GGRWHC Board of Directors
Mary Seeger, Jo Ellyn Clarey,
Co-Presidents
Ruth VanStee,
Secretary
Connie Ingham
Treasurer
Jo Ellyn Clarey
Susan Coombes
Falinda Geerling
Sharon Hanks
Connie Ingham
Kyle Irwin
Mary Seeger
Ruth Stevens
Julie Tabberer
Ruth VanStee
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Spirited Women:
Grand Rapids and the Push for Temperance
Ruth Van Stee & Julie Tabberer
of the Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council
6 p.m. Tuesday, November 17
Meijer Theater, Grand Rapids Public Museum
Free with cost of admission to the museum.
Supplementing the Grand Rapids Public Museum's exhibit, "American Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition," Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council speakers
Ruth Van Stee and
Julie Tabberer will take a look at the local scene during 13 years of speakeasies and bathtub gin and tell the stories of area women in the massive social movements surrounding the Prohibition years 1920-1933.
"Spirited Women: Grand Rapids and the Push for Temperance" will illustrate how the "True Woman" of the nineteenth century and the "New Woman" of the Jazz Age relate to contemporary women (and men) of Grand Rapids as "Beer City USA"!
For a century before 1920, Grand Rapids women (and men) had been pushing temperance as a solution to social ills that were intensified by the misuse of alcohol. Immediately after the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union was established nationally in 1874, the Michigan chapter was founded in Grand Rapids. Summer headquarters for the national WCTU soon moved to Bay View north of Petoskey, and Michigan became a magnet for speakers; many of whom stopped in Grand Rapids. Indeed, some local women also became speakers and started traveling for the cause.
Once Prohibition was passed, Grand Rapids entered the Roaring Twenties of speakeasies, and the "flapper" was born. Single young women moving to the city had money to spend, gin to drink, and the seeming freedoms of Jazz Age parties, but the 1920s also became a period of backlash to advances made by women during the earlier Progressive Era.
Prohibition proved itself a disastrous legal experiment, but the social effects of the broader temperance movement were long-standing. Women who had been laboring for over a century for their full rights as citizens continued the effort in Grand Rapids and in the nation.
See you November 17!
Can you guess why this lady is laughing?
QUIZ: Can you identify the above feminist activist who bought the first alcohol in Kent County, following the repeal of Prohibition? She worked for prohibition reform and Michigan temperance education, and on December 30, 1933, bought the first bottle of champagne to celebrate a new year and new life after a failed social experiment. Michigan was, in fact, the first state to vote for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment!
Two More November Dates!
Go to the Movies with GGRWHC!
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6 p.m. Tuesday, November 10: See the new GVSU documentary on 1940s-1950s Grand Rapids Chicks women's baseball,
A Team of Their Own. Grand Rapids Public Museum. Free with the price of admission to the museum:
For more information, click here..
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6:30 p.m. Friday, November 20: Come to Celebration Cinema North when
Suffragette opens in Grand Rapids. GGRWHC is hosting a premiere viewing of the film in its own reserved small theater! After the film, GVSU women's historian Gretchen Galbraith will discuss when the film is rooted in fact and when it slides into fiction and how the British and American women's movements were related.
$10, RSVP at EventBrite:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/suffragette-tickets-19303778120
Check for updates on our
website and look for our table in the lobby for up-to-the-minute information on opening night. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m, and the 1 3/4 hour film will begin at 6:45 p.m. Come early! Seating could be limited.
Remember to print your ticket from EventBrite and bring it with you. Celebration Cinema North is located at northwest corner of Knapp and the Beltline at 2121 Celebration Drive NE. For a two-minute trailer, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY
For more details about all these events and programs,
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Join us or Update your Membership! |
Not a current member of GGRWHC?
Register or renew your membership and
help offset the expenses associated with annual research and programs. Your membership helps to set the record straight on the women who've made history here in our community.
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Board meetings are held on the second Wednesday of the month at 5:30 p.m. at the Vanderveen Center for the Book at the Grand Rapids Public Library. If you have suggestions for programs, oral histories, or other items, please
email us
or plan to attend a meeting.
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