Don Bolinger, costume shop manager at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was selected to create the costumes for a professional development program for educators in Arkansas that will commemorate the history of the women’s suffrage movement.

The program, created by Arkansas PBS, is part of Arkansas IDEAS, which connects K-12 educators with quality professional development and educational opportunities approved by the Arkansas Department of Education that helps teachers meet licensure requirements. The women’s suffrage project comes as the country is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which gave women in the U.S. the right to vote.

“The program features seven people from Arkansas history,” Bolinger said. “The actors who play them are being filmed and will be put through a filter that looks like an oil painting talking. It’s very similar to Harry Potter when all the portraits suddenly start talking and come to life.”

Corey Womack, a producer for Arkansas PBS, wrote and filmed the program. The project filmed on Aug. 11-12 and will be shown in Arkansas elementary schools during the 2020-21 school year. Bolinger’s job was to create costumes that accurately matched the historic time period of the people featured in the documentary.

“I was given historic portraits of all those involved. I could approximate their look in the time frame between the biggest event of their career and when they died,” Bolinger said. “Most of the costumes turned out to be between 1870 to 1890, even though Charlotte Stevens, whom Stevens Elementary is named for, lived until 1951.”

To complete the period pieces, Bolinger used items from The Rep and UA Little Rock’s previous productions of “Waiting Room,” “On the Verge,” and “Scotland Road” as well as purchased items from Historical Emporium.

“I constructed the remaining garments, a black lace mantle, and an ecru wool capelet. These items also piqued my interest in terms of patterning and construction and generated period stock items for the department,” Bolinger said.

Bolinger noted that this project is important because it highlights Arkansas’s role in the national suffrage movement while also providing work for actors and technicians during the pandemic, when not many productions are taking place. The costumes he created will also become a part of the university’s collection and can be used in future productions as well as serve as examples of historic dress for students.

The historic figures featured in the documentary include Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who is credited with initiating the first organized women’s rights and women’s suffrage movements in the U.S.; Lizzie Dorman Fyler, founder of the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association; and Clara McDiarmid, founder of the Arkansas Equal Suffrage Association.

Another figure in the documentary is Catherine Cunnigham, editor of the Woman’s Chronicle, the leading publication for women’s suffrage in the South. Also featured are Mary Church Terrell, who helped found the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Charlotte Andrews Stephens, the first Black woman to teach in Little Rock.

John Riggs, the only male historical figure represented in the documentary, introduced legislation to allow women to vote in Arkansas primaries in 1917. After the bill passed, Arkansas became the first Southern state to allow women to vote in primary elections.

In the upper right photo, Felecia Richardson, who is playing Charlotte Andrews Stephens, is wearing one of Bolinger’s costumes.