Less than 100 years ago women in Washington state weren’t allowed to vote even though they paid taxes and lived by laws their male counterparts voted into place. Women were expected not to step out from their place as skilled domestics but rather be satisfied staying at home to raise the children and perform backbreaking labor to provide for the man of the house. Ultimately many women grew weary of being in men’s shadows and the rest, as they say, is history.

At some point something snapped and women put down their floor mops in favor of picket signs. The suffrage movement was born and its ripples were felt from coast to coast. Unlike other parts of the country where suffragettes struck out on their own to organize against a tide of opposition from members of both sexes, women in Washington state chose the tactic to work with men to achieve equality given that it was the men who would make the ultimate vote on women’s suffrage. It was a long and winding road to achieve the final victory, but tenacity by a good number of female leaders and fair-minded men ultimately clinched the deal. Women were granted full voting rights in Washington state in 1910.

The story of the suffragettes in Washington state makes for a fascinating lesson in Northwest history. It’s a story not told very often, much less in such a cohesive way as it is being told in the new “Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices” exhibit at Washington State History Museum. Photos and histories of the movement’s colorful characters, all kinds of ephemera, and an exquisitely designed exhibit make for a trip back in time that may very well leave you with the sense that America would be nowhere near the great nation it is without women’s influence on its history.

Shanna Stevenson, coordinator of Women’s History Consortium for the Washington State Historical Society, is co-curator of the exhibit with Marsha Rooney from the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane.

Stevenson said “Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices” took more than three years to complete. “We’re hoping that most women would see themselves in this exhibit,” she said.

The first thing visitors may notice is how well the exhibit has been constructed. Kiosks made of wood planks painted white and decorated with stars and stripes bunting recall nostalgic bygone years of campaign platforms built upon town square gazebos. Glass-fronted display cases hold more than 200 artifacts like a purple velvet dress once worn by Susan B. Anthony and the crystal inkwell that once sat upon her desk, and other such personal effects of suffragettes in our state and nation. Printed propaganda and broadsides of the era, newspaper clippings, posters, a rare copy of the Declaration of Sentiments (considered the suffrage movement’s Declaration of Independence) and much more are on loan from the Washington State Historical Society, Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, and Washington Women’s History Consortium, which works in partnership with universities and libraries around the state. Other pieces in the exhibit came from as far away as Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester, N.Y.

Interactive features get visitors involved in the story. At the entrance to the exhibit room there is a display of little cabinet doors stamped with certain year dates that can be opened to reveal facts about the state of voting rights among minorities across the country throughout the decades. Children may find the moving slide show of oral histories interesting with its control panel and big projection screen.

The exhibit comes to a close by looking at where women took their newly gained powers and how the battle for women’s equality continues to this day. Local notables are highlighted such as senators Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell and Margarita Prentice, and state representatives Velma Veloria and Peggy Maxie, who left the legislature in 1983 and now operates Peggy Maxie and Associates, an employee assistance mental health counseling firm.

Learn more about the exhibit at www.WashingtonHistory.org and www.washingtonwomenshistory.org.