Ballot & Beyond is powered by Preservation Maryland. Preservation Maryland is one of the nation’s oldest historic preservation organizations and has a generations-long commitment to protecting and telling Maryland history. To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment that enfranchised American women with the right to vote, Gallagher Evelius & Jones and Preservation Maryland have partnered on a new multi-media public history project, called Ballot & Beyond.
Maryland’s story in the fight for women’s suffrage was far from perfect. In fact, Maryland was not one of the original 36 states to ratify the 19th Amendment which made it part of the US Constitution in 1920. Maryland waited until 1941 and did not certify that vote until 1958.
Those facts do not in any way diminish the work of Maryland’s suffragists, instead, it makes their efforts and sacrifices that much more heroic in the face of strong opposition.
Due to Maryland’s proximity to the Capital, our suffragists often hosted rallies before heading south to the White House, protested at the State House in Annapolis, and even hosted Susan B. Anthony for her last public speech at Baltimore’s Lyric Theatre.
Because the women’s suffrage movement was largely racially segregated, Baltimore’s African American citizen activists organized parallel rallies and played important roles in leading citizenship training workshops focused on the next steps of enfranchisement for Maryland’s women of all colors and creeds. Notably, Maryland’s own Frederick Douglass was also a vocal suffragist and ally to the movement.
To tell these stories, this Ballot and Beyond partnership project will highlight the remarkable lives of Maryland’s women past and present in audio segments, essays, and historic images.
This material is based upon work assisted by a Non-Capital Historic Preservation Grant from the Maryland Historical Trust (MHT). However, the contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the agency. The work builds upon a special project funding by the Maryland Historical Trust’s Board of Trustees, in which Kay Rohn, then a graduate student in the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, developed a historic context statement for the Women’s Suffrage movement in Maryland. That report is currently in draft form. Additional biographies were derived from a podcast produced by Gallagher Evelius & Jones, called Beyond-the-Ballot and previously released by WYPR, Baltimore’s local NRR station.
Project Team
Email Nicholas Redding
Additional Credits & Support
A Special Thanks Goes Out To
Our theme music is performed by the band Pretty Gritty. You can learn more about them at their website, prettygrittymusic.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter @pg_prettygritty.