The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association is dedicated to honoring the suffragists, who fought for and won women’s right to vote. 

Its vision is to raise awareness and funds to create a memorial that will reflect the strength of these women and the significance of their struggle. In partnership with NOVA Parks, the memorial will be located in Fairfax County, VA, near the spot where women were imprisoned.

And its goal is to raise funds to complete construction and have the national memorial fully operational by 2020, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment which recognized woman’s right to vote.

If Executive Director Pat Wirth, former chairwoman Jane Barker, and a slew of activists have their way, the garden-style national memorial will be grand. It will commemorate the suffrage struggle, and educate, inspire, and empower present and future generations to remain vigilant in the quest for equal rights.

In this issue of Grateful American™ Magazine, we interview Pat Wirth (above right), and historian Edie Mayo (above left), who share insights into this fascinating topic and important project.

Hope Katz Gibbs: Pat, tell us how the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association came to be.

Pat Wirth: In 2007, the manager at the Occoquan Regional Park approached the League of Women Voters in Fairfax, VA, to explore the idea of building a memorial to the suffragists in his park — part of the historic DC Prison grounds where scores of suffragists were jailed for silently picketing the White House in 1917. A committee of women began meeting under Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority’s nonprofit foundation to explore and expand on the concept. (They changed their name to NOVA Parks earlier this year.)

In 2011, the women, at the recommendation of attorney members, formed a 501(c)(3), the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association. Robert Beach, an award-winning architect, donated the design. The group has an Interpretation and Design Committee that has been researching the historical information that will go into the 19 information stations that will tell the entire 72-year history of the suffrage movement. The memorial will have 19 stations because it was the 19th Amendment that gave women the vote!

David Bruce Smith: Pat, how did your involvement begin? 

In 2012, I became a member of the association when I saw an exhibit about the organization at a fall arts festival in the tiny town of Occoquan across from the park. Jane Barker, the founder of the organization, is a friend of mine who encouraged me to attend a fund-raising dinner and then some meetings. Turning Point hired me as its executive director on May 1, 2015.

Hope Katz Gibbs: Edie — Take us back to the mid-1800s when the suffragist movement began, and give us a brief history. 

Edie Mayo: In the mid-1800s, women were subjected to many legal disabilities, which had come down through English common law. If married, women even lacked their own individual legal identities, which were subsumed in their husband’s identity. Women lacked property rights, rights to their own wages, even rights to their own children — and they did not have the most basic right of citizenship — the right to vote.

Many women were involved in the anti-slavery movement, which awakened them to their own lack of rights as women. They began to organize to change their legal status. After the Civil War, two groups emerged to work for women’s right to vote: The American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, which had a moderate agenda to achieve voting rights state by state; and the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was more militant about achieving other legal rights for women and advocated a Constitutional amendment to gain women the right to vote. ...