Family Day Opens Voices and Votes

Several attended Family Day on April 18 at Sheridan’s Museum at the Bighorns to view the new Smithsonian’s Museum exhibit, “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America.”

The exhibition examines the nearly 250-year-old American experiment of a government “of, by and for the people,” and how each generation since continues to question how to form “a more perfect union.”

Carrie Edinger, Museum Director, lead a tour through the exhibit.

Other sections include voting and how other groups achieved the right to vote.

Another one was politics and how the candidates presented themselves to obtain votes from the people. There is also a poster with a timeline of voting years, and those attending are urged to put a star on the first year that they voted.

Edinger said since they were the first museum to host the exhibit, they hosted the five other museums in the state for set-up day which was held on Monday, April 13. “Every seven weeks it has a new travel date,” Edinger added. It will end in Wyoming in March of 2027.

Andrew Forsythe, who volunteers at the museum, and was helping with the scavenger hunt, was impressed by the exhibit.

Several youngsters attended and took part in the scavenger hunt, voted for their favorite American Food, designed their own “I Voted Button,” and picked up the Equality State coloring book, which talks about several famous Wyoming women.

Kael Oliver, an eighth grader who attends Wheatland Middle School, and his mother, Ashley Doty were in Sheridan and came to see the exhibit.

Kael said that history is his favorite subject in school, and has visited other museums on field trips.

There will be more free events connected with the exhibit to be held at the Museum at the Bighorns.

On Saturday, May 16, beginning at 10:00 a.m., Kylie McCormick, historian, will present a program, Fifty-One Years of Freedom: Wyoming’s Suffrage Story, 1869 – 1920.

In 1869 Wyoming made history as the first U.S. territory to give women the right to vote. Fifty-one year later, the nation followed Wyoming’s lead. A fresh take on a longstanding controversy, this presentation offers critical new evidence to Wyoming’s suffrage story and restores the contributions to the movement made by both Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard and Esther Hobart Morris.

On Tuesday, May 19 from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., there will be a program titled, Machinery of Democracy which will explore the history of campaigning and votes, and how politicians invented a unique American System of electing representatives. This program will engage Sheridan County’s local politicians with an interview format hosted by Sheridan High Schools We the People: The Citizen and Constitution Program.

Discussions will center on local government structures, campaigning, and the voting process.

The exhibit opened at the Museum at the Bighorns on April 18 and will run through June 13. For a list of the other museums where the exhibit will be presented go to the Voices and Votes Smithsonian website.