BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote

DC -- Library of Congress -- Exhibit: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote
June 4, 2019–September 2020
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. . . . In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object."
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
The campaign for women’s voting rights lasted more than seven decades. Considered the largest reform movement in United States history, its participants believed that securing the vote was essential to achieving women’s economic, social, and political equality. Culminating 100 years ago in the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the fight for women’s suffrage was not for the fainthearted. Determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, and picketed for years. Suffragists were ridiculed, patronized, and dismissed by opponents, yet they persisted. Some were assaulted and endured the harsh confines of prison for daring to claim rights equal to men, but they would not be denied.
The movement questioned the country’s commitment to democracy, exposed the nation’s longstanding class, regional, and racial divides, and challenged existing gender stereotypes. Arguments and strategies for and against women’s suffrage varied over time and place. Proponents forged uneasy alliances and overcame countless controversies. Although few of the women who began the suffrage campaign before the Civil War lived long enough to witness its final victory in August 1920, their work was carried on by their daughters, granddaughters, and other women whom they had inspired, nurtured, and taught. Their collective story is one of courage, perseverance, savvy, creativity, and hope that continues to inspire women today. #ShallNotBeDenied

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 52.14.168.56 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] LOCWO1_190619_001.JPG	[2] LOCWO1_190619_013.JPG	[3] LOCWO1_190619_016.JPG
[4] LOCWO1_190619_019.JPG	[5] LOCWO1_190619_022.JPG	[6] LOCWO1_190619_027.JPG
[7] LOCWO1_190619_032.JPG	[8] LOCWO1_190619_039.JPG	[9] LOCWO1_190619_042.JPG
[10] LOCWO1_190619_047.JPG	[11] LOCWO1_190619_052.JPG	[12] LOCWO1_190619_061.JPG
[13] LOCWO1_190619_070.JPG	[14] LOCWO1_190619_079.JPG	[15] LOCWO1_190619_082.JPG
[16] LOCWO1_190619_085.JPG	[17] LOCWO1_190619_093.JPG	[18] LOCWO1_190619_101.JPG
[19] LOCWO1_190619_106.JPG	[20] LOCWO1_190619_109.JPG	[21] LOCWO1_190619_115.JPG
[22] LOCWO1_190619_125.JPG	[23] LOCWO1_190619_128.JPG	[24] LOCWO1_190619_135.JPG
[25] LOCWO1_190619_142.JPG	[26] LOCWO1_190619_150.JPG	[27] LOCWO1_190619_158.JPG
[28] LOCWO1_190619_163.JPG	[29] LOCWO1_190619_168.JPG	[30] LOCWO1_190619_173.JPG
[31] LOCWO1_190619_177.JPG	[32] LOCWO1_190619_186.JPG	[33] LOCWO1_190619_191.JPG
[34] LOCWO1_190619_200.JPG	[35] LOCWO1_190619_205.JPG	[36] LOCWO1_190619_214.JPG
[37] LOCWO1_190619_216.JPG	[38] LOCWO1_190619_223.JPG	[39] LOCWO1_190619_228.JPG
[40] LOCWO1_190619_232.JPG	[41] LOCWO1_190619_236.JPG	[42] LOCWO1_190619_243.JPG
[43] LOCWO1_190619_249.JPG	[44] LOCWO1_190619_253.JPG	[45] LOCWO1_190619_262.JPG
[46] LOCWO1_190619_265.JPG	[47] LOCWO1_190619_272.JPG	[48] LOCWO1_190619_276.JPG
[49] LOCWO1_190619_285.JPG	[50] LOCWO1_190619_287.JPG	[51] LOCWO1_190619_290.JPG
[52] LOCWO1_190619_292.JPG	[53] LOCWO1_190619_294.JPG	[54] LOCWO1_190619_299.JPG
[55] LOCWO1_190619_304.JPG	[56] LOCWO1_190619_309.JPG	[57] LOCWO1_190619_312.JPG
[58] LOCWO1_190619_323.JPG	[59] LOCWO1_190619_327.JPG	[60] LOCWO1_190619_330.JPG
[61] LOCWO1_190619_338.JPG	[62] LOCWO1_190619_345.JPG	[63] LOCWO1_190619_349.JPG
[64] LOCWO1_190619_351.JPG	[65] LOCWO1_190619_352.JPG	[66] LOCWO1_190619_354.JPG
[67] LOCWO1_190619_361.JPG	[68] LOCWO1_190619_363.JPG	[69] LOCWO1_190619_366.JPG
[70] LOCWO1_190619_369.JPG	[71] LOCWO1_190619_371.JPG	[72] LOCWO1_190619_374.JPG
[73] LOCWO1_190619_382.JPG	[74] LOCWO1_190619_387.JPG	[75] LOCWO1_190619_390.JPG
[76] LOCWO1_190619_392.JPG	[77] LOCWO1_190619_396.JPG	[78] LOCWO1_190619_398.JPG
[79] LOCWO1_190619_409.JPG	[80] LOCWO1_190619_411.JPG	[81] LOCWO1_190619_413.JPG
[82] LOCWO1_190619_419.JPG	[83] LOCWO1_190619_422.JPG	[84] LOCWO1_190619_424.JPG
[85] LOCWO1_190619_427.JPG	[86] LOCWO1_190619_430.JPG	[87] LOCWO1_190619_433.JPG
[88] LOCWO1_190619_435.JPG	[89] LOCWO1_190619_438.JPG	[90] LOCWO1_190619_440.JPG
[91] LOCWO1_190619_443.JPG	[92] LOCWO1_190619_444.JPG	[93] LOCWO1_190619_449.JPG
[94] LOCWO1_190619_452.JPG	[95] LOCWO1_190619_459.JPG	[96] LOCWO1_190619_468.JPG
[97] LOCWO1_190619_474.JPG	[98] LOCWO1_190619_478.JPG	[99] LOCWO1_190619_485.JPG
[100] LOCWO1_190619_492.JPG	[101] LOCWO1_190619_503.JPG	[102] LOCWO1_190619_508.JPG
[103] LOCWO1_190619_512.JPG	[104] LOCWO1_190619_515.JPG	[105] LOCWO1_190619_517.JPG
[106] LOCWO1_190619_519.JPG	[107] LOCWO1_190619_525.JPG	[108] LOCWO1_190619_534.JPG
[109] LOCWO1_190619_542.JPG	[110] LOCWO1_190619_546.JPG	[111] LOCWO1_190619_550.JPG
[112] LOCWO1_190619_553.JPG	[113] LOCWO1_190619_563.JPG	[114] LOCWO1_190619_567.JPG
[115] LOCWO1_190619_586.JPG	[116] LOCWO2_190619_001.JPG	[117] LOCWO2_190619_005.JPG
[118] LOCWO2_190619_012.JPG	[119] LOCWO2_190619_016.JPG	[120] LOCWO2_190619_021.JPG
[121] LOCWO2_190619_027.JPG	[122] LOCWO2_190619_032.JPG	[123] LOCWO2_190619_041.JPG
[124] LOCWO2_190619_047.JPG	[125] LOCWO2_190619_053.JPG	[126] LOCWO2_190619_059.JPG
[127] LOCWO2_190619_063.JPG	[128] LOCWO2_190619_064.JPG	[129] LOCWO2_190619_071.JPG
[130] LOCWO2_190619_078.JPG	[131] LOCWO2_190619_081.JPG	[132] LOCWO2_190619_090.JPG
[133] LOCWO2_190619_100.JPG	[134] LOCWO2_190619_104.JPG	[135] LOCWO2_190619_111.JPG
[136] LOCWO2_190619_120.JPG	[137] LOCWO2_190619_126.JPG	[138] LOCWO2_190619_130.JPG
[139] LOCWO2_190619_134.JPG	[140] LOCWO2_190619_141.JPG	[141] LOCWO2_190619_143.JPG
[142] LOCWO2_190619_146.JPG	[143] LOCWO2_190619_149.JPG	[144] LOCWO2_190619_151.JPG
[145] LOCWO2_190619_154.JPG	[146] LOCWO2_190619_157.JPG	[147] LOCWO2_190619_164.JPG
[148] LOCWO2_190619_166.JPG	[149] LOCWO2_190619_168.JPG	[150] LOCWO2_190619_172.JPG
[151] LOCWO2_190619_177.JPG	[152] LOCWO2_190619_182.JPG	[153] LOCWO2_190619_186.JPG
[154] LOCWO2_190619_190.JPG	[155] LOCWO2_190619_200.JPG	[156] LOCWO2_190619_209.JPG
[157] LOCWO2_190619_211.JPG	[158] LOCWO2_190619_212.JPG	[159] LOCWO2_190619_221.JPG
[160] LOCWO2_190619_229.JPG	[161] LOCWO2_190619_232.JPG	[162] LOCWO2_190619_235.JPG
[163] LOCWO2_190619_242.JPG	[164] LOCWO2_190619_249.JPG	[165] LOCWO2_190619_251.JPG
[166] LOCWO2_190619_259.JPG	[167] LOCWO2_190619_263.JPG	[168] LOCWO2_190619_265.JPG
[169] LOCWO2_190619_269.JPG	[170] LOCWO2_190619_276.JPG	[171] LOCWO2_190619_281.JPG
[172] LOCWO2_190619_290.JPG	[173] LOCWO2_190619_292.JPG	[174] LOCWO2_190619_298.JPG
[175] LOCWO2_190619_302.JPG	[176] LOCWO2_190619_303.JPG	[177] LOCWO2_190619_311.JPG
[178] LOCWO2_190619_317.JPG	[179] LOCWO2_190619_322.JPG	[180] LOCWO2_190619_337.JPG
[181] LOCWO2_190619_342.JPG	[182] LOCWO2_190619_346.JPG	[183] LOCWO2_190619_359.JPG
[184] LOCWO2_190619_370.JPG	[185] LOCWO2_190619_375.JPG	[186] LOCWO2_190619_378.JPG
[187] LOCWO2_190619_380.JPG	[188] LOCWO2_190619_383.JPG	[189] LOCWO2_190619_390.JPG
[190] LOCWO2_190619_393.JPG	[191] LOCWO2_190619_394.JPG	[192] LOCWO2_190619_397.JPG
[193] LOCWO2_190619_401.JPG	[194] LOCWO2_190619_409.JPG	[195] LOCWO2_190619_416.JPG
[196] LOCWO2_190619_424.JPG	[197] LOCWO2_190619_430.JPG	[198] LOCWO2_190619_431.JPG
[199] LOCWO2_190619_434.JPG	[200] LOCWO2_190619_438.JPG	[201] LOCWO2_190619_451.JPG
[202] LOCWO2_190619_458.JPG	[203] LOCWO2_190619_460.JPG	[204] LOCWO2_190619_465.JPG
[205] LOCWO2_190619_467.JPG	[206] LOCWO2_190619_473.JPG	[207] LOCWO2_190619_480.JPG
[208] LOCWO2_190619_483.JPG	[209] LOCWO2_190619_499.JPG	[210] LOCWO2_190619_501.JPG
[211] LOCWO2_190619_508.JPG	[212] LOCWO2_190619_511.JPG	[213] LOCWO2_190619_513.JPG
[214] LOCWO2_190619_515.JPG	[215] LOCWO2_190619_522.JPG	[216] LOCWO2_190619_523.JPG
[217] LOCWO2_190619_528.JPG	[218] LOCWO2_190619_535.JPG	[219] LOCWO2_190619_537.JPG
[220] LOCWO2_190619_542.JPG	[221] LOCWO2_190619_553.JPG	[222] LOCWO2_190619_556.JPG
[223] LOCWO2_190619_559.JPG	[224] LOCWO2_190619_561.JPG	[225] LOCWO2_190619_566.JPG
[226] LOCWO2_190619_575.JPG	[227] LOCWO2_190619_578.JPG	[228] LOCWO2_190619_580.JPG
[229] LOCWO2_190619_582.JPG	[230] LOCWO2_190619_586.JPG	[231] LOCWO2_190619_590.JPG
[232] LOCWO2_190619_594.JPG	[233] LOCWO2_190619_596.JPG	[234] LOCWO2_190619_598.JPG
[235] LOCWO2_190619_603.JPG	[236] LOCWO2_190619_605.JPG	[237] LOCWO2_190619_606.JPG
[238] LOCWO2_190619_612.JPG	[239] LOCWO2_190619_616.JPG	[240] LOCWO2_190619_620.JPG
[241] LOCWO2_190619_622.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LOCWO1_190619_013.JPG: Shall Not Be Denied Women Fight for the Vote
2. LOCWO1_190619_016.JPG: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal... In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, 1848
3. LOCWO1_190619_022.JPG: The campaign for women's voting rights lasted more than seven decades. Considered the largest reform movement in United States history, its participants believed that securing the vote was essential to achieving women's economic, social, and political equality. Culminating 100 years ago in the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the fight for women's suffrage was not for the fainthearted. Determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, and picketed for years. Suffragists were ridiculed, patronized, and dismissed by opponents, yet they persisted. Some were assaulted and endured the harsh confines of prison for daring to claim rights equal to men, but they would not be denied. The movement questioned the country's commitment to democracy, exposed the nation's longstanding class, regional, and racial divides, and challenged existing gender stereotypes. Arguments and strategies for and against women's suffrage varied over time and place. Proponents forged uneasy alliances and overcame countless controversies. Although few of the women who began the suffrage campaign before the Civil War lived long enough to witness its final victory in August 1920, their work was carried on by their daughters, granddaughters, and other women whom they had inspired, nurtured, and taught. Their collective story is one of courage, perseverance, savvy, creativity, and hope that continues to inspire women today. #ShallNotBeDenied
4. LOCWO1_190619_039.JPG: Early Feminist Inspirations "But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God has designed us to occupy." -- Sarah Grimk�, Letters on Equality of the Sexes, 1838 The beginning of the American women's suffrage movement is often marked by either the 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, or the earlier 1840 World Antislavery Convention in London, where Lucretia Mott and five other American women delegates were barred from participating after making the long journey. The women's treatment convinced Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the need to convene a meeting focusing exclusively on women's rights. Although the 1840 and 1848 conventions were undeniably pivotal events, women had for decades been writing and speaking about their inequality in private letters, public lectures, and published books, as shown here. A half-century of feminist writing and political activism preceded Seneca Falls, providing both an intellectual framework and fearless role models for the first generation of suffragists.
