Features suffrage wagon at the New York State Museum —spring-fall 2024, Permanent Exhibition
There’s a lot of interest in the suffrage wagon coming from New Mexico. People are fascinated with this part of American history, no matter where they live. While New Mexico wasn’t high profile in the suffrage movement, the state’s women played an important part in the overall movement. Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren played a key role…
Continue ReadingWhen my grandfather fell in love with Edna, he was shocked that she found anything interesting about him. This is one of the many stories about Edna and Wilmer Kearns before they made activism a family affair. When the world agonized about international tensions, Alice Paul and her organization held tea parties at their Washington…
Continue ReadingMy Aunt Serena was known as Nassau County’s “youngest suffragist.” If there was a poster child for woman’s suffrage, it was little Serena Kearns. Her image was preserved when sitting in her mother Edna’s suffrage campaign wagon with the large bow in her hair. She accompanied her mother in New York City parades and on…
Continue ReadingWomen’s suffrage history includes Seneca Falls and the national 4th of July celebration.
Continue ReadingThe women’s suffrage movement was diverse. It included compromises. No one ever claimed it was perfect. It was NOT unilateral. Viewing the movement to win recognition in the larger mainstream culture is the goal of a podcast series underway by the NYC Department of Records & Information Services. I’m in support because I grew up…
Continue Reading“The dungeon I was in was very filthy, tobacco spit on the floor and all along the side of the filthy bunk; dirty horse blankets, open dirty toilet, no water, dark and damp. I was so cold my teeth chattered all night. Superintendent Whittaker ran up and down the corridor screaming to the guards to…
Continue Readingby Marguerite Kearns I wrote the book, “An Unfinished Revolution” because if I didn’t, no one would have. I chose what I believed would be an “easy” book for starters. I found out quickly that women’s rights as a topic, even its history, isn’t easy. Even the fact that I waited to begin the documentation…
Continue ReadingBLOG POST ABOUT SUFF ACTIVIST ELISABETH FREEMAN Peg Johnston, suffrage activist Elisabeth Freeman’s great niece, contacted me recently. Here’s her post ro say that s she gathered the energy to write about Elisabeth that was inspired by a book that has made its way to us suffrage nuts. See below. Edna Kearns and Elisabeth Freeman…
Continue Reading“Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had gone with the passing of Miss Anthony’s leadership. She called a halt on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be…
Continue Readingby Marguerite Kearns This illustrati9n accompanied a feature article about the Spirit of 1776 horsedrawn suffrage campaign wagon in the collection of the New York State Museum in Albany, New York. The feature article appeared in New York History Journal tbat is published by Columbia University. The imagined documentary or feature series about my grandmother…
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