NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

CREATIVITY 

Art that Fueled the Fight for Women’s Suffrage

AND

PERSISTENCE

CREATIVITY AND PERSISTENCE

 ART THAT FUELED THE FIGHT FOR WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
August 2020

The publication was produced by:

National Endowment for the Arts

Mary Anne Carter, Chairman

Don Walter, Director of Office of Public Affairs

Don Ball, Editor

Kelli Rogowski, Designer

In 2020, to celebrate the centennial of the passing of the 19th amendment, 

the National Endowment for the Arts made grants to organizations producing 

arts projects related to the fight for women’s suffrage. But the agency has been 

supporting women artists since its establishment in 1965. One of the first grants the 

agency awarded was in 1966 to the Martha Graham Dance Company to support its 

first national tour in 15 years. The Arts Endowment has continued to support projects 

by women-run and women-oriented organizations and many projects we support are 

designed to help women enter a career in the arts.

First Ladies of the United States Quotes:

Page 3: Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams 

(https://www.bustle.com/articles/102487-8-feminist-quotes-from-first-ladies-show-howthe-movement-continues-to-evolve)

Page 5: Caroline Harrison, wife of Benjamin Harrison 

(https://www.bustle.com/articles/102487-8-feminist-quotes-from-first-ladies-show-howthe-movement-continues-to-evolve)

Page 29: Florence Harding, wife of Warren Harding (http://www.firstladies.org/

biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=30)

Page 71: Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt 

(http://www.quotabelle.com/author/eleanor-roosevelt)

Cover Credits:

Front: Victory by Nina Allender, 1920. 

Back: The Spirit of ’76 On to the Senate by Nina Allender, 1915. 

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020911291

202-682-5496 Voice/TTY

(a device for individuals who are deaf or hearing-impaired)

Individuals who do not use conventional print materials may contact the Arts 

Endowment’s Accessibility Office at 202-682-5532 to obtain this publication 

in an alternate format.

This publication is available free of charge as a downloadable PDF at arts.gov
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Chairman Mary Anne Carter ............................................................ 1

Introduction ....................................................................................................... 3

Part 1: The Making of a New Woman................................................................... 5

Suffrage Art Before Seneca Falls .................................................................... 5

Early Poetry and Speeches at Seneca Falls...................................................... 8

Music of the Movement................................................................................16

Fashion.......................................................................................................19

Emerging Graphic Art................................................................................. 24

Part 2: The Suffrage Art Explosion................................................................... 29

United by a Common Language: The Visual Influence of the U.K. Suffragettes .... 29

Visual Art Propels the American Movement................................................... 39

20th-Century Suffrage Poetry....................................................................... 62

Part 3: The Awakening .......................................................................................71

Art and the 1913 Suffrage Parade .................................................................71

The Mass Movement ................................................................................... 80

Motion Pictures .......................................................................................... 98

Art in the Final Push Forward..................................................................... 104

Art Evokes Joy and Optimism After the 19th Amendment............................... 113

Bibliography ...................................................................................................119
iv
1

FOREWORD

T

he arts have a unique ability to serve as a rallying cry for change, with the 

profound power to disseminate complex messages across large audiences in 

a common, easy-to-understand manner that inspires people in a way few other 

things can.

There is perhaps no better example of the arts being used to help transform public 

opinion in a social or political manner than during the women’s suffrage movement.

Throughout the long and arduous path to victory, the depiction of women and the 

different perspectives of their roles in society and politics were displayed through 

literature, poetry, fashion, sculpture, and illustrations, as well as sharply acidic and 

intentionally divisive cartoons.

The National Endowment for the Arts recognizes and applauds how the arts were 

used to change the narrative about the importance of women’s full participation in 

society and politics. The arts were critical to the ultimate success of the women’s 

suffrage movement. 

Although the language of the 19th Amendment included all eligible women 

voters, not all women were, in fact, able to immediately exercise their right to 

vote, particularly women of color. Still, the amendment’s ratification was the most 

significant step forward in empowering women, giving them the autonomy to play a 

role in civil rights movements that followed.

