2:00 PM | This event is Private.

Her Ink Her Voice

by Gin Hammond

Susie Revels Cayton

Susie Revels was the daughter of Hiram Revels, the first Black U.S Senator, elected in 1870 from Mississippi. As Associate Editor of the black-owned newspaper The Seattle Republican, she published many stories about suffrage during the 1910 Washington campaign and beyond.

Suffrage Timeframe:  Though a bit younger than Carmelita, (born 1870), Susie was a contemporary of Emma Smith DeVoe and May Arkwright Hutton during the Washington State campaign.

Before Seattle was a city of tech and towers, it was a city of dreams—and contradictions. At its edge stood Susie Revels Cayton: writer, editor, mother, activist. Her Ink Her Voice follows her journey from Mississippi to the Pacific Northwest, beginning aboard a segregated train in her early twenties and landing in turn-of-the-century Seattle, where she’d shape history with little more than ink, grit, and unstoppable resolve.

Wry, modern, and rooted in historical truth, this original play reimagines Cayton’s world with a fresh lens. Through fictional and historical characters—and Cayton’s own razor-sharp voice—it explores the promise and betrayal of the Reconstruction Era, a time whose echoes feel uncomfortably close to our present. When ten years of Black political progress were undone by a single presidential deal, Susie kept writing. Kept organizing. Kept believing.

A story of persistence, legacy, and the power of the pen, Her Ink Her Voice invites audiences across Washington state to rediscover a woman whose voice refused to be erased—and whose courage still speaks volumes today.