5. LOCWO1_190619_042.JPG: British Inspiration for American Women Seeking Equal Rights British writer Mary Wollstonecraft, an advocate for equal education for women, was an inspiration to early suffragists, especially Susan B. Anthony who hung Wollstonecraft's picture in her home and serialized her 1792 feminist classic, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in her 1870s suffrage newspaper. Writing in her copy of Wollstonecraft's influential treatise, Anthony declared herself "a great admirer of this earliest work for woman's right to Equality of rights."
6. LOCWO1_190619_047.JPG: New Jersey Women Gain, then Lose the Vote The American Revolution roused the former colonies to rewrite their state constitutions and redefine voting rights. The 1776 New Jersey state constitution granted suffrage to all inhabitants meeting certain age, property, and residency requirements, thereby allowing some women to vote in local and state elections. This groundbreaking change lasted only thirty-one years, ending in 1807 with a state law restricting the vote to "free, white, male citizens" at least twenty-one years old and "worth fifty pounds."
7. LOCWO1_190619_061.JPG: "If man is Lord, woman is Lordess" Despite her famous admonition in 1776 to husband John Adams to "remember the ladies," Abigail Adams and other women saw little permanent change to their legal and political status after the American Revolution. While first lady, Adams wrote this 1799 letter to her sister Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody, asserting she "will never consent to have our sex considered in an inferiour point of light," nor cede the right to judge how men run the government. Partial transcription: I send my little Niece a Book. I did not Read it untill I bought it, there is no harm in it, many useful lessons, but some which I do not assent to or approve of -- I will never consent to have our sex considered in an inferiour point of light. Let each planet shine in their own orbit. God and nature designd it so -- If man is Lord, woman is Lordess. That is what I contend [. . .] for, and if a woman does not hold the Reigns of Government, I see no reason for her not judging how they are conducted--
8. LOCWO1_190619_070.JPG: Free Love, Socialism, and Women's Rights Scottish freethinker Frances "Fanny" Wright was among the first women to go on the lecture circuit. Her utopian socialist ideas and unconventional lifestyle attracted women's rights advocates, including women's education proponent Emma Willard and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had worked with Wright's prot�g�e Ernestine Rose to reform married women's property laws in 1840s New York. Stanton acknowledged Wright's influence by placing the Scotswoman's picture on the frontispiece of volume one of the History of Woman Suffrage.
9. LOCWO1_190619_079.JPG: But I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God has designed us to occupy. -- Sarah Grimk�, Letters on Equality of the Sexes, 1838
10. LOCWO1_190619_082.JPG: Abolitionism and Women's Rights Lydia Maria Child, popular novelist and author of household advice books, risked her financial well-being when she became immersed in the abolitionist movement, publishing the controversial but influential An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans in 1833. Two years later, Child wrote this pioneering comparative history of women, full of examples of oppression and achievement, which served as a foundational text for women challenging the limitations placed on them.
11. LOCWO1_190619_085.JPG: Women Speak Out to Challenge Prejudice In the 1830s, over the objections of male antislavery proponents, abolitionist Sarah Grimk� linked the issues of slavery and women's status. She was criticized and threatened for "promiscuously" speaking in public, especially to mixed-sex audiences. Grimk� defended her right to speak freely and challenged biblical justifications for women's inferior position in her 1838 book Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, and the Condition of Woman, considered the first systematic discussion of women's rights by an American woman.
12. LOCWO1_190619_093.JPG: "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." -- Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, 1869
13. LOCWO1_190619_101.JPG: 1848 In 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, men and women met to discuss the Declaration of Sentiments. At that meeting, Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared that women and men were equal and that women should be able to vote. The meeting is often considered the beginning of the suffrage movement -- the coordinated effort to fight for women's right to vote. In 1869, Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony. A later version of this organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, formed in 1890 and focused on ensuring women's right to vote in the states.
14. LOCWO1_190619_106.JPG: I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? -- Sojourner Truth, Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851
15. LOCWO1_190619_109.JPG: Seneca Falls and the Start of Annual Conventions "I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?" -- Sojourner Truth, Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 Many early suffragists served their political apprenticeships in the temperance and abolition movements, learning to organize, speak in public, and operate in volatile political environments. Veterans of both movements converged on Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19–20, 1848, to discuss "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women." The organizers -- Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary McClintock -- were all married mothers. Influenced by the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Grimk�, and others, they overcame their initial nervousness and sought to address the discrimination found in their homes and communities. The meeting's success led to subsequent, more diverse conventions and visible progress in the areas of property rights, dress reform, and educational opportunities.
16. LOCWO1_190619_115.JPG: "Declaration of Sentiments" In July 1848 more than three hundred people assembled in Seneca Falls, New York, for the nation's first women's rights convention. At this meeting, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her now-famous "Declaration of Sentiments" protesting women's inferior legal status and listing eleven resolutions for the moral, economic, and political equality of women, the most radical of which demanded "the elective franchise." Stanton's original Declaration is believed lost, but this rare printed version has survived.
17. LOCWO1_190619_125.JPG: Frederick Douglass Speaks in Support Elizabeth Cady Stanton documented the historic 1848 women's rights meeting in Seneca Falls by compiling this scrapbook of contemporary newspaper clippings, which include several from The North Star, founded in 1847 by abolitionist Frederick Douglass (ca. 1817–1895), who escaped from slavery in Maryland and settled in Rochester, New York. Douglass attended the meeting and spoke forcefully in support of Stanton's resolution for women's suffrage. His printer also published the pamphlet displayed here.
18. LOCWO1_190619_128.JPG: Seneca Falls -- The Origin Story Every movement idealizes its leaders and celebrates its founding as a way of legitimizing its cause and promoting the myth of inevitability. Seneca Falls became the focus of the suffrage origin story, with milestone anniversaries celebrated. This sixtieth anniversary program listed the 100 signers of the Declaration of Sentiments. Some signers later withdrew their names, fearing public ridicule, but it is not known if that was done before The North Star pamphlet was published.
19. LOCWO1_190619_135.JPG: Lucretia Mott Evaluates the Talent Pool Quaker abolitionist and women's rights advocate Lucretia Coffin Mott presided over the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848. Three months later she wrote to Elizabeth Cady Stanton requesting Stanton's help to hold a "Woman's Rights' Meeting" in Philadelphia. She suggested feminist works that Stanton could consult for a history she was planning to write and expressed frustration that friends Angelina and Sarah Grimk� are undependable -- "after such a flash & such an effectual extinguishment."
20. LOCWO1_190619_142.JPG: First National Women's Rights Convention Two years after Seneca Falls, the first national woman's rights meeting, organized by abolitionist Paulina Wright Davis (1813–1876), was held in October 1850, in Worcester, Massachusetts. It attracted more than 1,000 suffrage supporters from throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and California. News of the meeting spread, even reaching Britain where Harriet Taylor (1807–1858), future wife of John Stuart Mill, published a widely read favorable analysis of the proceedings with a carefully reasoned constitutional argument later used by American suffragists.
21. LOCWO1_190619_150.JPG: Sojourner Truth -- Eloquent Advocate for Women's Rights Among those attending the first national meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts, were editor Clarina Howard Nichols, physician Harriot K. Hunt, women's property rights advocate Ernestine Rose, and many leading abolitionists, including Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and former slave Sojourner Truth (ca. 1797–1883). The latter delivered her legendary "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a similar meeting the next year in Akron, Ohio. Susan B. Anthony observed of Truth "had she been educated -- no woman could have matched her."
22. LOCWO1_190619_163.JPG: Dress Reform and the Bloomer Outfit As a mother of young children and an avid gardener, suffragist Elizabeth Smith Miller began wearing a short skirt over loose trousers in the early 1850s. Her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Stanton's neighbor Amelia Bloomer (1818–1894) copied her style. When Bloomer publicized the healthful and liberating benefits in her temperance newspaper, The Lily, the look became known as the bloomer outfit. Although Miller and Bloomer became officials in the National Dress Reform Association, Stanton stopped wearing "the shorts" publicly in 1853 for fear that negative reaction was hurting the suffrage cause.
