Women’s History Collection Showcases Suffrage in Virginia
Showing through November
Photographs, ephemera and publications from the Adèle Goodman Clark papers from Special Collections and Archives in Cabell Library are showing on the big screen during Election Month, November. Nov. 20 marks the anniversary of the founding of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. And, November is the month for the annual Crenshaw Lecture, which focuses on Women’s History.
Thursday, Nov. 17, 1 p.m., at the Richmond Salon, Rooms 3-4, of the VCU Student Commons, the 7th Annual Crenshaw Lecture on Virginia Women’s History features Dr. Elsa Barkley Brown, author, professor at the University of Maryland and award winner. Her lecture, “The Politics of Labor: African American Women Serving and Organizing” is free and open to the public, with light refreshments to follow.
Also on Thursday, at 4 p.m., at the Forum Room of the VCU Student Commons, Dr. Caroline Emmons, of Hampden-Sydney College, will speak on “A Tremendous Job To Be Done: African American Women in the Virginia Civil Rights Movement.” This lecture is sponsored by the Alexandrian Society, a student organization of the VCU History Department.
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Adèle Goodman Clark (1882-1983) was a founding member of the first statewide organization to promote women’s suffrage in Virginia. The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia held its first meeting in 1909 at the Crenshaw House on 919 West Franklin St., now part of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Monroe Park Campus.
As an advocate for women’s franchise, Clark helped to direct legislative initiatives, organized suffrage rallies and traveled across the state to establish new chapters of the Equal Suffrage League.
After the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Clark served as the first chair of the Virginia League of Women Voters. She was later elected president, and served in that capacity for two different terms for a total of eighteen years. Clark also held leadership positions with the National League of Women’s Voters.
Clark was also an artist, art teacher and prominent supporter of the arts in Richmond. She studied at the Art Club of Richmond and won a scholarship to attend the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. She returned to Richmond, taught at the Art Club of Richmond, and established The Atelier, a private studio school where Theresa Pollak (founder of the VCU School of the Arts) studied. Clark worked to establish the Richmond Academy of Art in 1930, a forerunner to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
The materials on view are selections from the Adèle Goodman Clark papers. The records of the Virginia League of Women Voters of the Richmond Metropolitan Area are also among the manuscript holdings on women’s history available at VCU Libraries. Some of these materials are also available on VCU Libraries Flickr platform.
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