepresented communities. Fortunately, I have been able to work hands-on with these collections, while learning more about and participating in the inner workings of community engagement with archival materials. With the Cook’s Point and Holy City Reunion coming up, I developed a slideshow of photographs from Cook’s Point and Holy City that are currently preserved in the archives. I collaborated with fellow student worker, Shirley Ratliff, in searching the digital library once again for photographs of the barrio communities, an assignment that we both enjoyed. Ratliff noted that,  

As a Latina immigrant, it was as beautiful as enlightening to see the history of other Latinos who immigrated to this country just as well many generations ago. Being part of the project was a great way to discover and learn more about their experiences, to read their stories and look at their pictures reflecting the challenges of those days as well as the good times they shared with family and friends, was mostly inspiring.  Every time I take part in a project like this and come across other stories from people like me, it gives me the little push I need to keep going! For this reason, each time, is very meaningful.

The slideshow provided an opportunity for members of the community to reminisce about their lives and their ancestors in the barrios. For example, many of the photographs captured work, family, religious, and artistic experiences in the community. For Ratliff and myself, it also gave us an opportunity to empathize with barrio life and to learn more about the daily lives of migrants and their descendants.

Mary Terronez with granddaughter and nieces at LULAC, 1990s

As I searched within the photographs in my Aunt Mary’s collections, I also came across a photograph with several familiar faces, and well – me! In a tiny pink dress with white patent leathered shoes, sat myself as a toddler on the lap of my mother. It’s not every day that you find yourself in the archives, but to say the least, it brought a smile to my face and reminded me that the archives is a place of many surprises. The photograph also allowed me the opportunity to reflect on my connection to this community and history once again.

Posted in Events, From the collections, IWA Update, People, Women's History MonthTagged cook's point, holy city, mary terronez, micaela terronez, mujeres latinas, student
Feb 20 2019

Activists in the Archives: Connecting High School Students with Local LGBTQ History

Posted on February 20, 2019May 29, 2020 by Anna Holland

Guest post by Dr. Heather Cooper, Visiting Assistant Professor in History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

During LGBTQ History Month in October 2018, I worked with the Iowa Women’s Archives and University Special Collections to organize an archives visit for students from West Liberty High School.  The several students who were able to attend are members of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), a student organization that provides a safe and supportive environment for LGBTQ youth and their cisgender heterosexual allies and raises awareness on campus about LGBTQ issues.  The group’s faculty advisor, Katlyn Clark, has been teaching English at West Liberty High School for three years and is also enrolled in an English Education MA program at University of Iowa.  I first became aware of this important student group when Katlyn was enrolled in my Sexuality in the U.S. course during Summer 2018.  Her independent research project explored the importance of GSAs and the need to continue to develop more inclusive programming and pedagogy in the high school environment.

“Spinster, a lighthearted lesbian [card] gayme,” Iowa City Women’s Press records
LGBTQ History Month seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce these students to some of the amazing archival records at UI that document the history of local LGBTQ activism.  I relied on the expertise of archivists Kären Mason, Janet Weaver, Anna Tunnicliff, and David McCartney to pull together some of the most interesting and engaging materials from relevant collections.  When students arrived, they found a smorgasbord of documents and artifacts, including issues of the feminist journals Ain’t I a Woman and Better Homes and Dykes; correspondence and newspaper clippings related to “Rusty” Barcelo’s LGBT activism; and records from the Gay Liberation Front, one of the first student groups of its kind in the country.  Students also had fun exploring “Spinster,” a feminist and lesbian reimagining of the “Old Maid” card game, printed by the Iowa City Women’s Press.  David McCartney introduced our visitors to  the amazing timeline of Iowa City queer history that he and Kären Mason created for the outhistory.org project several years ago.