23. LOCWO1_190619_173.JPG: "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." -- Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, 1869
24. LOCWO1_190619_177.JPG: "Denouncing ye Lords of Creation" Despite the support of a number of men in the decade following the first women's rights meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, the conventions that were held throughout the North and West often received unsympathetic reports in the press and encountered disruptive groups in the lecture hall. On June 11, 1859, the New York-based newspaper Harper's Weekly published a wood engraving mocking the annual conventions, with men in both galleries heckling and interrupting the woman at the dais.
25. LOCWO1_190619_186.JPG: Susan B. Anthony's Wish Comes True ... their busts ought to stand in some of the niches in that mammoth building, the taxes to build which have been wrung from the hard earnings of the women of this nation as well as from those of the men. -- Susan B. Anthony, 1896 Sculptor Adelaide Johnson made several portrait busts of suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the last in 1892 as she prepared to exhibit in the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It is unclear if Johnson displayed this specific bust at the exposition or if this is a later replica made by her. In February 1896, Anthony wrote to Johnson expressing the hope that Congress would purchase the busts exhibited in Chicago for installation in the new Library of Congress building, then under construction and slated to open in November 1897. Unlike Anthony's books and papers, Johnson's bust did not come to the Library until now as a loan to this exhibition.
26. LOCWO1_190619_191.JPG: "... their busts ought to stand in some of the niches in that mammoth building, the taxes to build which have been wrung from the hard earnings of the women of this nation as well as from those of the men." -- Susan B. Anthony, 1896
27. LOCWO1_190619_200.JPG: Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906). Commemorative bookmark. Metal.
28. LOCWO1_190619_205.JPG: Susan B. Anthony's Wish Comes True . . . their busts ought to stand in some of the niches in that mammoth building, the taxes to build which have been wrung from the hard earnings of the women of this nation as well as from those of the men. -- Susan B. Anthony, 1896 Sculptor Adelaide Johnson made several portrait busts of suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the last in 1892 as she prepared to exhibit in the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It is unclear if Johnson displayed this specific bust at the exposition or if this is a later replica made by her. In February 1896, Anthony wrote to Johnson expressing the hope that Congress would purchase the busts exhibited in Chicago for installation in the new Library of Congress building, then under construction and slated to open in November 1897. Unlike Anthony's books and papers, Johnson's bust did not come to the Library until now as a loan to this exhibition.
29. LOCWO1_190619_214.JPG: Family, Friends, and the Personal Side of the Movement "I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex." -- Lucy Stone, 1847 In asserting women's equality, the suffrage movement challenged men's control not only in the public world of politics and paid work, but also in the private sphere, where men typically "ruled the roost." Antisuffragist songs and cartoons suggested that domestic tranquility and the virility of American men were under siege. Achieving happy marriages and finding ways to balance family responsibilities with a commitment to the cause proved as challenging for suffragists as it is for today's working women. The campaign inevitably raised one's consciousness to the inequities within marriage and to the social conventions that blocked women's advancement. Sadly, many of the friendships that nurtured the movement before the Civil War suffered a setback when suffragists divided in 1869 over support for the Fifteenth Amendment, which failed to include women.
30. LOCWO1_190619_216.JPG: Suffrage Opponents Push Back Songs, mock burlesque lectures, and blackface minstrel skits parodying women's rights meetings appeared immediately after the Seneca Falls and Worcester conventions. This song, sarcastically "Dedicated without permission to Mrs. Oakwood Smith and Mrs. Amelia Bloomer," sought to ridicule New York Tribune essayist and women's rights activist Elizabeth Oakes Prince Smith (1806–1893) and dress reform advocate Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818–1894). It is one of the earliest suffrage-related songs where the music and lyrics are both attributed to a woman. Transcription of Verse 2 (inside) 'Tis "Woman's right a home to have As perfect as can be, But "Not her right" to make that home To ev'ry lover free; 'Tis "Woman's right" to rule the house And petty troubles brave, But "not her right" to rule the head And treat him as her slave
31. LOCWO1_190619_223.JPG: A Partnership for the Ages Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed one of the most successful political partnerships in American history by overcoming their personality differences and recognizing their complementary strengths. Anthony considered Stanton the superior writer and implores her in this letter to draft an address on equal education even if Stanton has to juggle "one baby on [her] knee and another at [her] feet" while her other four boys run around her.
32. LOCWO1_190619_228.JPG: 1852 New York Temperance Convention As with abolition, suffragists learned from the temperance campaign how to raise money, hold public meetings, conduct petition drives, and deal with hostile audiences. At a temperance convention in Rochester, New York, in April 1852, Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed 400 to 500 people. She called for the total rejection of alcohol -- "Let us touch not, taste not, handle not, the unclean thing" -- and linked divorce reform to the need to protect wives and children from abusive "confirmed drunkards."
33. LOCWO1_190619_232.JPG: Love and Protest in a Suffrage Marriage Abolitionist and women's rights lecturer Lucy Stone had no intention of ever marrying but relented when persistently courted by fellow reformer Henry Browne Blackwell. They used their May 1855 wedding to focus on laws discriminatory to women. Lucy kept her maiden name, decades later inspiring other "Lucy Stoners." The couple eliminated the bridal vow "to obey" and circulated a written protest on which both had labored, with a nervous Henry writing in February, "I am curious to see your protest & trust you have prepared one before the receipt of mine, as I should like to observe the different workings of our minds." Their marriage suffered from separations, Henry's business failings, and his rumored infidelity. Their only surviving child, Alice Stone Blackwell, followed in the family business of suffrage.
34. LOCWO1_190619_236.JPG: Lucy Stone (1818–1893) and Henry Blackwell (1825–1909) marriage protest, May 1, 1855
35. LOCWO1_190619_243.JPG: I expect to plead not for the slave only, but for suffering humanity everywhere. Especially do I mean to labor for the elevation of my sex. -- Lucy Stone, 1847
36. LOCWO1_190619_249.JPG: Lucy Stone (1818–1893) holding three-month-old daughter Alice Stone Blackwell (1857–1950). Daguerreotype, ca. 1857.
37. LOCWO1_190619_253.JPG: Civil War and Clara Barton Out of patriotism, women's rights leaders suspended their campaign during the Civil War, but few sat idle. Clara Barton, then a clerk at the U.S. Patent Office, began by gathering provisions and medical supplies for the Union army. Restless with this limited role but initially hesitant to challenge War Department regulations and prevailing female stereotypes, Barton describes how "she broke the shackles and went to the field" at the Battle of Cedar Mountain.
38. LOCWO1_190619_262.JPG: The Movement Splits and Former Friends Choose Sides As dissension grew, the women's suffrage movement splintered into two groups in 1869. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association with a focus on pressing for a federal amendment enfranchising women. Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, and Henry Blackwell formed the competing American Woman Suffrage Association, which advocated state-by-state enfranchisement of women and avoided the National's efforts to link women's suffrage to trade unionism, divorce reform, and other issues.
39. LOCWO1_190619_265.JPG: Constitution of American Woman Suffrage Association, ca. 1869.
40. LOCWO1_190619_272.JPG: H. B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone! Plum St. Hall Tuesday Evening, Dec. 4 at 7:30 To Present the Equal Rights Movement. Broadside.
41. LOCWO1_190619_276.JPG: Universal Suffrage -- An Elusive Goal that Leads to The Revolution After the Civil War, the American Equal Rights Association, the first truly national suffrage organization, coordinated campaigns in a dozen states and Congress in support of universal suffrage for all African Americans and women. When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments omitted women, members of the Association disagreed over whether to withhold support. Fueling the discord, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton accepted money from George L. Train, an opponent of black civil rights, to launch The Revolution, advocating for "Educated Suffrage, Irrespective of Sex or Color."
42. LOCWO1_190619_285.JPG: Seneca Falls and Building a Movement, 1776–1890 "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." -- - Susan B. Anthony, The Revolution, 1869 Notions of equality that inspired America's war for independence from Great Britain brought only modest and fleeting change to the status of women, most of whom remained "civilly dead." Women had no legal identity separate from their husbands and were unable to sign contracts, own property, obtain access to education, obtain divorces easily, and gain custody of their children after divorce well into the nineteenth century. The desire to address this inequality and challenge the country to live up to its revolutionary promise led to a two-day convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, where 300 women and men gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments. Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, it outlined women's inferior status and included a radical demand for suffrage. After Seneca Falls, women's rights conventions became annual events, where women met to discuss educational opportunities, divorce reform, property rights, and sometimes labor issues. Women lent their support to abolishing slavery believing universal suffrage would follow, but both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ignored their demand for suffrage. National leaders responded differently, leading to a split in the movement and contrasting campaigns for voting rights at the local, state, and national levels. In 1878 the first federal women's suffrage amendment was introduced but was soundly defeated later in the first full Senate vote in 1887. As the nineteenth century neared an end, competing national suffrage groups reunited as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and groundwork was laid for a national movement.
43. LOCWO1_190619_290.JPG: A Movement at Odds with Itself "The history of our country the past hundred years, has been a series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in direct opposition to the principles of just government. . . ." -- National Woman Suffrage Association, Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, July 4, 1876 In the late 1860s and 1870s, white and black suffrage leaders swept across the country giving lectures and inspiring the creation of new suffrage organizations. Key leaders emerged in every region, and in 1878, a federal women's suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress. Suffragists gained publicity by attempting to vote and disrupting the nation's centennial celebration, but such tactics lost appeal by the late 1880s as the movement grew more conservative. Previously women had advocated for universal suffrage based on the individual rights of all people, regardless of sex and race. In the 1870s and 1880s, suffragists began to claim that women were different from men, and their distinctly higher morals would uplift the nation if given the vote. This emphasis on character and qualifications widened racial and class divides between suffragists.
44. LOCWO1_190619_294.JPG: Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), ca. 1870.
45. LOCWO1_190619_299.JPG: Relentless Travel and a "New Departure" As 1872 began, Susan B. Anthony summarized the previous year's exhausting workload -- 13,000 miles of travel and 170 meetings! She referenced the huge debts incurred in publishing The Revolution and prophetically noted in her diary meeting U.S. senator-elect Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA), who in 1878 would introduce the first federal woman suffrage amendment. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, espousing the "New Departure" argument Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) put forth the previous year to the House Judiciary Committee, whereby suffragists claimed the ballot as a right already conferred to them as citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment.
46. LOCWO1_190619_304.JPG: Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Speech before U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, January 12, 1872.
47. LOCWO1_190619_309.JPG: An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872.
48. LOCWO1_190619_312.JPG: Women's Declaration of Rights On July 4, 1876, members of the National Woman Suffrage Association disrupted the nation's centennial celebration at Independence Hall in Philadelphia by pushing their way to the platform and giving Susan B. Anthony the opportunity to present this Declaration of Rights for Women to Acting Vice-President Thomas W. Ferry. Hurrying from the building, the women scattered copies of the document to the assembled body. Safely outside, a crowd gathered and Anthony read the women's demands.
