04/13/2020
Wilhelmine Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett, a hapa-haole woman of Native Hawaiian and German descent, fought for the equality of women during the Territorial Period through a multi-ethnic coalition. As a founder of the National Women’s Equal Suffrage Association of Hawaiʻi, the first organization established to secure the vote for women, Dowsett used her leadership skills to press the 1919 Legislature to pass voting rights for Hawaiʻi women. Join us as presenter Dr. Ralph Kam recounts the life and civic legacy of one of Hawaiʻi’s greatest suffragists.
Dr. Ralph Kam holds an MA and PhD in American Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in Asian Pacific American studies and media studies, and an MA in Public Relations from the University of Southern California. He wrote Death Rites and Hawaiian Royalty: Funerary Practices in the Kamehameha and Kalākaua Dynasties, 1819-1953 (2017) and co-authored Partners in Change: A Biographical Encyclopedia of American Protestant Missionaries in Hawai‘i and their Hawaiian and Tahitian Colleagues, 1820-1900 (2018). He also has written 9 articles for the Hawaiian Journal of History.
