By Sylvia Coyle, Summer 2023 Collaborator at Power in Place
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to the Time Capsule team for participating in our in-house Per-Sister Speaker Series!
The Time Capsule team is made up of seven Summer Collaborators with three facilitators. The Collaborators are Lenora Upchurch, Talia Mesnik, Alyse Covington, Catherine Dimare, Mia Galvam, Emma Quirk, and Liv Jewell. They shared a presentation detailing the progress they have made on their summer project, creating a social media platform, sharing the timeline of events leading to the suffragette movement, as well as the milestones in the years after. In their presentation, they highlighted the importance of including the milestones after the suffragette movement, as the fight for equal rights and the right to vote did not end when the suffragette movement did. The end of the suffragette movement was just the beginning of the fight for everyone to have the right to vote.
The team discussed the new ways that they learned to conduct research this summer. They utilized databases and sifted through research done by previous summer collaborators at Power in Place. Catherine mentioned the need for patience, saying, “You need to give yourself some time and don’t get frustrated too fast.”
Through their research, they learned about important people who they weren’t aware of before this summer project. Lenora enjoyed learning about Mabel Lee, a woman who mobilized the Chinese community to earn women the right to vote. Emma brought up Mary Cary, who was the first Black woman to become a co-editor of a newspaper in Canada. Lenora highlighted the efforts of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, an indigenous suffragist who helped to found the National Council of American Indians. These are only a few examples of the incredible women of color the Collaborators discovered.
Thank you to the Time Capsule team for sharing your work with us. We look forward to what they create and accomplish at the end of the summer!