49. LOCWO1_190619_323.JPG: Suffragists Denounce The Woman's Bible Suffrage unity was quickly tested with the 1895 publication of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible, which horrified evangelical members and annoyed pragmatists fearful of negative association with the best-seller. For decades, Stanton railed against religious teachings on slavery, marriage, divorce, and women's status. Two of the eighteen grievances in the "Declaration of Sentiments" concerned religion. The Woman's Bible, like Stanton's draft manuscript shown here, reproduced a section of Biblical text followed by feminist commentary.
50. LOCWO1_190619_327.JPG: The history of our country the past hundred years, has been a series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in direct opposition to the principles of just government. . . . -- - National Woman Suffrage Association, Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, July 4, 1876
51. LOCWO1_190619_330.JPG: Suffragists Reunite at Urging of Daughters In 1890, second-generation suffragists Alice Stone Blackwell and Harriot Stanton Blatch helped to broker a merger of the two major national organizations, which put aside their differences to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1896 Alice (left) was photographed editing NAWSA's weekly newspaper, the Woman's Journal, which her parents had started in 1870. Joining her was Anna Howard Shaw, physician, ordained minister, national lecturer, and future president of NAWSA from 1904 to 1915.
52. LOCWO1_190619_338.JPG: Pioneering Woman Lawyer Runs for President Belva Lockwood (1830–1917), the first woman lawyer admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected suffrage leaders' appeals in 1884 to support Republican presidential candidate James G. Blaine, maintaining instead that women needed their "own party." Joined by California activist Marietta L. B. Stow (ca. 1830–1902) as her running mate, Lockwood and the National Equal Rights Party joined a crowded slate, which included Benjamin F. Butler on both the Anti-Monopoly and Greenback parties' ticket.
53. LOCWO1_190619_345.JPG: Harriet Tubman, Life Member in the Geneva Political Equality Club Harriet Ross Tubman, one of the most daring "conductors" on the Underground Railroad, led more than 300 slaves, including her parents, to freedom before the Civil War. She later served as a Union scout, spy, and nurse. After settling in Auburn, New York, Tubman began actively promoting women's rights and attended suffrage events organized in nearby Geneva by Elizabeth and Anne Miller, whose scrapbook contains this rare photograph, likely taken in 1911.
54. LOCWO1_190619_354.JPG: Suffragists Denounce The Woman's Bible Suffrage unity was quickly tested with the 1895 publication of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible, which horrified evangelical members and annoyed pragmatists fearful of negative association with the best-seller. For decades, Stanton railed against religious teachings on slavery, marriage, divorce, and women's status. Two of the eighteen grievances in the "Declaration of Sentiments" concerned religion. The Woman's Bible, like Stanton's draft manuscript shown here, reproduced a section of Biblical text followed by feminist commentary.
55. LOCWO1_190619_382.JPG: Sex Scandal Embroils Suffrage Movement in a Public Relations Disaster After nationally prominent Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher repeatedly and hypocritically accused her of being a depraved sex radical, presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927) retaliated by exposing in her newspaper his affair with Sunday school teacher Elizabeth Tilton, wife of his prot�g� Theodore Tilton. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was cited as one of Woodhull's sources. After initial denials, the Tiltons, but not Beecher, acknowledged the adultery. Woodhull was incarcerated for weeks for mailing the "obscene" newspaper.
56. LOCWO1_190619_398.JPG: The Notorious Victoria Woodhull Addresses Congress Before running for president of the United States in 1872, newspaper publisher and stockbroker Victoria Woodhull (1838–1927), proponent of free love, spiritualism, and other controversial doctrines, was the first woman to speak in Congress on the subject of suffrage. As reported in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Woodhull lobbied the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on January 11, 1871, making the argument that women's right to vote was inherent in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
57. LOCWO1_190619_424.JPG: New Tactics for a New Generation 1890–1915 Before the end of the nineteenth century, suffragists achieved victories in four western states and partnered with new organizations, including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which expanded the reach of their message. Challenging the status quo, suffragists worked to persuade women across the nation that they deserved the same rights that men took for granted, while also appealing to male political leaders to support their cause. They used a variety of tactics, including traditional approaches like petitioning and lobbying, but also innovative techniques such as parades and public demonstrations, political art, and the use of planes, automobiles, motion pictures, and other emerging technologies to spread their message. These creative strategies and tools helped garner media attention, raise money, apply political pressure, and attract new recruits, including more working-class and college women. A flurry of activity led to more suffrage wins in the West, while leaders of the newly formed Congressional Union, later the National Woman's Party (NWP), focused on Washington, D.C. The first national suffrage parade occurred on March 3, 1913, to coincide with President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. The parade put the president-elect and Congress on notice that suffragists would hold the Democratic Party responsible if it failed to pass a women's suffrage amendment.
58. LOCWO1_190619_443.JPG: Western States Pave the Way "It is to the strong, courageous, and progressive men of the western States that the women of this whole country are looking for deliverance. . . It is these men who must start this movement and give it such momentum that it will roll irresistibly on to the very shores of the Atlantic Ocean." -- Ida Husted Harper, 1905 As the nineteenth century ended, women had achieved full suffrage in Wyoming (1869/1890), Colorado (1893), Idaho (1896), and Utah (1896) and "partial" voting rights elsewhere on bond issues and municipal and school board elections. Alternately aided and hindered by national suffrage organizers and local Woman's Christian Temperance Union chapters, suffragists in seven more western states secured victory by 1914. Little progress, however, occurred at the federal level. Committee hearings were held every few years, but the amendment came up for vote only once, in 1887, when it was soundly defeated. Congress would not vote on it again until 1914. Major opponents included midwestern liquor interests, southern conservatives protecting their region's disenfranchisement of black men, and eastern and southern business leaders who relied on child labor and unregulated working conditions.
59. LOCWO1_190619_444.JPG: It is to the strong, courageous, and progressive men of the western States that the women of this whole country are looking for deliverance. . . It is these men who must start this movement and give it such momentum that it will roll irresistibly on to the very shores of the Atlantic Ocean. -- - Ida Husted Harper, 1905
60. LOCWO1_190619_449.JPG: "Forces of Evil" Oppose Women's Votes Membership pledges, including this one for the Women's Political Union, which focused on the commercialization of prostitution in New York City, often represented suffrage as part of a larger reform movement to improve society. They depicted the vote as a means to end women's oppression and safeguard against the graft and corruption of male-dominated politics -- the "forces of evil." Suffrage would extend women's accepted housekeeping superiority into the public sphere and help wipe out prostitution, gambling, and drunkenness.
61. LOCWO1_190619_452.JPG: Women and Their Political Peers Frances E. Willard (1839–1898) turned the Woman's Christian Temperance Union into a powerful force for social reform, including women's suffrage. In a painting displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the accomplished and respectable Willard, representing the "American Woman," was surrounded by exaggerated stereotypes of other disenfranchised citizens of society -- "idiots, convicts, the insane, and Indians." Henrietta Briggs-Wall, a member of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association, commissioned the provocative painting and sold photographic postcards of it for years thereafter.
62. LOCWO1_190619_459.JPG: "I Speak of Wrongs" -- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Poet and lecturer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was one of many black women who joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), generally as part of segregated chapters. A supporter of the Fifteenth Amendment and founding member of the American Woman Suffrage Association, Harper famously exposed racial inequities at an 1866 suffrage convention: "You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs." Although Harper attained leadership positions in the WCTU, she became disillusioned with the group's lack of commitment to anti-lynching laws.
63. LOCWO1_190619_468.JPG: Fears of Domestic Upheaval and Feminized Men Few suffragists seriously expected men to assume equal housekeeping responsibilities, but, in challenging men's monopoly on the public political sphere, women's campaign for voting rights unsettled those who perceived suffrage as a threat to gender roles and the domestic division of labor. These fears surfaced in cartoons, leaflets, and as shown here, the popular parlor entertainment of stereographs, a pair of photographs, which when looked at through a special viewer appear as a single three-dimensional image.
64. LOCWO1_190619_478.JPG: Suffrage Victories in Washington State and California After Washington State passed suffrage in 1910, ending a fourteen-year drought in suffrage wins, Seattle advocates launched The Western Woman Voter to inform newly enfranchised women on civic matters. This September 1911 issue previewed the upcoming referendum in California, which narrowly passed the next month. Both state campaigns involved younger women affiliated with the College Equal Suffrage League, cofounded in 1900 by future first president of the League of Women Voters Maud Wood Park and fellow Radcliffe alumna Inez Haynes Gilmore.
65. LOCWO1_190619_485.JPG: "Mother Duniway" and the Suffrage Campaign in the Pacific Northwest Abigail Scott Duniway was the author of twenty-two novels and publisher of the New Northwest (1871–1887), a weekly Portland, Oregon, newspaper promoting women's rights. She was instrumental in securing suffrage victories in Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), and eventually her home state of Oregon (1912), after four failed campaigns whose opponents included her brother, editor of the Oregonian. Duniway blamed the unwelcome involvement of national suffragists from the East and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She told Carrie Chapman Catt, they "threw back our work for six years," by linking suffrage with the "side-issue" of prohibition.
66. LOCWO1_190619_492.JPG: Abigail Scott Duniway (1834–1915) to Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947), June 19, 1915
67. LOCWO1_190619_503.JPG: Suffrage Follows Lady Liberty Eastward in "The Awakening" Suffrage wins in Washington, California, and Oregon were followed by hard-fought victories in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada, and Montana. By the end of 1914, more than four million women had voting rights equal to men in eleven states, all in the West, leaving women elsewhere still reaching for the light of Liberty's torch of freedom. Henry Mayer's 1915 illustration was the centerfold of a special suffrage issue of Puck magazine, guest-edited by New York state suffrage groups.
68. LOCWO1_190619_515.JPG: New Tactics and Renewed Confrontation "More than 3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom." -- Lucy Burns, 1913 When Harriot Stanton Blatch returned to the United States in 1902 after years in England, she bluntly noted that "the suffrage movement . . . bored its adherents and repelled its opponents." She founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later the Women's Political Union) to attract more working-class women to the campaign. She and others, including Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, introduced militant street tactics used abroad. Challenging existing notions of women's place in public, they commanded the attention of elected officials and the press by staging open-air meetings, trolley and automobile tours, and parades. In December 1912, Paul and Burns began planning a national suffrage parade in Washington. They overcame initial resistance from National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) leaders but soon exacerbated underlying racial tensions within the movement.
69. LOCWO1_190619_517.JPG: Tools of the Trade when Spreading the Word By 1900, suffrage-themed political artwork, handbills, broadsides, postcards, leaflets, and other publications began appearing everywhere, fostered by the availability of inexpensive, machine-produced paper and cost-saving innovations in printing processes. Some of this political literature was mailed and some distributed at meetings and on street corners, creating the need for carts, satchels, and bags, including this one used by a salesgirl or "newsie" for the Woman's Journal, the weekly newspaper of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
70. LOCWO1_190619_519.JPG: The Transatlantic Campaign for Suffrage Suffragists on both sides of the Atlantic informed, inspired, and financed each other. Harriot Stanton Blatch arranged several American speaking tours for her friend, militant British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. In December 1910, Blatch plastered advertisements throughout New York for a lecture by Pankhurst's daughter Sylvia, a socialist labor activist who shared Blatch's goal of attracting more working-class women to the cause. This lecture ticket is from Emmeline's third American trip in 1913, which received heightened publicity when immigration officials detained her at Ellis Island until President Wilson approved her entry.