 

 

 

Miranda Welch’s high school graduation cap, 2006, Miranda Welch papers

Reflecting on their visit, high school senior Miguel Solis wrote that, “… most people’s knowledge of LGBTQ+ history is mainly the Stonewall Riots and the AIDS crisis.  Iowa actually has a large history for the LGBTQ+ community that most people do no not know about. … I learned [that] the very first form of ‘Pride’ in Iowa was a last-minute float in the Iowa homecoming parade.”  Senior Dio Gonzales described their visit to the university as “an eye-opening experience. … My favorite part was being able to go around and see different kinds of posters, books, and magazines that were released.”  In contrast to the usual hushed environment of the library, we encouraged students to talk and wander around the reading room to get a feel for different kinds of materials.  Our conversations led Librarian Anna Tunnicliff to bring out a few boxes from the unprocessed collection of Miranda Welch, a student activist from small-town Iowa.  Among the papers and artifacts was Welch’s high school graduation cap, bedecked in pride-colored ribbons and gems. 

In preparing for their visit, Katlyn Clark mentioned that the students were especially interested in transgender history.  But the nature of archive collection practices and typical end-of-life donations means that IWA and Special Collections currently have very little material on this relatively contemporary topic.  That archival silence created an opportunity to talk about what it would mean to try to build a transgender archive and to document the experiences and activism of LGBTQ people today.  Aiden Bettine, a History Ph.D. student, joined us to talk about their current project, the Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa (TOPI).  As Aiden explained, “A primary goal of the project is to empower transgender and gender non-conforming communities to collect and preserve their own histories by training trans-identified people in the methodology of oral history.”  Students later commented that learning about TOPI’s goals was a very important part of their experience at the archives. 

Students from West Liberty High School’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) learning about local LGBTQ history at the Iowa Women’s Archives.

On the day of their visit, our discussion about creating a transgender archive offered a perfect segue to talking about how students in the Gay-Straight Alliance could start to record and preserve their own history of activism.  Since the club’s official recognition in 2017, they have successfully campaigned for the creation of a gender-inclusive restroom on their campus and, every year, they organize school-wide participation in the Day of Silence, a national event that brings attention to anti-LGBTQ bullying in schools.  Members of the group have attended leadership workshops at the GSA Conference in Des Moines and they regularly attend the annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ Youth.  I wanted to encourage the students to think about themselves as important historical actors whose activities deserved to be documented and preserved.  I hoped that showing them the records of other student organizations at UI would help them recognize that the work of student groups like theirs was important and would be valuable to researchers and other activist groups in the future.  We also talked about ways to build their archive, such as writing down the narrative of how the group was founded and keeping records of their members, group meetings, and specific events and activities.  Katlyn reports that since their visit last fall, students in the GSA have talked about creating a twice-a-year newsletter to record their activities.  Reflecting on our discussion in the IWA reading room, Miguel Solis wrote, “We really just need to keep trying to make a change and leave our mark on the school so that one day we can be remembered in history and be talked about as people who made a difference.”

A special thanks to Kären, David, Anna, Janet, and Aiden for their help with this!  And to Katlyn Clark, C. Blick, Jacqueline Castillo, Dio Gonzalez, Angie Meraz, Mary Norris, and Miguel Solis for joining us and sharing the amazing work they are doing in West Liberty.  Hope to see them on campus as official Hawkeyes in the years to come – the future is very bright!

 

Heather L. Cooper, Ph.D.

Visiting Assistant Professor

History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies

Posted in Events, From the collections, IWA Update, PeopleTagged Gay Straight Alliance, Heather Cooper, High School, LGBTQ, Transgender Oral History Project of Iowa, West Liberty
Jan 29 2019

An Iowa Woman in Japan: Kären Mason’s Trip to Rikkyo University

Posted on January 29, 2019January 18, 2021 by Anna Holland

Kären Mason, Iowa Women’s Archives curator, traveled to Tokyo in November to speak at Rikkyo University. Sixty library students, archivists, and others attended her lecture, entitled “Archives for All: Creating More Inclusive Archives in the United States.” Kären was invited by Ellen Hammond, former Japanese Studies librarian at Iowa and then at Yale, now living in Tokyo and teaching library courses at Rikkyo.

