Delaware’s 22nd annual Chautauqua: “Women’s Work: Campaigning for Social Change” on Sept. 10, 11, 19 and 20, 2020

NOTE: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 Chautauqua programs will not be conducted in front of a live audience but will instead be streamed live via Zoom. Each of the Chautauqua’s programs is free and open to its first 100 registrants. A complete listing of activities and registration instructions are available by going to https://history.delaware.gov/22nd-annual-chautauqua/.

As a compliment to the 2020 Chautauqua, identical versions of the display “Nothing Less: Delaware, Women’s Suffrage, and Equal Rights” have been installed at the Zwaanendael Museum and the New Castle Court House Museum. Created by Delaware Humanities, the displays include two, three-sided columns featuring information and images on the suffrage movement in Delaware from 1848 onward. The displays will remain on view until the Chautauqua has been completed. Go to the following for information on visiting the museums in keeping with Gov. Carney’s Phase II reopening guidance issued in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chautauqua takes its name from a series of adult education programs that were first held at a campsite on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York during the late 19th century. Chautauquas spread throughout America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries bringing speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day to a wide cross-section of the nation’s rural and small-town population. Circuit Chautauquas (also known as Tent Chautauquas) were an itinerant manifestation of the movement. Programs would be presented in tents pitched in a field near town. After several days, the Chautauqua would fold its tents and move on to the next community. The popularity of Chautauquas peaked in the mid-1920s, after which radio, movies and automobiles brought about the gradual disappearance of the movement by the 1940s.