71. LOCWO1_190619_525.JPG: The Earliest Marches for Women's Rights Open-air political meetings, outdoor processions, and other media-grabbing events challenged existing social conventions of women's place in public, where streetwalking was associated with prostitution. Resurrecting some of Susan B. Anthony's earlier tactics and guided by experience gained working with the British campaign, American suffragists held parades in California and Iowa in 1908 and the first large "march" in New York in 1910. Children were included, as they were in this New York parade in May 1912, visually challenging the stigma and demonstrating that mothers needed the vote.
72. LOCWO1_190619_534.JPG: "The Most Conspicuous and Important Demonstration" Alice Paul (1885–1977) and Lucy Burns (1879–1966), graduate students studying abroad who met in a British prison during that country's suffrage campaign, sought to inject more militancy into the American movement. They began planning a massive national parade, modeled on the elaborate pageants in Britain and the marches in New York, to be held in Washington, D.C., on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Handbills and pledge cards, with helpful logistical details, were widely distributed for this "most conspicuous and important demonstration."
73. LOCWO1_190619_546.JPG: More than 3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom. -- Lucy Burns, 1913
74. LOCWO1_190619_550.JPG: Parade Planning Exposes Racial Divides Almost immediately, plans for the March 3, 1913, parade became embroiled in controversy when questions arose as to whether African American women would be permitted to participate at risk of losing southern white women's involvement. Alice Stone Blackwell expressed relief that Alice Paul had not excluded African Americans but shared her hopes for a low turnout "in view of the wicked and irrational color prejudice so prevalent" in segregated Washington. Anna Howard Shaw telegrammed Paul ordering her to stop discouraging black participation.
75. LOCWO1_190619_553.JPG: Howard University Sorority Seeks Assurances of Nondiscrimination Future Washington, D.C., educator Nellie Quander graduated in June 1912 from Howard University, where she had joined Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), the nation's oldest black sorority. In January 1913, she took the lead in incorporating AKA, possibly hoping to avert the withdrawal of twenty-two student members, with a greater interest in political activism, who subsequently founded Delta Sigma Theta. The Deltas marched in the 1913 parade, but it is not clear how many AKA members participated.
76. LOCWO1_190619_563.JPG: Ida B. Wells-Barnett Holds Her Ground Continued concerns about the participation of African Americans in the March 1913 parade led organizers to concoct a plan whereby men's suffrage leagues would be strategically placed to separate white and black marchers. Accounts of what actually transpired differ. Many African American suffragists were segregated, but not all. Notably Ida B. Wells-Barnett, fearless journalist, anti-lynching crusader, and founder of the Alpha Suffrage Club for African-American women, marched with her state contingent from Illinois, despite some of them endorsing the parade's official segregated stance.
77. LOCWO1_190619_586.JPG: The old battle cries no longer stir our souls. Give us new banners for our times, let us have new leaders, and what we need most is undoubtedly a new battle cry to stir the dormant souls of American men and women. - -- Anna Howard Shaw, 1911
78. LOCWO2_190619_001.JPG: Parade Sparks Rifts in the Movement "The old battle cries no longer stir our souls. Give us new banners for our times, let us have new leaders, and what we need most is undoubtedly a new battle cry to stir the dormant souls of American men and women." -- Anna Howard Shaw, 1911 The March 3, 1913, parade foreshadowed the pattern of events that characterized the relationship between President Woodrow Wilson and suffragists over the next seven years -- public demonstrations, presidential disregard, mob violence, police inaction, and increasing public sympathy. Beginning with the parade, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns energized the movement and soon thereafter broke from NAWSA, eventually forming the National Woman's Party (NWP). In America, voting rights could be conferred by either the states or the federal government, meaning that activists need not focus all their attention on Washington. Anna Howard Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, and other NAWSA leaders worried that confrontational tactics would endanger state victories and antagonize Congress. They felt that targeting the party in power was self-defeating in the United States, where bipartisan coalitions were needed to achieve the required two-thirds majority vote in Congress and ratification by the states.
79. LOCWO2_190619_005.JPG: The Votes for Women Pilgrimage With cameras clicking, sixteen "suffrage pilgrims" from seven states left New York City on February 12, 1913, for a 295-mile, sixteen-day hike to join the March 3 national suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Led by "General" Rosalie Jones (1883–1978), they were followed by Elisabeth Freeman (1876–1942) in a yellow horse-drawn suffrage cart filled with leaflets and buttons, which they distributed along the route, engaging whenever possible with the local media.
80. LOCWO2_190619_012.JPG: Putting the President-Elect on Notice This letter was given to the suffrage pilgrims to carry to Washington for delivery to president-elect Woodrow Wilson. It warns him that women expect his assistance in passing equal suffrage and will watch his administration "with an intense interest." The letter was never delivered. Instead Alice Paul intercepted it from Rosalie Jones, whom she feared was scheming to disrupt the inauguration with an unscripted public confrontation rather than wait for a post-inaugural White House visit.
81. LOCWO2_190619_021.JPG: First National Suffrage Parade After weeks of controversy and logistics, the first national suffrage parade began in a capital city brimming with media and visitors for the next day's inauguration. Nine bands, four mounted brigades, twenty-four floats, and an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 costumed marchers assembled in a procession matching the dignity, beauty, and imagery of the illustrated souvenir program. All was nearly lost, however, when police failed to protect the parade route, and crowds of rowdy and inebriated men cursed, threatened, and mobbed the marchers, injuring more than 300 suffragists, before a cavalry unit restored order.
82. LOCWO2_190619_027.JPG: Congressional Investigation of Police Conduct Public outcry over the ill treatment of women participating in the 1913 parade, as expressed in this letter, led to a congressional investigation, the removal of the police chief, and "indignation meetings" staged throughout the country. Even NAWSA officials, leery of Alice Paul's affiliation with militant British suffragettes, conceded that the police debacle solidified support among "those who were wavering" and brought "to our ranks thousands of others who would never have taken any interest."
83. LOCWO2_190619_032.JPG: Pin It! "Show Your Colors All Day Long" Pins and buttons proliferated as the suffrage movement matured. As California suffragist Alice Park (1861–1961) suggested, pins aroused "curiosity among strangers," and wearing one's "colors all day long" provided opportunities to lobby tradesmen, salespeople, and passersby. This sunflower pin, owned by Park, was a nod to the 1867 Kansas referendum, during which the state flower and its yellow color became synonymous with suffrage. The Congressional Union (CU) for Woman Suffrage pin belonged to Alice Paul, who formed the group as a NAWSA auxiliary in April 1913. The CU became independent in February 1914 and eventually merged in March 1917 with the National Woman's Party, founded the previous June.
84. LOCWO2_190619_047.JPG: Family Ties Help Unite Diverging Groups The Congressional Union's break from NAWSA over strategy was contentious and reminiscent of the movement's post-Civil War split. Elsa Ueland, founding president of the College Equal Suffrage League at the University of Minnesota, was one of 50,000 people who joined the CU or its successor National Woman's Party. Her mother, Clara Ueland (1860–1927), one of NAWSA's estimated two million members, became president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association in 1914. The Uelands sought cooperation among the groups.
85. LOCWO2_190619_053.JPG: Those Who Wish to KNOW and Those Who Wish to DO In 1910, Wisconsin suffragists collected 18,000 signatures for a congressional petition. Two years later, a statewide referendum was soundly defeated. Seeking improvement, the Wisconsin Woman's Suffrage Association launched a training school. Modelled on a New York program pioneered by Carrie Chapman Catt in September 1913, "sixty-six women enrolled" in the Wisconsin course, and "many hundreds of men and women attended special day and evening lectures." The curriculum combined tips on fund-raising and public lecturing.
86. LOCWO2_190619_063.JPG: The Marketing of the Movement During the last decade of the suffrage campaign, greater mass production of commercial goods combined with new marketing techniques created an environment that both suffragists and manufacturers profitably exploited. Mainstream and militant suffragists alike saturated the marketplace with a proliferation of suffrage commodities, available especially in major urban centers but also through catalog sales. These included badges, pins, clothing, playing cards, dolls, tea sets, fans, food, and more. In addition, women opened suffrage restaurants, grocery stores, and retail shops; produced suffrage movies, plays, and songs; and unleashed an unprecedented stream of political print culture. These suffrage-themed products helped to legitimize the movement, advance its "political salesmanship," raise money, and keep the cause ever-present in daily life.
87. LOCWO2_190619_064.JPG: "Every Drop You Drink, Kind Friend, Will Help Undo a Wrong" Although fund-raising "suffrage teas" may have been more common, coffee drinkers also supported suffrage coffee houses and attended coffee socials. Both beverage products were packaged with suffrage labels and sold in stores and "distributing centers." In 1916, Florence Livingston Lent (1873–1917) of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association began advertising Suffrage Fund Coffee in issues of the Woman's Journal. Distribution quickly extended to other states, including Rhode Island where prominent suffragist Sara M. Algeo became the product's principal agent.
88. LOCWO2_190619_071.JPG: Suffrage Dolls and the Buy-a-Bale Campaign Cincinnati artist Lillian E. Whitteker designed this doll pattern in 1914, presumably as part of the nation's spontaneous Buy-a-Bale movement, intended to ease the calamitous drop in cotton prices caused by the wartime disruption of export markets in Europe. Attempting to curry favor for suffrage in the South, Anna Howard Shaw sent $50 checks to fourteen of NAWSA's state associations to buy bales of cotton. Simultaneously she urged Southern textile manufacturers to eliminate child labor, adding a touch of irony to the Little Suffragist Doll, which is paired here with a suffrage sewing kit displaying the oft-quoted nineteenth-century poem of undetermined authorship, "Woman's Sphere."
89. LOCWO2_190619_081.JPG: Harnessing the Visual Power of Postcards The National American Woman Suffrage Association sold a large supply of suffrage merchandise, particularly postcards bought in bulk by local groups. These were advertised in suffrage periodicals but also in a widely distributed catalog and price list. Popular cards included anything by feminist artist Rose O'Neill featuring her beloved "Kewpie" characters. Also sought after were Katherine Milhous's cartoon exposing hypocritical arguments that voting would unsex women, and artist and book illustrator Mary Shepard Greene Blumenschein's stylized portrait of a young suffragist.
90. LOCWO2_190619_090.JPG: Stockbrokers Collect Suffrage Swag Some suffrage novelties, like this fan from the Empire State Campaign of 1915, were intended as free souvenirs for parade watchers, petition signers, or passersby pausing for a street lecture. Although defeated at the polls in November, New York suffragists had gamely distributed more than twenty tons of leaflets, a million buttons, 200,000 matchbooks, and 35,000 "Keep Cool" fans, five hundred of which were eagerly snatched up by bankers and brokers during "Wall Street Day" demonstrations on September 15.