Among the highlights of her trip: glimpsing Mt Fuji from her hotel window, eating lots of delicious ramen and tempura, and visiting the National Women’s Education Center and its Women’s Archives Center in Saitama Prefecture, an hour’s train ride from Tokyo. See below a few more memories from Kären’s exciting trip! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ellen Hammond and Kären Mason with National Women’s Education Center staff. 

A treasure from the Women’s Archives Center: a sign carried by members of the Shufu Rengokai (Housewives’ Association), founded in 1948. The sign says: The Children of Japan are Commercial Addicts!  The character depicted was a popular cartoon figure called Fuku-chan (“Little Fuku”) used in advertising aimed at kids in the postwar period.

Kären and friend take a look at the stacks in the Women’s Archives Center, Saitama Prefecture. 

 

Posted in IWA Update, People, UncategorizedTagged Ellen Hammond, Japan, karen mason, Rikkyo University, travel
Sep 28 2018

Lupita Larios Travels through Time with Mujeres Latinas Oral Histories

Posted on September 28, 2018December 13, 2019 by Anna Holland

Guest post by Lupita Larios

Have you ever heard a story that your grandparents, for example, told you and you were so fascinated to hear the story that you still remember it? With oral histories, a person is able to travel through time and imagine all the events and experiences that the narrator was living in those years. My name is Lupita Larios. I am an undergraduate student double majoring in Portuguese and International Studies with a track in Latin American Studies. I have been working at the Iowa Women’s Archives for almost two years, transcribing the Mujeres Latinas oral histories. I have really enjoyed listening to and transcribing the interviews. I have learned about the Mexican-American culture, the Mexican society of the 20th century, the transitions that a person has to face to belong to a new society, and how the Mexican-American community tries to put in practice their version of Mexican traditions.

Lupita Larios has been transcribing oral histories at the IWA for nearly two years

I am fluent in Spanish and am able to understand most of the Mexican slang and Mexican colloquial language in the interviews. On occasion, I had to search for the meaning of some Mexican regionalisms like bolillo or words that are used in other countries like cipota, used in Honduras. Many of these interviews address issues such as migration and race. Some of the interviewees talk about the Mexican Revolution, discrimination, sexual assault, sense of community, LULAC, bilingual education, college experiences, and Mexico’s earthquake of 1985. My favorite parts of this project are the stories of how interviewees’ parents met or how they met their loved one, stories that made me laugh, or made me feel empathy for the person experiencing a difficult event in their life. Here are a few of my favorites:

Irene and Jose Guzman’s story
They are husband and wife residing in Des Moines, IA. Irene was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Jose was born in Kennedy, Texas, both with Mexican ancestors. What I liked about this oral history is that they were involved in the Migrant Action Program. This organization advocated for the rights of the Latinx migrants especially farmers, to have better housing, childcare and medical assistance. Most importantly, to let them know that they had rights and that they employers could not ignore them. I also appreciate listening to their stories of success and advocacy with the Latinx community through this program.

Berta Murillo’s story
Berta was born in Mexico City in the metropolitan area of Coyoacán in 1946. What is fascinating about this story is that her descriptions of the streets of Mexico City transported me there. I was able pass the Hernan Cortez headquarters on her way to school; she described museums, baroque churches, and the Casa Azul, which is the Frida Kahlo Museum. In addition, it was very interesting to learn that her grandfather, Mardonio Magaña, was an important sculptor in the Mexican arts that gained the respect and support of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. When Berta and her brother visited some family in Des Moines, she met Eddie. Eddie was learning Spanish and Berta was learning English. They kept in touch through letters to practice until their friendship grew into romance and they married.

Ana Ahern’s story
Ana was born in San Buenaventura, Honduras in 1929 where she grew up on a farm. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to go to school in Honduras, because her father was afraid that she would run away if she fell in love. However, she still wanted to learn how to read and write, so she paid a teacher until her father found out and prohibited her from studying. After she moved to the United States, most of her employers abused of their power by making her work long hours without liberty or benefits. One employer even took her passport so that she could not look for other jobs or go back to Honduras. After she had saved enough money to open a convenience store in Honduras, she decided to go back. The most heartbreaking part of her story is that when she returned, she discovered that her sister wasn’t taking care of her children like she had promised. The most devastating thing Ana recalled was that her daughter was living in rags and her ex-husband had taken their son to the banana plantations. Ana had to pay three hundred dollars to her brother in law to get her son back.

