Women’s suffrage expert available to discuss 100th anniversary of 19th Amendment in context of 2020 election
LAWRENCE — As states across the nation celebrate the 100th anniversary of their ratification of the 19th Amendment, a journalism historian and women’s suffrage expert says the issues women faced in their struggle to secure the right to vote still resonate.
“We are having different suffrage battles today,” said Teri Finneman, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Kansas. “Even still in this country we have disenfranchisement, from where you have voting locations to how accessible voting actually is. We need to be cognizant that the fight is not totally over for some people. Class and race still tend to be affected.”
Finneman, who wrote “Press Portrayals of Women Politicians, 1870s-2000s,” is a former political reporter who has studied journalism coverage of the suffrage and anti-suffrage movements in the early 1900s. She is available to reporters to discuss the historical aspects of the suffrage and anti-suffrage movements, as well as why those ideas are still relevant as we approach the 2020 election.
To arrange an interview with Finneman, contact Erinn Barcomb-Peterson at 785-864-8858 or ebp@ku.edu.