What began in the middle 1800s as a series of public talks that promoted full voting rights for women finally became a national cause during the years leading up to America's involvement in World War I (1917–1918) and after. Although many people today are aware of the radical actions of women in England and in the northeastern United States, museum curator RaeLana Poteat describes a very different, more modest, picture of the suffrage movement in North Carolina and the conservative South in general.