These are just a few stories that I had worked on, but I always find something that is very interesting and that as Latina I can identify with. Even if people are not doing research for a paper, or looking for primary sources, I recommend that they take some time to come and read a little bit about the lives of some Latinas that arrived in Iowa. Read about the hardships and stigmas they faced, the new changes that they had to make, the racism they faced, their education and employment experiences, and their communities. Enjoy the ride and visit Iowa Women’s Archives!

Lupita Larios, student worker in the Iowa Women’s Archives

Posted in From the collections, IWA History, IWA Update, People, UncategorizedTagged Latinx Heritage Month, mujeres latinas, oral history, students
Sep 21 2018

Dr. Myrtle Hinkhouse: From China to the Iowa Women’s Archives

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Anna Holland
horses 1917
Dr. Hinkhouse in Tengchoufu, China, 1917

In 1916, a young doctor by the name of Myrtle Hinkhouse stepped onto a ship heading toward China. Years earlier, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions appointed her to serve in Tengchoufu and, after studying at the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia, she was ready to begin her work. Hinkhouse worked in China for three decades, helping patients, training nurses, and teaching at medical academies before returning to family in West Liberty, Iowa. Her great-niece, Ann, grew up listening to her stories.

peking 1920
Hinkhouse with her medical staff in Peking, 1920

I met Ann while working as the director of an ESL program at a local church. She contacted me with the hope of meeting my students from China. She thought they would like to see and even keep some of the items Myrtle brought back from her travels. I set a meeting up with her and about five students, not really thinking anything of it. I assumed, mistakenly, Ann mostly had art or jewelry, maybe a fan or two. I was astonished when she instead pulled out folders of hand-written letters, photographs, and a journal. This wasn’t pieces of art. This was a history collection.

Feeling sick, I watched the students pick out which papers to keep. I knew once the collection was separated, it would be almost worthless. “Ann,” I said, “have you considered donating this to an archive?” She told me she had asked a local historical society, but they weren’t interested. She didn’t think anyone else would be, either. “Ann,” I repeated, “did you ask the University?” The University of Iowa was only a couple blocks away. That fall, I had started the School of Library and Information Science graduate program. Nestled in the same hallway as my classes sat the Iowa Women’s Archives. It seemed if Myrtle’s papers belonged anywhere, it was there, kept together, and accessible to everyone. The challenge was convincing Ann of that.

westliberty 1950s
Hinkhouse at home in West Liberty, Iowa, 1950s

I’ll spare you the details of how I begged Ann to leave the collection with me, the time spent relocating the items given away in that first meeting, or my devastation upon learning that one student went back to China with most of the photos, even after promising them to me. It was that last event that prompted me to run to IWA, clutching what I did have of the collection. I knew what I had was important; I didn’t know what to do with it, and I was afraid of losing more. But it all worked out. Ann visited IWA later and agreed to donate the collection. I volunteered to process it myself, determined to learn and to see the project through. Around the time I was hired as a student worker, Ann discovered a travel trunk full of Myrtle’s papers. I spent a year piecing through those items, adding the new material into what had already been organized.

Over one hundred years after Myrtle’s departure for China, I’m glad to announce the Hinkhouse collection is finally processed. The finding aid has been published and researchers finally have access to her letters, books, and photographs. As happy as I am, though, the moment is bittersweet. Processors, I think, always feel a connection to the people whose collections they are organizing. It’s hard not to, especially after delving through diaries, letters, childhood essays and recent memoirs. With Myrtle Hinkhouse, though, it was always more than that. She feels like an old friend, one I’ve cared deeply about and worried over, one that brought me Ann’s companionship, and one that pushed me into a new (and happy) path at the IWA during my graduate career. I can only hope she’ll inspire the students and researchers who study her collection as much as she inspired me.