91. LOCWO2_190619_100.JPG: Wage-Earners and Society Women Join Forces Despite skepticism from other suffrage organizations, the Women's Political Union held its first "Votes for Women Ball," in February 1912 at Murray Hill Lyceum. With tickets at 50 cents, the fund-raiser aimed to be inclusive, and it drew nearly two thousand dancers, including striking garment workers admitted for free. This flyer is for the February 1915 ball, held in the considerably larger Grand Central Palace on Park Avenue, for which fifteen thousand tickets were sold.
92. LOCWO2_190619_104.JPG: "The Best Cooks Are Suffragists" Between 1886 and 1920 American suffragists published at least six cookbooks to raise money, attract members, and dispel fears that enfranchised women would shirk domestic responsibilities. Advertisements for this 1915 cookbook from Western Pennsylvania offered the reassuring tagline "The Best Cooks Are Suffragists," with cover art showing a calm Uncle Sam holding the sexes in balance while twelve states and Alaska granted women full or partial (Illinois) suffrage. Recipes were contributed by group members and well-known literary and political figures.
93. LOCWO2_190619_111.JPG: Suffrage and the Silver Screen Many early motion picture films depicted suffragists as pathetic spinsters or aggressive shrews who neglected their homes, browbeat their husbands, and ignored their children. In response, suffragists began making their own films portraying themselves as crusaders devoted to their families and to fighting political corruption. The 1914 melodrama Your Girl and Mine, produced by suffrage lobbyist and future congresswoman Ruth Hanna McCormick, revolves around Rosalie Fairlie, a young bride who suffers under laws unfavorable to women.
94. LOCWO2_190619_120.JPG: Suffrage Marching Song Before her involvement with the Suffrage Fund Coffee campaign, Florence Livingston Lent wrote the lyrics for the Suffrage Marching Song, composed by fellow Massachusetts suffragist Fanny Connable Lancaster for the May 2, 1914, suffrage parade in Boston, estimated to have drawn 12,000 participants. Orchestrated for twenty-five pieces, the march was played during the parade and later sung at the closing rally by a 200-person chorus under the direction of Harvard musicologist Archibald Davidson, Jr.
95. LOCWO2_190619_130.JPG: Winsor McCay, Suffrage March Line -- How Thousands of Women Parade Today at Capitol, New York Evening Journal, March 4, 1913.
96. LOCWO2_190619_141.JPG: Confrontations, Sacrifice, and the Struggle for Democracy 1916–1917 By late 1916, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) acknowledged that the group's state-by-state strategy was taking too long. They unveiled their "winning plan," a two-pronged attack that paired the careful coordination of state work with more aggressive nonpartisan lobbying in Washington, D.C., for a federal amendment. By year's end, both NAWSA and the National Woman's Party (NWP) were working toward a federal amendment but differences remained. In January 1917, the NWP instituted the controversial and "unladylike" practice of picketing the White House. At first, President Wilson was tolerant of the pickets, but when the United States entered World War I in April, any criticism of the government was considered treasonous. As World War I progressed, many suffragists, including longtime pacifists, stopped campaigning for the vote and devoted themselves to war work. The NWP, however, did not support the war and did not halt its agitation. Using Wilson's own speeches against him, the NWP highlighted the government's hypocrisy of supporting democracy abroad while denying its women citizens at home the right to vote. Beginning in June 1917 suffragists were arrested for picketing, imprisoned, and subjected to brutal treatment. Women from all social classes risked their health and reputations by continuing to protest for the vote.
97. LOCWO2_190619_164.JPG: I have worked all my life for suffrage, and I am determined that I will never again stand up on the street corners of a great city appealing to every Tom, Dick, and Harry for the right of self-government. - -- Harriot Stanton Blatch, 1916
98. LOCWO2_190619_166.JPG: Changing Strategies of NAWSA and NWP "I have worked all my life for suffrage, and I am determined that I will never again stand up on the street corners of a great city appealing to every Tom, Dick, and Harry for the right of self-government." -- Harriot Stanton Blatch, 1916 The momentum, which had started to build in 1910–1914, when seven states, all in the West, passed women's suffrage, came to a halt in 1915–1916. Suffragists experienced one demoralizing loss after another in state referendum campaigns across the country. During those two years, only one vote was taken in Congress on the federal amendment, a defeat in the House in January 1915. By the end of 1916, Carrie Chapman Catt, back at the helm of NAWSA, had begun to implement her "winning plan" and predicted that 1917 would be "The Woman's Hour." Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, disappointed that women voters in the 1916 presidential election had failed to defeat Wilson, began 1917 by introducing the new and dramatic strategy of picketing the White House.
99. LOCWO2_190619_168.JPG: Carrie Chapman Catt's "Winning Plan" Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) reluctantly assumed a second term as NAWSA president in December 1915, after years of suffrage work internationally and in New York. She declared the American movement in "crisis" and at a crossroads, as suggested by this newsletter. At NAWSA's September 1916 convention in Atlantic City, Catt unveiled her "winning plan," whereby victory depended on avoiding "detours" into states considered hopeless, namely much of the South, while funding more promising state campaigns, lobbying for a federal amendment, and building support for future ratification efforts.
100. LOCWO2_190619_172.JPG: The Woman's Hour -- A Bellwether of Success to Come Five thousand artists entered a poster contest held by NAWSA to launch their 1917 campaign. New York illustrator Edward A. Poucher won the $250 first prize, drawing inspiration from Carrie Chapman Catt's rousing 1916 convention speech challenging suffragists to abandon their complacency. In an obvious reference to women yielding to "The Negro's Hour" after the Civil War, Catt declared that "The Woman's Hour has struck." In 1917, women won full voting rights in New York and partial rights in other states.
101. LOCWO2_190619_177.JPG: Suffragists are First to Picket White House After years of lobbying, petitioning, and parading, suffragists felt that their tactics were growing stale and ineffective. On January 10, 1917, frustrated at President Woodrow Wilson's flagrant dismissal of their demands, the National Woman's Party instituted the practice of picketing the White House, the first political activists to do so. News articles reported that "wintry blasts turned their lips blue," but they remained at their posts, keeping warm with hot chocolate and fur coats while standing on wooden boards and hot bricks.
102. LOCWO2_190619_186.JPG: Pennsylvania Day on the Picket Line Every day, women marched in a line from Congressional Union headquarters to the White House to assume their stations as "silent sentinels." To maintain press interest, women representing specific states, organizations, and occupations were scheduled on different days. Nearly 2,000 suffragists traveled from 30 states to take shifts. On January 24, 1917, a group of twenty suffragists, organized by Ella Riegel of Bryn Mawr, left Philadelphia and arrived by noon for "Pennsylvania Day."
103. LOCWO2_190619_190.JPG: Silent Sentinel Alison Hopkins on New Jersey Day The protesters called themselves "Silent Sentinels" because they stood without speaking as a gesture of strength and restraint. Alison Turnbull Hopkins, New Jersey NWP chairman, positioned herself for maximum benefit, ensuring that President Woodrow Wilson could not avoid seeing her when passing through the White House gates on New Jersey Day, January 30, 1917. Her husband, John A. Hopkins, served on the Democratic National Committee in 1916 and helped run Wilson's campaign in their state.
104. LOCWO2_190619_209.JPG: "Governments Derive their Just Powers from the Consent of the Governed" The pickets endured intimidation and insult almost from the beginning, with little boys -- encouraged by older onlookers -- calling them names and spitting at them. Later, more threatening crowds gathered, incensed at the suffragists' "unpatriotic" messages. Starting on June 22, women began to be arrested, including a group of ten on July 4, 1917, who carried a banner quoting the Declaration of Independence, a scene drawn by political cartoonist Nina Allender. Geologist Helena Hill Weed, daughter of a former congressman and a vice-president of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was among those sentenced to three days in District Jail.
105. LOCWO2_190619_211.JPG: The Infamous Kaiser Wilson Banner For several days in mid-August 1917, attacks on the pickets reached a fevered pitch, fueled by sailors and soldiers enraged by banners comparing Woodrow Wilson to German emperor Wilhelm II. This one, held by Virginia Arnold, questioned Wilson's supposed sympathy for self-government. August 14 was especially violent, and when unable to keep replenishing their torn banners, the pickets withdrew to the balcony of NWP headquarters, only to have sailors scale the wall. A gunshot ripped through a window. This colorful fragment was retrieved from the White House sidewalk by passerby Anne B. Cushman, who sent it to the NWP in 1943.
106. LOCWO2_190619_229.JPG: Suffrage and World War I "We are being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans fight for it abroad." -- Alice Paul, 1917 When the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, suffragists were divided on their response. The NWP continued picketing the White House and brandished even more provocative placards despite the fact that the political climate had become less accepting of government criticism. The protesters endured arrests, long prison sentences, and on at least one occasion, extreme violence after insisting they be given political prisoner status. Carrie Chapman Catt encouraged NAWSA members to contribute to the war effort, compromising her personal pacifist beliefs while winning appreciation from the Wilson administration. Many countries around the world adopted women's suffrage during the war, including Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. Americans debated whether to pass suffrage as a war measure, but Congress deferred such action.
107. LOCWO2_190619_232.JPG: War and Suffrage Come Together in New York Parade As war raged in Europe and American troops trained for deployment (right), suffrage activities often took a backseat to "national service." New York suffrage leaders, eyeing the November 6, 1917, suffrage referendum, took pains to avoid alienating patriotic voters and fueling opposition. With generous backing from wealthy pro-suffrage men, they mounted an ambitious door-to-door campaign and staged this October 27 parade (left) emphasizing women's wartime contributions, with wives and mothers of servicemen marching with nurses and women munitions workers.
108. LOCWO2_190619_235.JPG: "She Has Given Me to Democracy; Give Democracy to Her" Carrie Chapman Catt's presidential address was the highlight of NAWSA's 49th annual convention. Given on December 13, 1917, it was framed as an address to Congress although never delivered there. The audience, jubilant from New York's recent suffrage victory, roared when she began, "Woman suffrage is inevitable. Suffragists knew it before November 6, 1917; opponents afterward." The published speech, padded with testimonials of women's wartime contributions from British statesmen, shows a soldier telling Uncle Sam to extend democracy to women. NAWSA sent copies to all Congressmen and state legislators.
109. LOCWO2_190619_242.JPG: Antisuffragists Oppose Passage as Necessary War Measure After Congress decided in 1917 that it would only consider war-related bills, both the NWP and NAWSA stressed women's wartime contributions and pitched women's suffrage as a "war measure." Antisuffragists responded in kind, as in this handbill, which highlighted the pre-war pacifist positions of Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw and warned voters that Congress would gain more members like the recently elected Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who voted against the president's war declaration.
110. LOCWO2_190619_249.JPG: Suffrage Prisoner Cora A. Week Wisconsin-born New York artist Cora Alice Week (fifth from left), daughter of Norwegian immigrants, was nearly fifty-six when arrested on November 10, 1917, as part of a massive picket protesting the "wanton persecution" of NWP leader Alice Paul, who was serving a seven-month sentence for "obstructing traffic." Week was released without sentence on November 12, and within hours, returned to the picket line, only to be rearrested. Her tricolor sash, delegate badge, and two buttons represent suffrage organizations in Washington, New York, and London.
