CANCELLED due to COVID-19. A Historical Talk by Dr. Ralph Kam, UH Manoā, American Studies
In honor of Women’s History Month and Women’s Right to Vote Centennial, Kahuku Public and School Library will host a historical talk by Dr. Ralph Kam about Hawaiian Suffragist Wilhemina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett. Dowsett was the founder of the first Hawai‘i suffrage organization, National Women’s Equal Suffrage Association of Hawai‘i (WESAH).
Thanks to the efforts of women like Dowsett and WESAH, President Wilson signed a bill allowing the residents of the territory [of Hawai’i] to decide for themselves. Gathering both Native Hawaiian and white suffragists at the Capitol building on the morning of the Senate vote on March 4, 1919, Dowsett declared:
“Sister Hawaiians, our foreign sisters are with us. Senator Wise asked us yesterday if the so-called ‘society women’ were leading us, and we told him that this was not so. We are working all together, and we want the legislature to know this. And we must also remember our Oriental sisters, who are not here today but who will also unite this great cause.”*
Ralph Kam is Interim-Director of the Historic Preservation Graduate Certificate Program at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He wrote Death Rites and Hawaiian Royalty: Funerary Practices in the Kamehameha and Kalākaua Dynasties, 1819–1953 (2017) and several articles in the Hawaiian Journal of History, including “Copied Hymns of John Young” (2015) and “The Gospel Roots of Hawai‘i Aloha” (2017). He holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He also holds a Master of Public Relations degree from the University of Southern California.
*Source: https://www.nps.gov/people/wilhelmina-kekelaokalaninui-widemann-dowsett.htm