Not Given but Earned: Women’s Fight for the Vote originally launched as a physical exhibition in August, 2021. Though originally intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment (2020), it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In August 2022, Purdue archivists along with Libraries IT chose to turn the content into an online exhibition.

Initially, Purdue archivists did not think there would be sufficient materials in our collections to tell the story of the women’s suffrage movement and Hoosier and Purdue women’s involvement. However, after much research and digging into our collections, we found that they contained numerous entries about early suffragists and women’s rights discussions, and that Purdue women, students, and faculty alike integrated themselves into the movement.

The result of our work is a selection of rare books, papers, manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts documenting key aspects of the women’s suffrage movement from its beginnings in the United States to suffragists’ continued activism even after its passage. The exhibition does not intend to retell the entire history of the suffrage movement, but to situate Hoosier and Purdue women in the wider national and international movement, highlight their actions and contributions, discuss the inequalities that persisted throughout the movement and even after the passage of the 19th amendment, and show how women and many other groups continue to advocate for equitable rights.

We hope you enjoy exploring this key moment in US history through the unique, rare, and original materials from the Archives’ vault.