Articles

March 7, 2019 March is women’s history month, and there are lots of great ways to honor women’s history in Utah. We’ve compiled a few ideas below: Take the Self-Guided Women’s Suffrage Walking Tour – explore the downtown Salt Lake City sites connected to the women’s suffrage movement in Utah. Read picture books about women’s […]

By Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director February 21, 2019 Women’s suffrage in America grew out of the movement to end slavery. Many of the people who spearheaded the women’s rights movement were abolitionists. Although women in the early United States weren’t allowed to vote, many of them found ways to be involved in […]

by Candace Brown February 14, 2019 It’s now been over a decade since my first grade year. Since then, I’ve forgotten most of the details about my teacher, my classmates, and our little classroom at the end of the school’s longest hallway. I believe we were learning to read that year, so I’m fairly certain […]

by Naomi Watkins January 31, 2019   Becky Petersen’s seventh graders at Hillside Middle School in Salt Lake City were upset to learn that there was a time in our U.S. history when women were not allowed to vote. It didn’t make any sense to them. Why weren’t women allowed to vote? “We started with […]

by Sarah Hancock Jones January 17, 2019 Here in Utah, the news can sometimes be as dismal as a gray January day, the inversion is at its worst. From poverty to education to the gender pay gap, we’re often inundated with articles about the serious challenges facing our society. It can be enough to make the […]

by Sherri Einfeldt January 10, 2019 130 years ago today, Emily S. Richards and Margaret Caine led Utah women in organizing the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah in Salt Lake City’s Assembly Hall. This meeting in 1889 marked the beginning of Utah women’s organized efforts to win back their voting rights after Congress had revoked […]

a By Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director December 20, 2018   Susan B. Anthony first visited Utah in 1871, one year after Utah’s female citizens gained the right to vote, and she returned in 1895 to celebrate Utah women’s successful efforts in gaining suffrage for the second time. Congressional legislation had revoked Utah […]

by Tiffany Taylor Bowles   In 1920, many women throughout the United States gained the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Prior to this historic legislation, some territories and states granted various levels of suffrage to their female residents; and in 1870, Utah women became the first to […]

By Gabi Price November 29, 2018 In February of 1870, Utah territory granted Utah women citizens the right to vote. Many Americans hoped that Utah women would use their votes to help end the common Mormon practice of polygamy, or plural marriage, believing that it did not align with the goals of enfranchised women, who […]

Over the airfield, a wounded aviator fell from the sky. He lay there for what felt like hours, waiting to die, but suddenly, he felt hands lifting him onto a stretcher and gently setting him in the back of an ambulance. The aviator kept his eyes closed as the truck lurched forward. He hardly dared hope he’d survive the journey to the nearest hospital.

Contention at the Convention By Sarah Hancock Jones October 18, 2018   Filing into the Salt Lake City and County building in the spring of 1895, Utah women thought they had it in the bag. They had been working for years to build support for universal suffrage in the state constitution: collaborating with national leaders […]

By Katherine Kitterman, Better Days 2020 Historical Director September 13, 2018   Our mission at Better Days 2020 is to share the stories of Utah women – who were the first women citizens in the U.S. to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law! We’re pretty proud of that fact, so let’s take a closer […]