Her Flag is a nationwide project celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave some U.S. women the right to vote. Bethann Garramon Merkle is a research scientist at the University of Wyoming and one of the women chosen to participate in the Her Flag project.
The collaborative flag features a stripe from each of the 36 states that helped ratify the 19th amendment. Merkle says she wanted to make her stripe unique and deeply personal.
"I chose to focus more on women who have directly influenced my own understanding of equality and empowering women and other minority demographics to participate in civic conversations and in science."
Her stripe moves visually from left to right, starting with members of her family then moving to more recent influences.
"They're all women who in some way really strongly informed my understanding of my own role as a woman, a citizen, a person interested in the natural world, and an artist," Merkle said, "A person who might be able to say or make something that puts all those ideas together."
Merkle’s stripe will be sewn in this Saturday at 1 p.m. over a live stream by award-winning artist Marylin Artus, who created the Her Flag project. Wyoming was the 27th state to ratify the 19th amendment but was the first territory to give women the right to vote in 1869.
Go here to watch the ceremony.
Have a question about this story? Contact the reporter, Megan Feighery, at mfeigher@uwyo.edu.