— Rachel Black, IWA Graduate Assistant

Posted in From the collections, IWA Update, People, UncategorizedTagged behind the scenes, China, history of medicine
Aug 03 2018

Reflections of an IWA Student

Posted on August 3, 2018January 18, 2021 by Anna Holland
Maritza Lopez-Campos in the IWA

Maritza Lopez- Campos joined the IWA student staff to work on the Mujeres Latinas Project. Since then she’s learned about processing, written finding aids, and been an invaluable member of the team at several 25th anniversary events. We’re all wishing her the best as she leaves the archives and begins her career in social work! Here is Maritza’s reflection on her time at IWA:

“I am very grateful to have spent a year and a half working with the amazing individuals at the Iowa Women’s Archives. I was mostly involved with the Mujeres Latinas project, but I found myself also working with other materials and at various events, including the Feminist Reunion in 2017. On one special occasion, I found an album with newspaper clippings about a friend I made during my first job at a retirement home in Sioux City, IA. The Iowa Women’s Archives connected me with people whose lives had much in common with mine. As a Latina, I found similarities between the oral histories I reviewed and transcribed and the story of my family as they navigated a new home country. My hope for these materials is that others will also know women have been persevering for many, many centuries. What I will miss most about IWA is the tranquility inside the archives and working with my caring colleagues.”

Thank you, Maritza, for all of your hard work, and good luck in your future career! 

Posted in IWA Update, People, UncategorizedTagged Maritza Lopez-Campos, mujeres latinas, staff, students
Jun 08 2018

A Donation 46 Years in the Making!

Posted on June 8, 2018June 12, 2018 by Anna Holland
Robert McCown’s 1972 letter to Prekker’s great-aunt, Nora Leander

In 1972, the University of Iowa’s Manuscript Librarian, Robert McCown, wrote a letter to Nora Leander. He hoped that she would donate the papers of her aunt, Esther Bacon, an Iowan and missionary to Liberia from 1941 – 1972. In 2018, Leander’s niece, Ann Prekker, found the letter among Bacon’s papers and decided to contact the Iowa Women’s Archives. She knew it had been almost 50 years, but were we still interested? Oh yes, we were! 

Three members of the Prekker family pose with assistant curator, Janet Weaver, and the Esther Bacon papers.

Originally from Sioux City, Esther Bacon was a medical missionary in Liberia from 1941 – 1972 where she worked in the hospital at Zorzor. Through her work as a midwife, Bacon delivered over 20,000 babies and provided medical care to people of all ages. She died in Liberia after succumbing to Lassa fever in 1972. The collection includes photographs of Bacon’s time in Liberia, missionary newsletters, and many moving tributes to Bacon describing the lives she saved and the children she brought into the world. Bacon’s papers will join the papers of other Iowa women who chose to be missionaries such as Myrtle Hinkhouse, Marian Farquhar, and Marianne Michael. 

Prekker, her husband, and their two daughters traveled to Iowa City this week to donate Esther Bacon’s materials and we are so glad they did. It may have taken 46 years for the papers to get here, but they were worth the wait! 

 

Posted in From the collections, IWA History, IWA Update, People, UncategorizedTagged Africa, donors, Esther Bacon, Missionaries, new collections, visitors
Jun 04 2018

