TOPEKA — A crowd clamored Wednesday at the Kansas Statehouse to see the state’s suffragist icons and family members memorialized in paint.
The mural-sized installation is the first by a woman artist in the Kansas Statehouse. The artist, Phyllis Garibay-Coon, painted the majority of the work in her dining room, she said ahead of the unveiling.
Titled “Rebel Women,” the work was the subject of speeches, a dedication and awe from those gathered Wednesday, which was also Kansas Day.
Gov. Laura Kelly marked the day as an occasion to celebrate “bold, visionary, badass” women. In a speech, she reiterated her commitment to public education and touted economic development wins such as the Panasonic battery plant in De Soto.
The painting was the brainchild of the League of Women Voters, which pitched it to the Capitol Preservation Committee for approval. Legislators approved bills in 2022 authorizing the memorial. The bills forbade the use of public funds for the project.
The painting depicts more than a dozen suffragist figures from Kansas’ history.
Among them: Anna O. Anthony of Leavenworth, sister-in-law to pivotal women’s rights and suffragist figure Susan B. Anthony; Laura M. Johns of Salina, a journalist and organizer who was president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association for nearly a decade; Annie L. Diggs a public speaker and journalist who was the first woman to register to vote in Lawrence despite opposition from local men; and Lutie Lytle, the first Black person to be admitted to the Kansas Bar Association and one of the first Black women to earn a law degree and work as a law professor.
The painting also features the great-grandmother of an attendee at Wednesday’s unveiling, as well as the painter’s mother, Helen Garibay Coon.
Helen Garibay Coon was an avid reader and encouraged the same in her children. A silver ring is visible on her hand. Nicki Harders, the artist’s eldest sister, gifted Phyllis Garibay-Coon the ring after the painting’s unveiling. The sisters’ father died the day before the unveiling, making it a proud but sad moment, Harders said.
Their father was blind and hard of hearing before he died, said Jennifer Vulgamore, another one of the artist’s sisters.
“Now he can see it with clear eyes and with mom,” Vulgamore said.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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