To celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution, Park University hosted Kim Warren, Ph.D., during its annual women’s history month lecture in the McCoy Meetin’ House on the Parkville campus. Warren is an associate professor in the department of history at the University of Kansas.

This lecture was focused around the 19th Amendment which was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and then ratified on August 18, 1920. This prohibited states and the federal government from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex. The 19th Amendment took decades to get passed and required generations of women suffrage supporters to keep protesting, marching and lecturing.

Warren also centered the lecture on Mary McLeod Bethune, Ph.D. Bethune was born into a former slave family and ended up opening and owning a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach, Fla., and a hospital for African Americans.

Bethune also was active in campaigns for suffrage. She started her own civil rights organization: the National Council of Negro Women. That same year, she was a special advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on minority affairs. Bethune died after a heart attack at 79 years old.

The focus of Bethune was her political strategies for the advancement of women and African Americans. The lecture was geared toward having the same core movement and having it still continue today.

Professor of History Debra Sheffer, Ph.D., attended the event, and said she hopes to have more lectures like this on campus.

“Because it expands our expertise rather they be students, faculty and staff. They give us an insight,” said Sheffer.