Landing After Hours: Soothing the “Savage Hearts of Man”

Rural areas were often ignored by national and eastern women’s suffrage organizations, but women’s suffrage groups in the Midwest learned by the late 19th century that these areas must also be targeted to win the hearts and minds of the electorate. In this program, historian Elyssa Ford will share how rural women in Missouri played an important role in the suffrage movement. Across the state, rural communities engaged in suffrage discussions, invited national speakers who bewitched – and sometimes enraged – local audiences, and supported their own suffrage workers.

Within this world of Missouri suffragists, Ford will highlight the compelling story of Maryville’s Alma Nash and her all-women band, which traveled to Washington, D.C., for the national women’s suffrage parade in 1913. By analyzing the actions of Nash and company at the parade and at home in the Midwest, it is possible to see how a small group of young, rural women engaged with the suffrage movement and how they were shaped not just by the national suffrage discussion but by the local and often heated suffrage debates within their community.