This book, aptly titled Creativity and Persistence: Art that Fueled the Fight for Women’s 

Suffrage, is designed to commemorate the centennial of the ratification of the 19th 

amendment and to remind us all how the arts were used to sway public opinion and 

help secure the right to vote for women across America.

Mary Anne Carter 

Chairman

National Endowment for the Arts
Figure 1. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty 

Leading the People, 1830, painting, 

Louvre Museum, Paris
3

In a letter to her 

husband President 

John Adams: 

“Remember the 

ladies and be 

more generous 

and favorable 

to them than 

your ancestors. 

Do not put such 

unlimited power 

into the hands 

of the husbands. 

Remember, all men 

would be tyrants if 

they could.” 

ABIGAIL 

ADAMS

INTRODUCTION

A

rt has always reflected the world in which it was created, from the ancient 

Greeks, whose surviving poetry and sculpture attest to their humanism, to 

mid-20th-century American art, which broke with tradition by engaging with 

popular and consumer culture. Art has also always had the power to do more 

than simply reflect—it can make social commentary to effect change.1

 Much of the 

art made across history involved such critiques, but the Enlightenment is especially 

associated with doing so. Artists like Eugène Delacroix (fig. 1) and Jacques-Louis 

David famously depicted the tragedies of war in their art, raising awareness of 

important social issues.2

 Similarly, satire was used by writers like Jonathan Swift 

and artists like Honoré Daumier, both of whom made scathing commentary in their 

work. Their goal, of course, was to call attention to the ills of society with the hope of 

correcting them. 

With the birth of the women’s suffrage movement, American artists made the same 

kind of social commentary by working with the activists who were fighting for 

women’s rights at the ground level. Without a doubt, the women’s suffrage movement 

would not have had the success it did had the arts not brought the valiant efforts of 

the suffragists into the spotlight. 

In the earliest days of the movement, the spoken, sung, and written word played a 

leading role: suffragists understood the persuasive power of language, which could 

not only be shared at gatherings but also published and widely disseminated. The 

early focus on language aligned with the ethos of American culture in the second 

1 Consider the art of ancient Rome, for example, which was filled with propagandistic imagery. A great source 

for information on Augustan propaganda is Paul Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan 

Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

2 For more on the emergence of more socially engaged art in modern Europe, see Matthew Craske, “Beyond the 

Useful and Agreeable Man,” in Art in Europe, 1700–1830: A History of the Visual Arts in an Era of Unprecedented 

Urban Economic Growth” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 23–87.
4

half of the 19th century when 

American literature was coming into its 

own.3

 As America was finding its 

voice, the suffrage movement 

participated, with the powerful voices 

of women like Sojourner Truth leading 

the way. 

In the first decade of the 20th century, 

the suffrage movement in the U.S. 

began to work more actively with 

the visual arts to spread its message, 

creating striking cartoons (fig. 2), 

paintings, posters (fig. 3), postcards, 

films, and even sculpture. These 

images permeated American culture, 

changing the perception of what it 

meant to be a woman and to be a 

suffragist. 

Without these compelling words and 

images, the work of the suffragists 

might have gone largely unnoticed. 

After all, only the very staunchest 

devotees of the movement followed 

the details of legislative successes and 

failures. It was the arts that rendered 

the unseen work of the suffragists 

visible and important to the average 

American. Art put a human face on a 

political issue, it empowered American 

women, and, in the end, it helped 

to reshape the face of American 

democracy for the better.

Figure 2. W. E. Hill, His daughter! 

And he thought she was “just a little 

girl,” Puck, February 1915, New York, 

illustration, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC

Figure 3. Egbert C. Jacobson, Votes 

for Women, Equality Is the Sacred 

Law of Humanity, ca. 1903–15, 

lithograph, Schlesinger Library, 

Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

3 For more on the importance of literature in 19th-century American culture, especially the profusion of 

newspapers, magazines, and journals, see the introduction to The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. C,

1865–1914, ed. Jeanne Campbell Reesman, Nina Baym, and Arnold Krupat, 7th ed. (New York: Norton, 2007), 4–5. 
5

“This Society, 

to live and grow 

and become what 

we would desire 

it to be, must be 

composed of ... 

women. ... 

