TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has a brand new mural in its Statehouse honoring girls who campaigned for voting rights for many years earlier than the 1920 ratification of the nineteenth Modification to the U.S. Structure granted these rights throughout the nation.
Gov. Laura Kelly and different state officers unveiled the “Rebel Women” portray that spans a complete wall on the primary ground on Wednesday, the anniversary of Kansas’ admission because the thirty fourth U.S. state in 1861.
Whereas Kansas Day is historically marked with renditions of the official state tune, “Home on the Range,” Wednesday’s occasion additionally featured the ladies’s voting rights anthem, “Suffrage Tune,” to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
A 2022 regulation licensed the mural, and artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, of Manhattan, in northeastern Kansas, received the competition with an outline of 13 outstanding Kansas suffragists. A number of girls within the crowd of a number of hundred individuals have been dressed as nineteenth century campaigners who have been lively earlier than statehood.
Kansas prides itself as getting into the union as an anti-slavery free state, however it additionally was extra progressive than different states in steadily granting girls full voting rights. Girls might vote at school elections in 1861 and in metropolis elections in 1887, and the nation’s first lady mayor, Susanna M. Salter, was elected in Argonia, Kansas, that yr. Voters amended the state structure in 1912 to grant girls full voting rights.
