News Tribune | Article | Emily Cole | 8/27/19

On July 3, 1919, Missouri became the 11th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, which would eventually give women the right to vote when it was fully ratified the next year.

Just more than 100 years later, the Cole County Historical Society held an event to celebrate the anniversary of the 19th Amendment as part of a nationwide, collaborative art project.

Her Flag is the brain-child of Oklahoma-based artist Marilyn Artus. The project incorporates a stripe from each of the 36 states that ratified the amendment into a large version of the American flag. Each stripe is designed by a female artist from that state.

The end result will be an 18-by-26-foot flag with 36 stripes, with a starfield designed by Artus which displays a "Votes For Women" button and 36 white stars.

Artus was inspired by the suffrage movement, and knew she couldn't let the anniversary go by without doing something to commemorate it.

"I picked up a book years ago about the suffrage era and just fell in love with it," Artus said. "I fell in love with the stories. I fell in love with the women, the adversity, the tenacity it took, the fact that it was men, women, Republican, Democrat, black, white — everybody was in the mix."