[M]uch of 

[society’s] success 

was due to the 

character of the 

women of that 

era. ... I feel sure 

their daughters 

can perpetuate 

a society worthy 

of the cause 

and worthy of 

themselves.” 

CAROLINE 

HARRISON 

PART 1: THE MAKING > A NEW WOMAN

SUFFRAGE ART BEFORE SENECA FALLS

Nineteenth-century American art occupied a unique role on the world’s stage. 

Lacking an established art tradition of its own, it borrowed from its diverse 

heritage while simultaneously inventing a new, distinctly American visual 

language that was evident in both the world of the so-called “high arts”—

painting, sculpture, and architecture—and in the “commercial and applied arts”—massmarket prints and illustrations, fashion, and everyday objects, as well as in literature. 

The commercial arts are especially helpful in understanding the cultural perceptions 

and representations of women, who were often excluded from the high arts.

Godey’s Magazine and Lady’s Book, an influential and broadly distributed magazine 

for women in the 19th century, is an invaluable resource filled with the kinds of minor 

arts that were being created by, for, and about women. In 1837, writer Sarah Josepha 

Hale (fig. 4) took the helm as editor of this publication that persuasively empowered 

women. It was noted for publishing songs and poetry, as well as color-tint fashion 

plates that were featured at the front of each edition. A reflection of mainstream, 

Anglo-Saxon culture, Godey’s authoritative voice reached a broad audience, 

estimated at 150,000 readers by 1860.4

Song lyrics and poems published in Godey’s Magazine in the 1840s reveal a desire 

to define women as intrinsically domestic and as arbiters of goodness. One example 

is the song, “Come, Come Away: A Social Glee or Chorus,” whose lyrics celebrate 

the peace of the sequestered realm of the home.5

 Verse Two reads, “From toil and 

4 Kathleen L. Endres, Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines (Greenwood Publishing 

Group, 1995), 115.

5 “Come, Come Away: A Social Glee or Chorus,” words adapted by W. E. Hickson, Godey’s 

Magazine 32 (1846): 92–93, available at Hathi Trust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/

pt?id=mdp.39015025890040&view=1up&seq=65.
6

cares, on which the day is closing, / The 

hour of eve brings sweet reprieve, / Oh 

come, come away: / Oh come, where 

love will smile on thee, / And round its 

hearth will gladness be, / And time fly 

merrily—Oh come, come away.” It is 

understood that women, of course, are the 

stewards of this welcoming world. One 

assumes that women readers would 

recognize their homes in these words and 

might aspire to achieve the kind of 

“peaceful home” as the song extolls. 

The messages throughout Godey’s 

Magazine (and common to most women’s 

publications in the 19th century) were 

largely the same: women were celebrated 

for their beauty and gentleness, and 

they were associated with domesticity. 

Nonetheless, it would be overly simplistic 

to suggest that all American women filled 

traditional roles. Many American women 

distinguished themselves in their work 

outside of the home as scholars, activists, 

doctors, and in other professions. Even 

well before the 19th century, many 

women had already begun to question 

traditional gender roles in their published 

writings. In 1792, British author Mary 

Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the 

Rights of Woman, a seminal treatise of 

early feminist philosophy.6 Suffrage leader 

Susan B. Anthony, who called herself 

“a great admirer of this earliest work 

for woman’s right to Equality of rights,” 

owned a copy of this book.7

Another early feminist, Frances Wright 

(fig. 5), rose to fame in the 1820s when 

she began lecturing internationally about 

both abolitionism and women’s rights. 

Although the public debates about 

suffrage were several decades away, 

Wright was threatening enough that she became the subject of a satirical cartoon that 

anticipates the sort of anti-suffrage cartoons that were common later in the century. 

