KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A Knoxville group is hoping to bring a women’s suffrage museum to downtown in the next few years. It’s meant to highlight the role the state and the people living in east Tennessee played in securing a woman’s right to vote.
Efforts to open this museum are being made by the Women’s Suffrage Coalition, a group dedicated to locating and preserving the history of the people who worked to secure voting rights for millions of women. And they want to make sure that the history is shared.
“Tennessee played the critical role in the suffrage movement, and that role has never been adequately represented, we think,” Wanda Sobieski, the president and founder of the coalition, said. “As a matter of fact, when we began our process, which was with the memorial on Market Square, there was not a single plaque or bust or anything in the state to recognize the women and the men who worked so hard to get suffrage in a time when it was very difficult. We think the Tennessee stories need to be preserved.”…