Better Days 2020 Historian Katherine Kitterman on women suffrage history, key arguments, events and people (1870-1920) (Season 1, Ep. 8 - Part 1)

**Brad Westwood** (0:05)
Welcome to the podcast, Speak Your Piece. This podcast is about Utah history.
My name is Brad Westwood. I'm the Senior Public Historian at the Utah Dept. of Heritage and Arts.
The past, whoa, what a story. The past is never really in the past. It's all around us. It informs us. It speaks to both our shared and to our separate identities. Speak Your Piece is a podcast where writers, historians, archaeologists, curators, all those who contribute to Utah's history, share their insights and discoveries. When you're looking forward, planning for the future, first examine carefully the past. This is what this podcast strives to do for the many diverse geographically varied communities across Utah. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, this is the place. Today's guest is Katherine Kitterman, Historical Director for BetterDays2020.
Katherine is a PhD candidate in history at American University, currently working on a dissertation in the area of Utah suffrage history. Hello Katherine.

**Katherine Kitterman** (1:12)
Hi, thanks for having me.

**Brad Westwood** (1:13)
So much grateful to you for being here. We have so much going on in 2020 In this episode, we'll be speaking about women's history, women's suffrage history and all that's going on in 2020 across Utah related to the history of women, the history of the suffrage movement and so on. But we also want to talk about an exhibit that's opening soon at the state capitol in its fourth floor. Katherine, tell me about this exhibit, its title, its opening, how long it'll be.
Just tell me all the details.

**Katherine Kitterman** (1:47)
Thanks. Well, BetterDays2020 is partnered with the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts to put on this exhibit.
And we're proud and grateful for that partnership. So the exhibit consists of two different parts. One is a series of 50 illustrations of Utah Women's Advocates. And those were commissioned by BetterDays2020, done by local illustrator Brooke Smart.
And we've chosen and worked with communities, local communities across the state, to pick women who represent their communities, who worked for women's advancement in different ways. So many of these women were suffragists who worked for women's right to vote. And then many of them continued their work for women's rights and women's advocacy long past the legal achievements that gave women the right to vote at different times. So these illustrations run the gamut. We have people in there who passed away just two years ago. We have women who were born in 1810, you know, so...

**Brad Westwood** (2:40)
Women of color, women of all kinds of different geographical areas in Utah.

**Katherine Kitterman** (2:44)
Absolutely. And it's really important to us that since this project, this illustration project, was focused on education, we wanted kids to see people who are like them and also people who are not like them as actors in history.
And also to see that there are lots of different ways to make a difference. Some people might be the president, leader, start-your-own-organization type, and others might make a difference through education, through leadership in the arts or business or other ways. And so we wanted to represent a diverse group of women and diverse methods of making change happen and of working for women's rights and advancement in their communities.

**Brad Westwood** (3:20)
And then you have some other aspects of this exhibit.

**Katherine Kitterman** (3:22)
We do. We've partnered with State History and others to bring in a couple of artifacts related to the history of voting rights in Utah for women. So we have some things like the 1870 law, a scan, a copy of that, that gave women the right to vote in Utah for the first time.
And we also have items that are related to ongoing work and the work that continued past 1870 and 1920 for women's voting rights.
We have items that show, for example, the conflict after women in Utah got the right to vote about whether or not they should be able to keep that right. And so there's a lot of sides of the story. There are a lot of ways we could have gone, and we have a small space to tell this story, but we have some really representative items there, as well as an autograph from Susan B. Anthony when she came to Utah in 1895 to celebrate Utah women regaining suffrage then.

**Brad Westwood** (4:13)
So, I also know that you're going to present the bona fita, those original wonderful, the Constitution of the State Archives is going to bring some of these original, although the facsimiles are in the exhibit, you're going to have a reception or two at the Capitol.

**Katherine Kitterman** (4:32)
Yes, so they'll be on display at a reception on January 15th from 6 to 8 p.m. with a short program at 630