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Storytelling through clothing
The 19th Amendment: A History of Women’s Rights at JMU By Emily Blake
In 2008, Pamela Johnson, a professor in the School of Theatre and Dance, had already dedicated many years of work to building the school’s collection of thousands of items of historic clothing. The costume shop held hundreds of these items; the rest, ranging from the 1830s to the 1970s, were tucked away in carefully labeled boxes and totes in the Forbes Center. She wanted others to have the chance to enjoy them, but there wasn’t any secure, museum-quality exhibit space. Out of the blue, Johnson received a call from Julia Merkel, a friend from graduate school working in JMU Libraries, to ask if she could provide clothing for the university’s Centennial Celebration. What followed was a 13-year collaboration and
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a series of six exhibits that told JMU (Above, L–R): Julia Merkel, Paula Green stories through clothing from the hisand Pamela Johntoric collection in Theatre and Dance son assemble an exhibit in the Carand items from Special Collections. rier Library lobby. The most recent of these exhibits celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment being ratified, an event which gave many women in the U.S. the right to vote. The exhibit also offers a window into the student experience at the height of the women’s suffrage movement, when James Madison University was the State Normal School for Women at Harrisonburg, only 12 years into its existence.
PH OTO G R A PH BY D E B B I E PU G H