Our 2018 Travel Grant Recipient: Ezra Temko

Posted on June 4, 2018December 17, 2020 by Anna Holland
Ezra Temko, hard at work

Our 2018 Linda and Richard Kerber Fund travel grant recipient is Ezra Temko, a Sociology PhD candidate at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). The Linda and Richard Kerber Fund was established to help researchers travel to the Iowa Women’s Archives. Temko has come to Iowa City from the state of Delaware, where his research investigates how cultural power and ideology are navigated around issues of racial and gender representation.
Temko became interested in Iowa after learning that in 2009, it became the only state in the U.S. to require gender balance for state and local boards and commissions. After interviewing proponents of the 2009 law, he discovered its roots went back to 1986, when a law requiring gender balance on only state boards and commissions was first passed.
Temko hoped that the papers available at the Iowa Women’s Archives would provide context for the 1986 law and the efforts to extend it. For the past week he has accessed a wealth of useful materials in the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus records, the Minnette Doderer papers, the Johnie Hammond papers, and Governor Ray’s Commission on the Status of Women records to name just a few collections.
After four days in IWA, Temko says the highlights of his research include reading constituent letters to Iowa politicians and learning more about ERA campaigns in the state. Most of all, he’s enjoyed learning about about the feminist victories of the 1970s and 1980s that we take for granted today such as the right of a married woman to have her name in the phone book without paying for it, or women’s ability to change their names after divorcing. Iowa, he says, is unique, but through his research he’s seeing connections to the feminism of the 1970s and 1980s everywhere. We can’t wait to see the results of his work!

Posted in Kerber Travel Grant, People, Scholarship, UncategorizedTagged ezra temko, Governer Ray's Commission on the Status of Women, grant recipient, Iowa Women's Political Caucus, Johnie Hammond, Linda and Richard Kerber fund, Minnette Doderer, Research, scholarship
May 30 2018

New Staff in IWA

Posted on May 30, 2018January 18, 2021 by Anna Holland
Annie gets a welcome from the University of Iowa Libraries.

This week, Anna Tunnicliff joined the IWA staff as Processing Librarian. Tunnicliff earned her MLIS with a Certificate in Book Studies from the University of Iowa earlier this May. She has been a graduate research assistant at the Iowa Women’s Archives for the past three years and is very excited to continue working here in a new position. 

If you see her around the archives, be sure to say, “Welcome back!”

Posted in IWA Update, PeopleTagged anna tunnicliff, staff
Nov 16 2017

25 for 25: Iowa Suffrage Memorial Commission

Posted on November 16, 2017November 29, 2017 by Anna Holland
Iowa Suffrage Memorial bas-relief, Nellie Walker
Lindsay Shannon, Assistant Professor of Art History, North Central College

It is in part thanks to the Iowa Suffrage Memorial Commission that the IWA has such a collection of materials on the suffrage movement in Iowa. The commission, incorporated in 1922, was organized “to commemorate the efforts of the Pioneer Suffragists and the long procession of workers who helped secure the final enfranchisement of women.” In addition to successfully erecting a bas relief memorial by native Iowan artist Nellie Walker in the state capitol building, the commission worked to preserve materials relating to the women’s suffrage movement through 1941. Many years later, Lindsay Shannon, Assistant Professor of Art History at North Central College and author of “Uncharted Territory: The Iowa Suffrage Memorial and the Pioneer Spirit“, found the collection quite useful. Shannon, who received her Ph.D. in American art history from the University of Iowa, had this to say about the collection:

“The Iowa Suffrage Memorial Commission records are a true gem! I often begin a research project on a female artist expecting to find very little documentation of their working methods or process, but was delighted to find a detailed account of these politically astute women debating and deciding how best to represent their achievements in a work of public art. This collection has been crucial to my efforts to give the Iowa Suffrage Memorial the recognition it deserves through published research and public presentations, such as the exhibition “Women’s Suffrage in Iowa: 90 Years after the ‘Winning Plan'” at the Blanden Art Museum. What excites me the most is knowing that the Iowa Women’s Archives is custodian to historical collections like this and that it continues to actively seek out new material that represents overlooked or undervalued voices.”

— Lindsay Shannon, North Central College, 2017

This post is a part of the Iowa Women’s Archives’ 25th anniversary celebration and exhibition: 25 Collections for 25 Years: Selections from the Iowa Women’s Archives on display until December 29th at the Main Library Gallery. Gallery hours are available on the Main Library website. For more information about events, see our 25th anniversary website. 

Posted in 25th Anniversary, Exhibits, From the collections, IWA History, IWA Update, People, Scholarship, UncategorizedTagged 25 for 25, 25th anniversary, myiwa, suffrage

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