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Women’s Vote in California: 100 Year Anniversary “We Won the Vote!”

Presented by California State Capitol Museum at California State Capitol Museum

October 1, 2011-September 30, 2012

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After a long and innovative campaign, California women won the right to vote in a special election on October 10, 1911. The 1911 California victory for woman suffrage was the culmination of a long, hard-fought battle to win political freedom and basic civil rights. California was the sixth western state to win the vote for women, inspiring suffragists nationwide and increasing national attention on what had long been a controversial political and moral debate. With the 1911 triumph of equal enfranchisement, six-hundred thousand California women doubled the number of women who could vote in the United States.

The campaigns in the West, and California's in particular, set new standards for bold actions, new ideas, and successful techniques for efforts in other states across the nation. It helped to build up electoral power and political support in the nation's capital to finally ensure passage of the 19th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, granting American women the right to vote in 1920.

This exhibition will feature historical photographs, period campaign materials, objects, and oral histories designed to guide the visitor through the history of the successful 1911 campaign for woman's suffrage in California. Highlighted are specific issues and activities of the California campaign, and how the state's experience related to and dramatically affected the way the national campaign played out over the next decade. Visitors will actively engage in the debate over women's right to vote through the incorporation of historical questions, objective presentations of both sides of the issue, and interactive displays.