PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — SAGE (Seniors Achieving Greater Education) from the University of Maine at Presque Isle will offer their membership the presentation “We Demand: America’s First Cross-Country Automobile Trip for a Cause” from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 29.
SAGE is a membership organization for people over the age of 50 with a membership fee of $25 a year. To register, go to msad1.coursestorm.com and navigate to SAGE.
Anne Gass, and an independent historian, will present this program telling of an adventure. In September 1915, four women embarked in an open car from San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition on the country’s first cross-country road trip for a cause. They were carrying a petition to Congress and President Wilson demanding an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women.
Over primitive, poorly signed roads and through blazing heat, rain, snow and mud, they battled their way across the country, stopping in towns along the way to collect more signatures and to raise awareness that most women in the country were prohibited from voting. Gass retraced their route in 2015 and blogged about it at www.suffrageroadtrip.blogspot.com. This lively talk is accompanied by historic slides.
Gass is the author of ”Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage,” published in 2014. Gass, who is Whitehouse’s great-granddaughter, speaks regularly on Florence Brooks Whitehouse and women’s rights history at conferences, historical societies, libraries, high schools and other venues.
