KCPT On Tour - WA Women's History Initiative: Suffrage Lecture Series
The Suffrage Lecture Series is the newest project of Key City Public Theatre's WA Women's History Tour program, equal parts academic discourse and biographical dramatization. This series provides a dramatic chronology of the suffrage movement across WA state with a special focus on under-represented voices. Through historical materials, first-person accounts, and dramatic biographical re-enactments, little-known stories of BIPOC/PGM women of the WA suffrage movement are brought to life. The Suffrage Lecture Series was developed in partnership with humanities scholar Barbara Callander. Featured stories illuminate both the personal histories of women and their unique challenges within each of their socio-cultural contexts as well as their collective experiences in the American suffrage movement. KCPT's WA Women's History Initiative, in partnership with humanities scholar Barbara Callander, initially focused on the stories of May Arkwright Hutton and Emma Smith DeVoe, women who were known contemporaries of nationally famous suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Scott Duniway. For this project, we aim to reflect and engage our state's full history by developing and featuring stories of women from under-represented communities who were active in WA state's suffrage movement and/or have built on its legacy.
Her Ink Her Voice
Carmelita
By Ana Maria Campoy
Show Times and Location:
On the KCPT Mainstage
April 24 - May 11, 2025
Carmelita Colon
Carmelita was born in Mexico. She and her husband Sebastian settled in Walla Walla in the 1860’s, several years before Susan B. Anthony and Abigail Scott Duniway toured the Pacific Northwest (including Walla Walla) in 1871. Carmelita and Sebastian ran a mule train to the gold mines in Idaho and later sold tamales while operating a restaurant in Walla Walla.
Suffrage Timeframe: Carmelita’s work and activism were quite early in the Northwest women’s rights/suffrage movement, years before women had — and lost — the vote twice in the 1880’s.
How do you break free from an assigned narrative? Meet Carmelita Colon, determined to do just that, challenging us to re-imagine what it means to reclaim our stories.
A tale of gold rushes, wars, outlaws, and tamale recipes
Historical fiction immerses you in one woman's treacherous and triumphant journey from 1860s Mexico to WA territory.
Returning to the tour in March 2026
Prim and proper Emma Smith DeVoe and outrageous, flamboyant May Arkwright Hutton worked side by side -- but seldom eye to eye -- to win the vote for women in Washington State May’s Vote presents Emma and May from their respective childhoods through the noisy public struggle that ended with success in 1910.
Suffrage Timeframe: The events leading up to, throughout, and just after the Washington State Campaign
DeVoe, based in Western Washington, was a professional suffrage organizer trained by Susan B. Anthony. She believed that in order to win the vote, it was imperative to approach men in a ladylike manner: “persuade them, convince them, argue their resistance down.” Hutton, a Spokane millionaire who had struck it rich in the Idaho silver mines, thought that the way to get the vote from men was to “clap ‘em on the back, pass out cigars, and swap stories with ‘em.” The story dramatically demonstrates that we do not always have to agree in order to achieve a common goal.
Now Playing:
by Gin Hammond
Show Times and Locations:
At Seattle Public Libraries
Saturday, April 19 - 1 pm - Capitol Hill Branch, Meeting Room 425 Harvard Ave E, Seattle 98102
Saturday, April 26 - 2 pm - Greenwood Branch, Meeting Room 8016 Greenwood Ave N, Seattle 98103
Sunday, April 27 - 2 pm - West Seattle Branch, Meeting Room 2306 42nd Ave SW, Seattle 98116
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.
A Vindication for the Unwritten: Or How to Write Yourself Back into History
May's Vote
By Toni Douglass
Interested in hosting a Suffrage Lecture Series presentation?
Direct inquiries to: Key City Public Theatre 360-379-0195 ext 3.
Key Participants:
Project Partners:
Project Funders:
Barbara Callander, a Seattle-based humanities scholar and performing artist who has been researching and disseminating the history of women’s rights throughout the state of WA and the PNW for over 25 years in conjunction with the creation and presentation of lectures, dramatic biographical performances and other programs about suffrage in Washington, the Northwest, and beyond. Ms. Callander's numerous Humanities presentations over the last three decades have been awarded grants from Humanities Washington, the Washington State Historical Society and ArtsWA, among others.
A Mexican American theatre artist, educator, and advocate, Ana Maria Campoy is based in Seattle and has worked at regional theaters throughout the U.S. as a writer, director, dramaturg, and actress. Ms. Campoy has adapted a number of classic and contemporary plays as Spanish/English productions performed nationally with bilingual BIPOC/PGM artists. Ms. Campoy currently is an Associate Artist with Seattle Shakespeare Theater where she advises on Community Engagement and EDI, participates in the SEE program, and is exploring the expansion of programming into other areas of WA State. Founder of the all-volunteer, mutual-aid collective, WashMasks, Campoy works with others to provide PPE, support, and advocacy for migrant and seasonal farm workers and their families in Washington state during COVID-19 pandemic.
Gin Hammond is an African American Seattle-based writer, director, teacher, and actor, who wrote and performed her award-winning solo-shows RETURNING THE BONES, based on 10 years of interviews with her Aunt Bebe and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, which had a month-long run at Book-It Repertory Theater in Seattle (2019), following a workshop production at KCPT (2014). Ms. Hammond's artist statement reveals she is " a theater artist who has developed a love for real stories, about real people who, despite the terror in their own hearts, believed in asserting the fullness of their own humanity, and believed that they were a part of something bigger than themselves." Ms. Hammond has received a Kathleen Cornell award, and WA state grants from Allied Arts, The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Artist Trust, 4 Culture, as well as from the NEA, and has recently been nominated for a WA State Governor’s Arts & Heritage Award.
Denise Winter, KCPT Artistic Director, has worked as a performing artist and arts administrator at regional theaters across the U.S. Ms. Winter is the co-writer of the award-winning musical, SPIRIT OF THE YULE, featuring the little-known historic Jefferson County WA,1880s female entrepreneur, Henrietta Maynard. Winter leads KCPT's WA Women's History Initiative and also appears as May Arkwright Hutton in touring presentations of MAY'S VOTE.
