Zion's Suffragists

Utah’s original settlers have had a long struggle for equal rights before the law in the United States. Host Dianna Douglas introduces some of the Utah women who led the charge. Zitkála-Šá was an early pioneer for voting rights and civil rights for native peoples, helping European Americans acknowledge the beauty and richness of native peoples’ cultures through essays, speeches and even an original opera. Mae Timbimboo Parry helped Utah confront a dark history of mistreatment of native peoples, all with her disarming mix of humor and kindness. And we meet native women of Utah who are continuing the work today.

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Utah women joined forces with a young suffragist named Alice Paul and jumpstarted the drive for suffrage with some spectacular events. A mile-long petition. The biggest parade Washington had ever seen. And, controversially, pickets and protests in front of the White House with signs demanding a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage. When President Wilson got sick of the protests, the women were arrested and sent to prison. Host Dianna Douglas explains why seeing women arrested and abused in prison turned public opinion in favor of women’s suffrage, and how Utah celebrated when the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed. 

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A state senate race for the ages: a young doctor named Martha Hughes Cannon runs in a crowded field to join the very first Senate in the state of Utah. She runs against her husband, Angus, against Utah’s preeminent suffragist, Emmeline B. Wells, and against seven other men. When she wins, she is the first woman elected to a state senate in the U.S. Host Dianna Douglas tells us about how Martha Hughes Cannon and the other women who won public office in the early 1900s still influence Utah today. 

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Going into the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, Utah women were fighting against the stereotypes of polygamous country bumpkin wives. Coming out of the fair, they were hailed as some of “the brightest exponents of woman’s cause in the United States.” How did the women of Utah flip the script? Host Dianna Douglas walks us through a PR miracle and tells the dramatic story of how they got their voting rights irrevocably written into the constitution of the new state of Utah.

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Utah women were the first in the nation to vote. Their voting rights were under constant threat, however, from people who weren't happy that polygamy persisted in Utah, or who felt that voting was degrading to women. Host Dianna Douglas shares some of their petitions to Congress, articles from Utah’s suffrage newspaper, and their reactions to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton speaking in the tabernacle.

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Utah women gave a collective shrug when they first heard of a movement in New York to let women vote. But when the federal government began to attack polygamy, Utah women knew they needed a voice. Host Dianna Douglas recreates some of the mass meetings across Utah where women demanded a vote and stunned the world.

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Host Dianna Douglas introduces Zion's Suffragists, a six-episode podcast about how Utah women won the vote in the late 1800s, and pushed the country toward women’s suffrage. 

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