Downtown Display Commemorates Women’s Right to Vote

Pictured is a Women's Suffrage display previously located in downtown Three Rivers. (Dave Vago|Watershed Voice)

The Three Rivers Woman’s Club has installed a new display in downtown Three Rivers commemorating the 100th Anniversary of women’s right to vote.

The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, after a multi-year process. A bipartisan coalition of two Senators and two U.S. Representatives led a successful effort to designate August 2020 as National Women’s Suffrage Month.

The display includes a collection of interpretive material and artifacts from the women’s suffrage movement. Woman’s Club Chair Mary Kay Todd led the effort to assemble the Suffrage Month display, which can be seen in the storefront windows at 42 North Main Street along with two other Woman’s Club displays. 

“We were discussing how we could support the suffrage, the hundred years of women’s right to vote,” Todd said. The club wrote a resolution in recognition of the anniversary, which the County Commission passed earlier this week, but members decided they also wanted to create a display to celebrate the anniversary.

Kathy Brueck, owner of Brucrew Coffee Company, offered the space after the two had a conversation about the display idea. “I said, ‘it’s too bad we don’t have a central place,’” Todd said. “And (Brueck) said, ‘well, you know, we aren’t doing anything right now because of COVID, and we’re still working with the architect. Our windows at the old River City Appliance building are empty.’”

Todd said, “that’s all I needed, was for me to be told I had a venue.”

Brucrew has been in business producing and selling coffee in Three Rivers for several years now. The company purchased the building somewhat recently after River City Appliance ceased its retail operation. Brueck, her family, and her associates, held periodic pop-up shop hours prior to the pandemic shutdown. They are currently open by appointment according to their Facebook page, and Brucrew continues to produce and sell product online.

The Suffrage Month display is viewable at any time from the sidewalk. It includes a suffragette dress that belonged to Todd’s grandmother, Jesse Rogers, who lived in the Bloomingdale-Allegan area, and wore it to a suffrage march in Chicago. “I had it, still, in a cedar chest, and I brought it out, dusted it off,” and made it the centerpiece of the display, Todd said. The dress bears an authentic suffrage pin.

The display also includes a suffrage flag, a mockup of a ballot box, and some historical interpretive materials. “I just kept gathering up things that we had, and a group of us went down there one afternoon and displayed it in those windows,” Todd said. “We’re hoping that the community comes out to see what we’re all about, but also enjoy some things from the past and some things from the future and present.”

The windows also include displays on the upcoming Three Rivers Bridge Walk on Labor Day, which the Woman’s Club coordinates and sponsors, and on other Woman’s Club programs including a scholarship and a charitable afghan blanket program.

Other downtown buildings have seen historical displays in the last several years. Although the Women’s Club put together its own display, the St. Joseph County Historical Society has also worked with storefront owners to add themed history displays in other buildings since 2017, and also assembled displays previously.

The historical society moved into downtown Three Rivers from its previous home in Centreville about five years ago, adding to a growing presence of historical organizations and displays. The Sue Silliman House is the longest standing such operation, having been a museum since shortly after its donation to the Abiel Fellows Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1945.

Helen McCauslin, another Woman’s Club member who is “a really great historian,” helped assemble the suffrage display at 42 North Main Street, Todd said. “She said, ‘it’s not the Suffragette Movement,’ she kept trying to correct me, ‘it’s the Suffrage Movement.’” 

Women’s suffrage advocacy began during the early parts of the industrial revolution in the U.S., prior to the Civil War. The movement gradually grew, and gained significant traction starting in the 1890s. Todd said this women’s movement platform included 12 points, but the right to vote was the biggest one. A number of states, including Michigan, extended women the right to vote in the decade leading up to the 19th Amendment’s ratification.

After some previous failed votes, the 19th Amendment was passed in the U.S. Senate in June 1919, and then passed on to the states for ratification. Michigan was one of the first three states to ratify the amendment. Southern states tended to have stronger opposition. Tennessee was a holdout, and on August 18, 1920, it approved ratification by a single vote in its state House of Representatives. The amendment was certified on August 26, permitting women across the country to vote in the November 2020 election.

Silliman House Director Becky Shank provided some comments in support of the commemorative resolution at the County Commission’s meeting on August 17. Several Three Rivers area residents were instrumental in bringing the issue of women’s suffrage to the Michigan legislature beginning in the late 1890s, Shank said. 

Attorney Lucy Fellows Andrews, Sue Silliman, who was mentored by biologist Ruth Hoppin, and physician Dr. Blanche Haines all played a role in the movement. Haines even received special recognition in Washington, D.C. for her work. The Three Rivers Municipal Airport is named for Dr. Haines, while Andrews and Hoppin each have elementary schools named for them in Three Rivers today.

Dave Vago is a writer and columnist for Watershed Voice. A Philadelphia native with roots in Three Rivers, Vago is a planning consultant to history and community development organizations and is the former Executive Director of the Three Rivers DDA/Main Street program.