When asked to create a quilt commemorating two key moments in women’s struggle for equal rights, Oakland artist Alice Beasley chose to portray conflict rather than what she calls an “ice cream and roses” version of history.

Her quilt, titled “When and Where I Enter,” depicts a famous moment of confrontation when early 20th century white suffragists attempted to prevent Black suffragists, led by journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, from joining a voting rights march.

Beasley’s charged quilt is her contribution to the“Women’s Voices, Women’s Votes, Women’s Rights” exhibition now on view at the Clinton Presidential Center in Arkansas through April 30. Conceived by Allida Black, historian to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the show was designed to celebrate the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 and the 25th anniversary of Clinton’s “women’s rights are human rights” speech at the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. Pandemic delays postponed the opening until this year.

Among other items on display are the suit Clinton wore during theConference on Women; the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention Declaration of Sentiments; a jabot worn by Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and a copy of a speech given by Vice President Kamala Harris during the Celebrating America inauguration event on Jan. 20, 2021. International contributions include Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai’s kindergarten papers and a headwrap worn by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

Black also commissioned 18 art quilts, made by 16 artists from all over the country in addition to Beasley, aiming to reach “an audience that did not usually go to museums” with a medium long associated with female artists.

The quilting tradition in America represents the impressive geometric creativity of many folk artists. Lesser known may be the art quilt, part of the fiber art medium, for which creators use textiles to create works meant to hang on walls like paintings.

While the Clinton Center exhibit mostly presents a unified narrative of feminist progress enacted by individual lionized figures, “When and Where I Enter” shows a side of the suffrage movement often glossed over.

Inspired by Alison Wilbur’s Quilts for Change project that uses quilts to bring attention to issues that affect women, Black suggested to Clinton they “use women’s voices to tell the story.”

“I’m just so blown away by the artists in their exhibit and their willingness to stretch their skills in new ways to help to investigate, really interrogate the issues and the women who tackled the issues,” said Black.

At the center of “When and Where I Enter,” an angry white woman shouts, thrusting her finger in the face of an unflappable Wells. White women and Black women stand in two camps, divided on either side of that gesturing hand, which Beasley silhouetted and isolated against the dark street.

“It’s like the power radiates — the conviction radiates — off this fabric,” said Black of the quilt.

The quilt depicts a scene on the day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in 1913, when thousands of suffragists gathered to march in Washington, D.C. Wells arrived with the Alpha Suffrage Club she’d helped to found in Chicago, only to be told by national organizers to march at the end of the parade – behind the men who marched.

“Ida B. Wells refused to accept it. She just wouldn’t do it,” explained Beasley. “She calmly walked into a spot on the crowd … and when the delegation from Illinois (came through), she just leapt off the sidewalk and into the parade.”

Two white suffragists placed themselves on either side of Wells, according to reports of the event, and the three marched on together. Many other Black women also managed to march up front in defiance of the segregation directive.

“You can’t know about the true history of the suffrage movement if you think it was all roses,” said Beasley. “It was conflict, and it was internal conflict. We have to know the whole picture to appreciate what was going on and appreciate the struggle and appreciate that Black women didn’t get the vote until 1965.”

Beasley estimates about a third of her work deals with political topics; she even created a second quilt, depicting Wells’ entrance into the 1913 suffrage protest, that was exhibited in the national touring exhibit “Deeds Not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Suffrage,” which included a stop at Visions Museum of Textile Art in San Diego earlier this year. Next year, Beasley has plans for a solo show at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, scheduled to open Feb. 9, and is slated to be featured in “Common Thread,” a group exhibit opening in the fall at Santa Clara University.

She said she began quilting in 1988 to alleviate the stress of a legal career, “a horrible antagonistic profession.”

“I needed to come home and make something beautiful and specific, something that wasn’t angry … My head would have exploded if I couldn’t have had an outlet of making,” she explained. “This is my little way of protesting.”

Born in 1945 in Tuskegee, Ala., Beasley moved to Michigan when she was 4. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Marygrove College and worked for the Detroit News as an entertainment reporter before moving to the Bay Area in the late 1960s. Knowing she’d need a job, one of the few Black reporters at the Detroit News sent Beasley’s clippings to his friend, an editor at The Chronicle, ahead of her arrival. Beasley ended up working at The Chronicle as a Datebook features reporter for about a year, until starting law school at UC Berkeley in 1970. She has lived in Oakland ever since.

Beasley, who decided to dedicate her full attention to fiber art after her retirement from a long legal career in January 2007, sees the exhibit as a chance to get through to people.

“To me art has some small advantage in healing the divide,” she said. “Most people don’t automatically expect art to have a political viewpoint, so they’re going to stand there first and say, What is this about?”

For her part, Black hopes people take away “the unfathomable courage it took to do this work.”

“Women’s Voices, Women’s Votes, Women’s Rights”:Historical material, art quilts. 9 a.m-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 1-5 p.m. Sunday. Through April 30. $7-$12. Clinton Presidential Center. 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock, Ark. 501-374-4242.www.clintonfoundation.org

“Alice Beasley: A Retrospective”:Art quilts. Feb. 9-March 9. Free. Los Medanos College, 2700 E. Leland Road, Pittsburg. 925-439-2181.www.alicebeasley.com

“Common Thread”:Art quilts. Nov. 13-Feb. 2, 2024. Free. Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara.www.scu.edu