111. LOCWO2_190619_265.JPG: We are being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans fight for it abroad. -- - Alice Paul, 1917
112. LOCWO2_190619_269.JPG: "The Night of Terror" Women arrested in mid-November 1917, including Cora Week, were sent to Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia, on November 14, where they encountered unprecedented psychological intimidation and physical violence. Enraged by their demands, Superintendent Raymond Whittaker unleashed guards to beat, push, and throw them into cells. Dora Lewis was knocked unconscious; Alice Cosu suffered a heart attack; and Lucy Burns was awkwardly handcuffed overnight. Many women, including Minnie Prior Quay of Salt Lake City, Utah, recounted the brutality and terrorizing threats in affidavits.
113. LOCWO2_190619_276.JPG: Obstructing Traffic or Exercising Free Assembly? Both in court and later in prison, suffragists arrested on criminal charges of obstructing traffic demanded to be treated as political prisoners. They asserted that silent picketing and peaceful assembly were protected First Amendment rights, and that their arrests were politically motivated, as Mary Winsor's sign suggests. Winsor was arrested twice, the first time on September 4, 1917, during Draft Day festivities holding a banner questioning why women had no voice in a government that was conscripting their sons.
114. LOCWO2_190619_281.JPG: Worrisome Solidarity among Government Critics The Wilson administration resisted granting suffragists political prisoner status partly over concerns of establishing precedent. Officials feared extending comparable privileges, including access to counsel, mail, writing materials, better food, and release from prison work, to those imprisoned for draft evasion or wartime sedition. In this postcard, Lola Hennacy of Columbus, Ohio, forwarded encouraging words from her brother, noted Christian pacifist and anarchist Ammon Hennacy, and his fellow conscientious objectors detained in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia.
115. LOCWO2_190619_290.JPG: The president will tell you that we have democracy in this country, but we have not. So many million women cannot vote. This is not democracy. -- Mabel Vernon
116. LOCWO2_190619_292.JPG: Political Spectacle and the Importance of Banners Suffrage banners transformed traditionally masculine streetscapes into colorful spaces of female empowerment. During parades, banners identified who was marching and why. When picketing, they were simple but effective rhetorical devices to convey disapproval and pressure politicians. Painstakingly sewn, they often contained thought-provoking or inspirational messages, like the "Faith and Daring" example shown here, lifted from verse four of Dame Ethel Smyth's famous anthem of the suffrage movement, The March of Women. Even wordless banners, such as these tricolor flags, conveyed meaning by signaling the bearer's allegiance to the National Woman's Party, whose purple, white, and gold colors suggested a connection to militant British suffragism.
117. LOCWO2_190619_302.JPG: Surviving Prison and Protecting Civil Liberties "At 4:30 that afternoon he returned, forced a tube down my throat without making any examination of my heart and swiftly poured down a pint of cold milk and eggs. I vomited in the midst of the feeding but he paid no attention." -- Elizabeth McShane, 1917 Suffrage prisoners, most of whom came from sheltered, privileged backgrounds, endured dark, unsanitary, rat-infested conditions and contaminated food. They were manhandled, forced to perform prison labor, and intentionally incarcerated with the general prison population. Their mail was often withheld, and when they began hunger strikes, they were brutally force-fed. Alice Paul was threatened with transfer to an insane asylum. The harsh treatment of the prisoners became its own story, turning public opinion in favor of the suffragists as they toured the country to share personal accounts of their imprisonment. Although many of them could have easily paid the fines, they chose prison sentences on principle and in defense of civil liberties. By the end of the campaign, 168 NWP members had served time in prison.
118. LOCWO2_190619_303.JPG: "The Stomach Tube" When denied political prisoner status, Alice Paul and labor organizer Rose Winslow began hunger strikes in the District Jail on November 5, 1917, to protest their unjust imprisonment and disproportional sentences. Prison officials responded with thrice-daily "forcible feeding," illustrated in this British poster, by which a solution of milk and eggs was poured into a tube forcibly inserted in the nose or throat of a restrained prisoner. Paul, like Lucy Burns, had previously experienced this painful and demeaning punishment when imprisoned for suffrage activities in Britain.
119. LOCWO2_190619_311.JPG: "He Knew I was Ill Every Night" On November 16, 1917, Philadelphia school teacher Elizabeth McShane was sentenced for her part in the November 10 pickets. She immediately began a hunger strike and eventually was subjected to forced feedings by Dr. John M. Ladd, the District Jail's assistant superintendent. In her affidavit, she described suffering from intense pain and vomiting, but the feedings continued, despite another physician's, Dr. James A. Gannon's, diagnosis of stomach ulcers. Before her release on November 27, McShane developed a gall bladder infection.
120. LOCWO2_190619_322.JPG: At 4:30 that afternoon he returned, forced a tube down my throat without making any examination of my heart and swiftly poured down a pint of cold milk and eggs. I vomited in the midst of the feeding but he paid no attention. - -- Elizabeth McShane, 1917
121. LOCWO2_190619_337.JPG: "All Join Me in Much Love -- Very, Very Much" Press accounts of the suffrage prisoners' mistreatment alarmed the families of imprisoned women, who had difficulty learning of their loved one's situation. Imprisoned since mid-October 1917, art student Kate Heffelfinger began a hunger strike in mid-November and emerged from incarceration on November 27, weakened and requiring assistance. It is unclear if she ever received this loving letter from her father, but her family's support likely strengthened her resolve. She continued to protest and was arrested again in 1918 and 1919.
122. LOCWO2_190619_342.JPG: "All Join Me in Much Love -- Very, Very Much" Kate Heffelfinger after her release from prison, 1917.
123. LOCWO2_190619_346.JPG: Alice Paul Threatened with Incarceration in St. Elizabeth's Insane Asylum Although the NWP had numerous able lieutenants, the arrest and lengthy sentencing of leader Alice Paul was of considerable concern, especially since her location and condition were unknown. Anxious telegrams were sent, like this one to progressive reformer and settlement house pioneer Jane Addams, calling on influential people to pressure President Wilson. Paul's attorney Dudley Field Malone, former Wilson administration official, heroically located her, threatened a writ of habeas corpus, and secured her transfer from the jail's psychiatric ward.
124. LOCWO2_190619_359.JPG: "Prisoner of Freedom" Pin The arrests and civil disobedience of the suffragists, combined with the retaliatory force-feedings, shocked the nation and brought unfavorable attention to the Wilson administration, which suddenly capitulated and ordered the release of all suffrage prisoners in late November 1917. A celebration was quickly planned for December 6 in Washington, at which each "prisoner of freedom" was honored and presented a silver "Jailed for Freedom" pin in the shape of a cell door, fashioned after a similar pin presented to imprisoned British suffragettes.
125. LOCWO2_190619_370.JPG: "Prison Special" Tour Aboard the Democracy Limited During the rest of the suffrage campaign, the NWP took full advantage of the publicity generated by the arrests of the pickets. In February 1919, they put former suffrage prisoners on a train they named Democracy Limited and sent them from Washington, D.C., on a cross-country speaking tour. Their first stop was Charleston, South Carolina, on February 16 (delayed from February 10), where more than a thousand people were turned away from the capacity-filled Academy of Music.
126. LOCWO2_190619_375.JPG: Effective Political Theater or Meaningless Pageantry? Early suffrage parades, hoping to dazzle onlookers, attract recruits, and grab legislators' attention, were as much theatrical processions as political protests. Women marched in well-identified groups by state or occupation, often wearing special color-coordinated outfits, such as this purple, white, and gold cape and cap associated with the Congressional Union (later National Woman's Party). One suffragist, referring to this outfit or an earlier ensemble, suggested she might skip the March 3, 1913, parade rather than "march in disguise" and wear a "purple cap and cape," which overshadowed marchers' "individuality."
127. LOCWO2_190619_383.JPG: Hear Us Roar: Victory, 1918 and Beyond "Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it!" -- Carrie Chapman Catt, 1920 Suffragists' ongoing acts of civil disobedience, their extensive and strategic lobbying of Congress and the president, and women's wartime contributions led to Woodrow Wilson's endorsement of the Nineteenth Amendment and its passage in the House of Representatives in January 1918. Securing enough votes in the Senate took until June 1919, at which point attention shifted to the states for a new and exhausting ratification campaign. After Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and suffragists had secured the required three-fourths majority of the states, the amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920. Three months later, in a presidential election year, millions of women across the country could vote for the first time. The National American Woman Suffrage Association quickly transformed into the League of Women Voters with an emphasis on voter education, citizen participation, and legal, economic, and educational advancement of women, which continues to this day. Simultaneously, the National Woman's Party introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) hoping to secure further rights for women; the ERA cleared the Senate in 1972 but remains unratified. A remarkably hard-fought accomplishment, the Nineteenth Amendment was just the beginning of successive achievements, as waves of women activists drew strength and inspiration from the suffragists who had preceded them and had furthered the nation's democratic ideal of equality for all.
128. LOCWO2_190619_397.JPG: House and Senate Passage Leads An Exhausting Ratification Campaign "I wish you to know what faith is reposed in you, and how earnestly twenty million women are waiting for political freedom." -- Jeannette Rankin, 1918 Continued demonstrations and public sympathy for suffrage prisoners became a liability for the Wilson administration. The NWP's dogged protests along with years of intense lobbying by the NWP and NAWSA and a last-minute plea from Representative Jeannette Rankin forced the president to support the amendment before a critical House vote in January 1918. It was increasingly difficult for him to ignore women's contributions to the war effort and the potential impact of women voters in the upcoming elections. Opponents successfully delayed passage in the Senate, so suffragists continued to lobby, protest, and keep watch fires burning. The amendment sailed through the House again on May 21, 1919, and on June 4, 1919, the Senate, now with a Republican majority, passed it. NAWSA immediately mobilized its state ratification committees and pressed governors to convene special legislative sessions.
129. LOCWO2_190619_401.JPG: First Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin Lobbies President Wilson Jeannette Rankin, a former NAWSA field secretary who worked on multiple state suffrage campaigns, was the first woman elected to Congress in 1916, two years after her home state of Montana passed women's suffrage. In this letter of January 8, 1918 (misdated December), she asked President Woodrow Wilson to exert influence on "doubting Members," pointedly reminding him of his avowed support for democracy. The next day, Wilson publicly endorsed the federal suffrage amendment for the first time and met with ten wavering representatives. On January 10, the bill narrowly passed the House but was shelved in the Senate.
130. LOCWO2_190619_409.JPG: Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973) to Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), [sic December] January 8, 1918.
131. LOCWO2_190619_416.JPG: Suffrage "Ocean to Ocean" before the Next Election Despite personal appeals from President Wilson to pass women's suffrage as a war measure, the Senate delayed action for ten months and then narrowly defeated the House-passed amendment on October 1, 1918. NAWSA leader Carrie Chapman Catt wrote this ingratiating letter to the president on November 28, requesting "one more mention of the Federal amendment." She optimistically predicted ratification by May. Wilson acquiesced in his December State of the Union Address, but Senate passage again fell short, this time by one vote on February 10, 1919.
