PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Museum of the American Revolution’s groundbreaking new exhibition When Women Lost the Vote: A Revolutionary Story, 1776 – 1807 opened to the public on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020 and runs through Sunday, April 25, 2021. The exhibition also will be made accessible to virtual visitors from around the world through a robust, free online experience.
Through the onsite and online experiences, When Women Lost the Vote explores – as no exhibit, book, or other medium has before – the little-known story of women and free people of color legally voting in New Jersey following the Revolutionary War. It also examines the political conflicts that led to their voting rights being stripped away in 1807.
The exhibition coincides with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment this year and explores how Revolutionary-era women voters became role models for the next generation of women's suffragists.
“With the rapidly approaching presidential election, this exhibition presents a timely cautionary tale about one of America’s first voting rights crises and serves an important reminder that protecting our rights and freedoms—and those of others—requires constant vigilance,” said Dr. Marcela Micucci, Curatorial Fellow in Women’s History at the Museum. “It is also an inspiring story about the radical potential of the American Revolution and its role in shaping women’s political opportunities and activism.”
Featuring original objects including textiles, manuscripts, and works of art, the exhibition brings to life the forgotten stories of the women who first pioneered the vote. Also featured in the exhibition are several recently discovered poll lists including the names of 163 white female voters and three Black male voters, tracked down by the Museum’s curatorial team during an extensive examination of voter records. Prior to this discovery, little proof of women or people of color voting during this period was known to exist.
When Women Lost the Vote has been integrated within the Museum’s core galleries and connected by an audio tour, incorporating this brand-new scholarship into the Museum’s central narrative and delving even deeper into the complexities of the nation’s founding and the implications of the Revolution.
In November, the Museum will install a new historical tableau scene featuring women at the polls in Montgomery Township, Somerset, New Jersey in 1801. The scene will include lifelike figures of two white women and one woman of color—encouraging visitors to consider the complexity of laws that allowed propertied women, both of European and African descent, to vote, but also defined enslaved women as property. The tableau will remain on permanent display.
When Women Lost the Vote also will be made available to virtual visitors from around the world through a robust online experience, which is scheduled to launch in late October and will remain permanently available. The online experience will feature explorations of the newly-discovered poll lists and other primary source documents; a look at history-making discoveries and how historians do their work; provocative questions, exercises, and prompts for discussion; as well as teacher resources, a glossary of terms, and opportunities to learn more. It also will include interviews with the exhibition’s curators, eminent historians, and other special guests.
