Guest Bio:
Katherine Kitterman deeply understands both the national and the local contexts regarding 19th and early 20th century women suffrage history. She also has a knack for explaining in simply ways, complex historical circumstances.
Kitterman is a PhD candidate in History at American University (Washington, D.C.) and is the Historical Director for the BetterDays2020 organization. Her focus has been American women’s history and Mormon history, as well as training in historical interpretation and public history programming. Previously Katherine was an instructor for the Church History and Doctrine Department at Brigham Young University, and worked in Washington, D.C., for the Smithsonian Institution, the Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Overview
In this engaging, and quick paced interview, Kitterman offers a beginner’s primer on the history of Utah’s women suffrage movement. She outlines all the events, people and circumstances, covering 1870 to 1920.
Kitterman also explains the two big anniversaries coming up in 2020. First, the 150th anniversary of the first American woman, under a women’s suffrage law, to vote in the USA (Seraph Young in a municipal and territorial election in January 1870) and secondly, the 100th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment (August 1920), which prohibits government from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.