Minnesota women actively protested for the right to vote before and during the World War I years. The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association and the Minnesota branch of the National Woman's Party organized various efforts for suffrage. Members of these groups wrote letters, raised money, marched in parades, petition legislators, and participate in hunger strikes. 

Banners such as this one -- owned by the Minneapolis League of Women Voters -- were common as women assembled and marched for suffrage. This banner lists the people who were not allowed to vote in Minnesota, including criminals, lunatics and idiots (words used at the time to describe people with disabilities), and women. The point is that Minnesota women felt that it was demeaning to put women in the same "unfit to vote" category as the others on the list. Gold was a very common color for suffrage movement materials, along with white and purple.