A student with the Gertrude Simmons Bonnin cutout
The St. Cloud State Make It Space is helping campus celebrate 100 years of women voting by creating life-size cutouts of some of the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement.
The cutouts made by student worker Sam Joyce and Assistant Professor Mark Schroll in the Make It Space feature Jeannette Pickering Rankin, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) and Ida B. Wells. The cutout statues are making their way across campus for students and visitors to take photos with and celebrate 100 years of women voting in the United States.
The cutouts will be on display outside the Atwood Gallery in conjunction with “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence” a Smithsonian Institution Traveling Poster Exhibition that will be on display from Oct. 21-23 in the Atwood Gallery.
Women in the United States earned the right to vote across the entire country when Nineteenth Amendment was passed in August 1920 prohibiting the government from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.
The first cutout was displayed in Wick Science Building in September and features Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman elected to serve in the U.S. Congress in 1916. She introduced a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
The Make It Space has since added cutouts of two other leaders of the suffrage movement to the lineup.
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala-Ša, was a member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux, who advocated for Native American citizenship, suffrage and rights. She was active in the women’s movement creating an Indian Welfare Committee in the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and exposed the exploitation of Native Americans in Oklahoma.
Ida B. Wells was a journalist and educator who fought for African American civil rights. She was also an active advocate for women’s rights, who saw suffrage as a way to empower black women to become politically active and increase the election of African Americans regardless of gender. Her dual role in advocating for African American and women’s rights sometimes brought her into conflict with other women’s rights advocates, who were often silent on civil rights for people of color, but she never backed down from her message.
