In a nod to election season, “Buttons, Banners and Ballots” is an exhibit featured at the Aurora Historical Society’s Pierce Art and History Center.
The public is invited to the show at the center, 20 E. Downer Place in Aurora. Admission and parking are free. The exhibit runs to Nov. 23. Visit hours are noon to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays
John Jaros, center executive director, said buttons from every presidential election from 1936 to 1876 are displayed. Additionally, photos recall presidential candidates’ visits to Aurora: Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, and John F. Kennedy in 1960.
The exhibit features memorial items related to president Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and a panel devoted to Aurora’s colorful and controversial mayor Paul Egan, who served from 1953 to 1961.
A photo and bio of Aurora’s Charlotte Thompson Reid chronicles the congresswoman who took her husband Frank’s place on the GOP Congressional ballot after he died a few months before the 1962 election. Reid won the election and became the only new woman member of Congress that year. She served four terms that included the first woman to deliver a State of the Union response and allegedly the first to wear pants on the House floor.
—Al Benson