132. LOCWO2_190619_424.JPG: Jumping on the Bandwagon Cartoonist Clifford Berryman optimistically predicted in January 1918 that it was the "Last Call" for members of Congress to jump on the suffrage bandwagon. Although premature, he was correct in forecasting growing congressional support. On May 21, 1919, just two days after the 66th Congress convened, the House of Representatives again passed the suffrage bill, this time overwhelmingly -- 304 yeas to 89 nays, 42 more than needed. Two weeks later, on June 4, 1919, the Senate followed suit.
133. LOCWO2_190619_430.JPG: "Republican Party Is Now Responsible" By June 1920, when the Republican and Democratic parties gathered for their presidential nominating conventions, thirty-five states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, eight rejected it, and five had yet to vote. When the Republicans failed to add a suffrage plank to their platform, attorney Sue Shelton White (center, holding Tennessee banner) and other NWP activists picketed the Republican convention in Chicago. Their sign accused Republicans of defeating ratification in Delaware and blocking ratification in Vermont and Connecticut.
134. LOCWO2_190619_431.JPG: Watchfires of Freedom During the months of Senate inaction, both the NWP and NAWSA intensified their lobbying of U.S. senators and President Wilson. The NWP also picketed Senate office buildings and held demonstrations in Lafayette Park. Angered at Wilson's failure to secure the last two suffrage votes needed in the Democratic-controlled Senate, the NWP began burning "watchfires of freedom" in January 1919. They torched copies of the president's speeches, incinerated a paper effigy of him, and ceremoniously burned wood from Revolutionary-era sites. Arrests and imprisonments followed.
135. LOCWO2_190619_434.JPG: Wood from the Revolutionary battlefield of Brandywine sent by Pennsylvania suffragists for the "Watchfires for Freedom," with envelope, January 1919.
136. LOCWO2_190619_438.JPG: Wood from the Revolutionary battlefield of Brandywine sent by Pennsylvania suffragists for the "Watchfires for Freedom," with envelope, January 1919.
137. LOCWO2_190619_451.JPG: Ratification in Kentucky Splits Former Allies Although many states convened special legislative sessions to vote on ratification, Kentucky waited until the first day of its regular 1920 session to pass the measure by a comfortable margin of 72 to 25 in the Kentucky House and 30 to 8 in the Senate. Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, proudly preserved this copy of the House Roll Call. Her predecessor, foremost southern suffragist Laura Clay (1849–1941), opposed the amendment as an attack on state's rights.
138. LOCWO2_190619_458.JPG: Ratification Campaign Begins Confident of victory, Carrie Chapman Catt left Washington before the Senate vote and began mobilizing NAWSA's ratification campaign, tracking progress of each state in this notebook. She recorded in the upper-right corner the number of seats in every state legislature. In Alabama, ratification failed twice in the state Senate and once in the House, despite President Wilson's support and assurances from white suffragists that existing poll taxes and literacy tests would limit black women's votes. Transcription Senate 35 Assembly 106 [Total] 141 ALABAMA Legislature convened on 2nd part split session July 8. Mrs. [Maria] McMahon, Miss [Josephine] Miller, and Miss [Edna] Beveridge gave about two months each to work. Secured (through Mrs. [Katrina Ely] Tiffany) promise of Ex Sec[retary of Treasury William Gibbs] McAdoo to visit state provided Legislature would invite him. It did so unanimously. Status quo July 13. Mrs. [Pattie Ruffner] Jacobs wired president for message July 11. Senate caucused against July 12. Rejected
139. LOCWO2_190619_460.JPG: Transcription Senate 35 Assembly 106 [Total] 141 ALABAMA Legislature convened on 2nd part split session July 8. Mrs. [Maria] McMahon, Miss [Josephine] Miller, and Miss [Edna] Beveridge gave about two months each to work. Secured (through Mrs. [Katrina Ely] Tiffany) promise of Ex Sec[retary of Treasury William Gibbs] McAdoo to visit state provided Legislature would invite him. It did so unanimously. Status quo July 13. Mrs. [Pattie Ruffner] Jacobs wired president for message July 11. Senate caucused against July 12. Rejected
140. LOCWO2_190619_465.JPG: Ratification and Beyond "I consider myself the first woman victim after the Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment north of the Mason & Dixon Line." -- Mary Church Terrell, 1920 Within four months of congressional passage in June 1919, seventeen states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, but victory required another nineteen states to approve the measure. After a wild and draining campaign in Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state was won. On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the amendment into law, enfranchising millions of American women who had not previously had the right to vote. Yet this victory was limited. The amendment did not cover Native Americans, women living in some of the U.S. territories, women of Asian descent, and others excluded from obtaining citizenship. In addition, many African American women were systematically prevented from voting, notably in the South, until the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Extending women's rights, through educated use of their votes and efforts to pass an equal rights amendment, began immediately after ratification and continues to this day.
141. LOCWO2_190619_467.JPG: Tennessee Makes it 36! After fourteen long months, Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and join The Suffragist's "Honor Roll." Ratification easily passed the state Senate, but the House repeatedly delayed its vote, breathing life into a desperate last-ditch campaign by opposition forces. Plying representatives with liquor and food, antisuffrage lobbyists flipped an influential newspaper editor and the House Speaker, among others. On August 18, 1920, freshman Representative Harry Burn, wearing an antisuffragist red rose, shocked everyone by switching sides. He had promised his suffragist mother that he would support the amendment if the vote was close.
142. LOCWO2_190619_473.JPG: "36 Star Pin." Red on white on blue pinback button with thirty-six white stars surrounding the number "36."
143. LOCWO2_190619_480.JPG: The Stars Align at Last After receiving the good news from Tennessee on August 18, Alice Paul unfurled the NWP's completed ratification flag with 36 stars. To generate press interest and bolster members' spirits, NWP officials had sewn a star on the flag each time a state voted for ratification. They captioned publicity photographs "The Betsy Ross of Suffrage," brilliantly linking the ratification campaign to the nation's struggle for independence. Even Paul took up the needle on occasion and posed as George Washington's famous flag maker.
144. LOCWO2_190619_483.JPG: A Hero's Homecoming in New York An exultant Carrie Chapman Catt arrived in New York on August 27, greeted by Governor Al Smith, Senator William M. Calder, and prominent New York suffragists with a victory bouquet. After leaving Tennessee, Catt had stopped in Washington to thank personally President Woodrow Wilson, who ensured that Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the Nineteenth Amendment into law on August 26, 1920. Colby's receipt of Tennessee's ratification certificate had been delayed by antisuffragists' legal attempts to overturn the vote.
145. LOCWO2_190619_499.JPG: "The Colored Women of the South Will be Shamefully Treated" Despite ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, obstacles to voting remained, especially for African American women. In this October 1920 letter, educator and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell, one of the founders of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896, declared herself "the first victim" of post-ratification voter suppression "north of the Mason & Dixon Line." She described to NAACP president Moorfield Storey how a train ticket agent sought to arrest her after she inquired about an African American Republican Party organizer in Delaware.
146. LOCWO2_190619_501.JPG: Harris & Ewing, photographer. Mary Church Terrell, between 1920 and 1940.
147. LOCWO2_190619_508.JPG: "Vote Today and Your Conscience Will Be Clear" After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Carrie Chapman Catt and Maud Wood Park transformed NAWSA into the nonpartisan National League of Women Voters, which aimed to educate the electorate, especially newly enfranchised women, about candidates and campaign issues. The League encouraged everyone to "Attend to the Business of Citizenship," as illustrated in this drawing by Cleveland News cartoonist W. S. Warren, whose long career also included stints with the Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Public Ledger, and Buffalo Evening News.
148. LOCWO2_190619_522.JPG: I consider myself the first woman victim after the Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment north of the Mason & Dixon Line. -- - Mary Church Terrell, 1920
149. LOCWO2_190619_523.JPG: "The Race is Doomed unless Negro Women Take an Active Part . . ." Educator Nannie Helen Burroughs advocated for suffrage as an officer of the Woman's Convention of the National Baptist Convention, a union of African American congregations supporting social reform. In 1915, she wrote that when women's suffrage is passed, "the world is going to get a correct estimate of the Negro woman." To help leverage their political power and safeguard their voting rights, she asked African American women to complete this questionnaire after the 1920 election when she was president of the National League of Republican Colored Women.
150. LOCWO2_190619_528.JPG: National League of Republican Colored Women. Colored Women in Politics Questionnaire, completed by Elizabeth Jeter Greene, New London, Connecticut, ca. 1920.
151. LOCWO2_190619_535.JPG: From Nineteenth Amendment to ERA After ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Alice Paul remained at the helm of the NWP and redirected its focus on other legislation in support of women's equality, including a federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to ban all forms of sex discrimination. Drafted by Paul as early as 1921, the ERA was first introduced in Congress on December 10, 1923, by Senator Charles Curtis (R-KS). Many former suffragists opposed the amendment, fearing it would invalidate labor regulations designed to protect women.
152. LOCWO2_190619_537.JPG: "Women for Congress" Campaigns In 1924 and 1926, the National Woman's Party mounted non-partisan "Women for Congress" campaigns to encourage and support women candidates for national office. The organization pledged resources to women who supported the Equal Rights Amendment and other women's issues. From February to May 1926, organizers Margaret Whittemore and Mabel Vernon drove from Detroit to San Francisco to Philadelphia, traversing twenty states, to give speeches and raise money for women candidates. Here they stopped to meet with Colorado Branch NWP members.
153. LOCWO2_190619_542.JPG: Mapping the Movement for Students In 1926, when Harvard University historian and editor Albert Bushnell Hart updated an earlier compilation of wall maps intended to aid the teaching of American history in secondary schools, he added a sheet (A39) drawn by R. Baxter Blair illustrating the progression of woman suffrage decennially from 1880 to 1920. Each map recorded the nation's increasing female population, the numbers of women granted suffrage of some type, and key suffrage dates in various states. The 1920 map also shows the order of ratification.
154. LOCWO2_190619_566.JPG: Nineteenth Amendment Signed Without Fanfare Although signing ceremonies were held in the House and Senate when the suffrage measure passed Congress in 1919, no similar ceremony, to the disappointment of suffragists, occurred on the morning of August 26, 1920, when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby quietly signed, at his home, the proclamation certifying the Nineteenth Amendment. No photographs captured the moment. The Washington Post cited Colby's desire to "avoid friction" between NAWSA and NWP. That night he read a congratulatory message from President Wilson at a NAWSA mass meeting.
155. LOCWO2_190619_575.JPG: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
156. LOCWO2_190619_594.JPG: 1920 After more than seventy years of advocacy by suffragists, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women nationally the right to vote. It was ratified by three-fourths of the states and signed into law on August 26, 1920. Women in some states, mostly in the West, had already been voting, but now women in all states had that right. Former suffragists then went to work ensuring women would use their right to vote. Suffragists fought hard for equal rights and to address the injustice they saw in their lives. They have inspired generations of women activists to take a stand on issues that matter to them. So, what matters to you, and what can you do to take a stand?
157. LOCWO2_190619_622.JPG: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote is made possible by The Library of Congress James Madison Council with additional support from 1st Financial Bank USA, Democracy Fund, AARP, Thomas V. Girardi, HISTORY�, Barbara Lee Family Foundation Fund at the Boston Foundation, Roger and Julie Baskes.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].