NSU Department of History to host 2025 Ballenger Lecture series

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – Northeastern State University will welcome author, professor and historian Dr. Rachel Michelle Gunter to the Tahlequah campus to present the 2025 Ballenger Lecture on March 13.

The annual lecture series provides a forum for historians who are leading scholars and researchers in their area of expertise. The series is named after Oklahoma historian and researcher, T.L. Ballenger who lived to the age of 104-years-old and settled in the heart of the Cherokee Nation to study Cherokee history.

Gunter will present “Suffragists, Soldiers, and Immigrants: Drastic Changes to Voting Rights in the Progressive Era” as the 2025 Ballenger Lecture. The lecture will leave those in attendance with a more comprehensive understanding of women’s suffrage and voting rights in the late-1890s to the 1920s during the Progressive Era. The time period was marked by massive societal and political change.

Gunter, who received her Ph.D. in history from Texas A&M University in 2017, is a professor of history at a community college in North Texas. Her research focuses on the woman suffrage movement and its effects on the voting rights of other groups including immigrants, servicemen, WWI veterans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans.

The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 13 in Wilson Hall room 407 on the NSU Tahlequah campus. A Q&A portion will follow the talk and refreshments will be provided for attendees. Students, as well as members of the public, are invited and encouraged to attend the free event.

For more information about the 2025 Ballenger Lecture series, contact Dr. Denis Vovchenko at vovchenk@nsuok.edu.

For information about this year’s lecturer, visit https://rmgunter.com/.

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