Women’s suffrage exhibition in Huntsville extended after high demand

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAFF) - The Historic Huntsville Foundation is bringing some under-told stories to light. It’s lifting up stories from Huntsville’s women’s suffrage movement.

The Rooted in History: Women as Makers, Creators, Movers & Shakers History exhibit is set up in three parts at the Harrison Brothers Hardware Store. Historic Huntsville Foundation Executive Director Donna Castellano says it was supposed to close on Sept. 6 but was extended until the end of September because of the demand.

“It speaks to the hunger we have in Huntsville and the greater area, to really want to know what were women really doing in 1910, 1915, 1920.″

Walking through the shop, the first exhibit is focused on trailblazer Alice Boarman Baldridge. She was Huntsville’s first female attorney and the first woman to hold public office in Madison County when she was elected to the school board.

Continuing on to the back of the shop, you will walk into the second exhibit honoring the Huntsville Equal Suffrage Association.

Castellano is most proud of the third exhibit remembering the Black women who fought for the right to vote. You can touch and thumb through a voter registration book with the six Black women allowed to vote in 1920.

“It takes those Black women and literally puts them in black and white,” says Castellano. “That they existed and this is the symbol of activism to see their name in the voter registration book with the date they registered, 1920. and the abbreviation ‘col.’ colored next to their name really brings it home to us.”

One name in that book is India Herndon. Her relatives came up from Louisiana to see their great-grandmother in that historic book.

The exhibit is open through the end of the month. It’s free at the Harrison Brothers Hardware store. Tours are available by emailing donna@historichuntsvillle.org.

Castellano says there will be an extended exhibit coming in February.

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