Dayton Live will host a documentary viewing and panel discussion in honor of International Women’s Day, highlighting how Ohio played a major role in the national suffragists movement.
The Victoria Theatre will offer a free, 1 p.m. showing on March 8 of "Let Ohio Women Vote," followed by a discussion with the producer of the Tony Award-winning musical SUFFS, Rachel Sussman, and the documentary's director, Ann Rotolante.
"I started working at ThinkTV, Public Television, and Dayton, Channel 16, about 13 years ago now," said Rotolante. "As a documentarian —You're just making little short story videos. And those I think are just as valid as the long form ones because you're still telling a story. You're bringing people into a world they may not know much about to learn something new."
The panel will also feature Maureen O’Conner, senior fellow for the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, retired Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and former lieutenant governor.
Dayton Live is partnering with Ohio History Connection to promote its “Ohio Women Vote: 100 Years Of Change” exhibit which audience members are invited to explore after the screening.
Rotolante said they will also use this gathering as an opportunity to register audience members to vote.
"I think that's really powerful because — spoiler alert — I like democracy," she said. "I think it's important for everyone who has a voice, who has something to say, to be able to say it and to say it at the ballot box."
Ohio's suffrage movement
ThinkTV’s 58 minute "Let Ohio Women Vote" documentary was originally created to celebrate the centennial of the 19th amendment’s passing in 2020.
"We did get some funding together. We got started and I was like, 'This is going to be great. No other TV station or public television stations in Ohio were doing anything like this," Rotolante. "And then the pandemic happened and saideverything kind of shifted and got knocked sideways."
Nonetheless, Rotolante continued to pursue the film. She collaborated with scholars, Ohio Humanities, Ohio History Connection and the League of Women Voters during her research, ensuring her work was accurate.
It was during this time that she discovered the efforts of activists in Ohio who influenced national efforts in the suffrage movement.
"The women that were involved in the abolitionist movement, mostly around Cincinnati, Oberlin College, places like that, that was the first foray into women trying to have a voice," Rotolante said. "And then out of that grew, 'Hey, if we can vote, we can affect change. Us just sitting here lecturing to other women to then talk to their husbands about affecting change. It's not the same as us actually being able to do it ourselves.'"
Rotolante said even before the Seneca Falls Convention formed in New York in 1848, a woman named Francis “Franny” Wright was lecturing on women’s rights in 1818.
“She lectured to both men and women about these topics in Cincinnati back at that time," she said. "And that was kind of surprising that women were having a platform at that time in mixed-company.”
Rotolante said she hopes her documentary highlights the diverse and powerful activists that came from Ohio.
“They're immigrant women, there were women of color, all ages, all economic groups," she said. "It wasn't just a very elitist, well-educated, polished movement.”
Rotolante said there are even more women who had a major impact on the suffragist movement in Ohio that she wants to highlight, many of which came from Oberlin.
"Mary Church Terrell who went to Oberlin and lived in Yellow Springs when she was younger, a mazing, amazing legacy," she said. "Helen Hamilton Gardner, she came from Ohio and led the fight nationally. Doris Stevens I believe went to Oberlin."
Rotolante said if viewers are interested in hearing more stories that could not be added to the documentary, they can watch even more short clips on other impactful women at thinktv.org
