Kansas unveils a mural honoring 'rebel women' who campaigned for voting rights

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas has a new mural in its Statehouse honoring women who campaigned for voting rights for decades before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted those rights across the nation.

Gov. Laura Kelly and other state officials unveiled the “Rebel Women” painting that spans an entire wall on the first floor on Wednesday, the anniversary of Kansas' admission as the 34th U.S. state in 1861.

While Kansas Day is traditionally marked with renditions of the official state song, “Home on the Range,” Wednesday's event also featured the women's voting rights anthem, "Suffrage Song,” to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

A 2022 law authorized the mural, and artist Phyllis Garibay-Coon, of Manhattan, in northeastern Kansas, won the contest with a depiction of 13 prominent Kansas suffragists. A few women in the crowd of several hundred people were dressed as 19th century campaigners who were active before statehood.

Kansas prides itself as entering the union as an anti-slavery free state, but it also was more progressive than other states in gradually granting women full voting rights. Women could vote in school elections in 1861 and in city elections in 1887, and the nation's first woman mayor, Susanna M. Salter, was elected in Argonia, Kansas, that year. Voters amended the state constitution in 1912 to grant women full voting rights.