Dorsey, Ida (1866–1918)

Employing the racial prejudices and fantasies of elite male clients once used against her, Ida Dorsey established herself as one of the Twin Cities’ most notorious madams, running multiple brothels between the 1880s and the 1910s. As a woman of color in an industry dominated by white women, she demonstrated herself an adept entrepreneur and real estate owner when most women had neither income nor property.

A view of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, looking northeast, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

View of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden

A view of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, looking northeast, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Detail of a steel tablet featuring an image of the memorial trellis and a poem from suffragist Clara Hampson Ueland’s scrapbook. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Component of the Woman Suffrage Memorial

Detail of a steel tablet featuring an image of the memorial trellis and a poem from suffragist Clara Hampson Ueland’s scrapbook. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Steel tablet showing the civil and social rights ladder women had to climb to achieve suffrage. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Component of the Woman Suffrage Memorial

Steel tablet showing the civil and social rights ladder women had to climb to achieve suffrage. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Steel tablet with the memorial dedication, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Dedication inside the Woman Suffrage Memorial

Steel tablet with the memorial dedication, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

The memorial features a steel trellis inscribed with the names of twenty-five prominent Minnesota suffragists, including Alice Ames Winter, Marguerite Milton Wells, and Myrtle Cain. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Trellis in the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial

The memorial features a steel trellis inscribed with the names of twenty-five prominent Minnesota suffragists, including Alice Ames Winter, Marguerite Milton Wells, and Myrtle Cain. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Architect’s rendering of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, from the memorial dedication booklet, 2000. LOOM Studio.

Drawing of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden

Architect’s rendering of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, from the memorial dedication booklet, 2000. LOOM Studio.

Architect’s rendering of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, from the memorial dedication booklet, 2000. LOOM Studio.

Drawing of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden

Architect’s rendering of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden, from the memorial dedication booklet, 2000. LOOM Studio.

The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the northeast corner of the upper state capitol mall, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial

The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial on the northeast corner of the upper state capitol mall, 2019. Photo by Linda A. Cameron.

Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial, St. Paul

In the summer of 1994, the League of Women Voters of Minnesota convened a group of thirty women to form the Nineteenth Amendment Celebration Committee. The committee organized events around the seventy-fifth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, giving women the right to vote. They left a lasting legacy in the form of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Memorial Garden. It was the first monument to a movement approved for the mall of the third Minnesota State Capitol.

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