6 Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 

2003), 25.

7 This quotation is from Anthony’s inscription at the front of her personal copy, which she donated to the Library 

of Congress in 1904. See “British Inspiration for American Women Seeking Equal Rights,” Library of Congress 

(website), https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/seneca-falls-and-building-amovement-1776-1890/early-feminist-inspirations/british-inspiration-for-american-women-seeking-equal-rights/.

Figure 4. W. B. Chambers, Portrait of 

Sarah Josepha (Buell) Hale, Godey’s

Magazine 41, 1850, frontispiece, 

Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division, Washington, DC

Figure 5. John Chester Buttre, 

Portrait of Frances Wright, 1881, 

engraving, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC
7

The cartoon, A Downright Gabbler, or a Goose That Deserves to Be Hissed (fig. 6), 

was most likely published in response to a speaking tour Wright made in 1829.8 The 

artist depicts Wright with the head of a goose, gesturing and reading aloud from 

a book, while being watched by a man holding her bonnet. Rather than rendering 

Wright as composed and dignified, the artist caricatures and demeans her. Although 

this type of critique of prominent women was common, the suffragists would soon 

harness this medium for their own means, undercutting the power of their detractors.

Figure 6. James Akins, A Downright 

Gabbler, or a Goose that Deserves to 

Be Hissed, 1829, illustration, Library 

of Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

8 Bernard F. Reilly, American political prints, 1766–1876 (G.K. Hall, 1991), entry 1829–2. 
8

EARLY POETRY AND SPEECHES AT SENECA FALLS

The fight for women’s suffrage in America 

began to take shape in upstate New York 

in the summer of 1848 when a group of 

friends, including such lions of the 

movement as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and 

Lucretia Coffin Mott (figs. 7 and 8), 

organized the first women’s rights 

convention at Seneca Falls. An ad was 

hastily placed in the Seneca County 

Courier just days before the convention. 

Still, there was a surprisingly large turnout 

and the meeting received a great deal of 

attention in newspapers and other 

publications in the days after it was held.

Conventions were of course dependent 

on the spoken word, and so some of the 

most important early examples of suffrage 

art are literary.9 After convention speeches 

were delivered, they were disseminated 

via magazines and newspapers. Even 

beyond the context of conventions, 

suffrage and women’s rights were frequent 

subjects in the work of prominent writers. 

As women began to speak out more 

publicly during the last half of the 19th 

century, it was their words more than 

anything else that created the sense of 

camaraderie propelling the movement and 

that gave other women courage to 

participate in it. 

One powerful example is the satirical 

poem, “The Times That Try Men’s 

Souls,” by prominent suffragist Maria 

W. Chapman and read by Mary Ann 

McClintock just two weeks after the 

Seneca Falls convention at a gathering 

in Rochester, New York.10 The poem was 

written in response to a letter written by a 

Massachusetts clergy group criticizing the 

first Woman’s Rights Convention. It reads: 

Figure 7. Portrait of Elizabeth Cady 

Stanton, 1854, photograph, Library 

of Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

Figure 8. Portrait of Lucretia 

Coffin Mott, 1860–80, photograph. 

Courtesy of the Rare Book and 

Special Collections Division, Library 

of Congress, Washington, DC

9 Rhoda J. Palmer, Personal Memories of the Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, May 1908, 

Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897–1911, Scrapbook 6 (1907–1908), Library of Congress https://www.loc.

gov/resource/rbcmil.scrp4006802/?sp=3.

10 Sandra Weber, Women’s Rights National Historic Park, Seneca Falls, New York ([Washington, DC]: U.S. 

Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1985), 145.
9

Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong;

The women have leaped from “their spheres,”

And, instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along,

And are setting the world by the ears!

In courses erratic they’re wheeling through space,

In brainless confusion and meaningless chase.

In vain do our knowing ones try to compute

Their return to the orbit designed;

They’re glanced at a moment, then, onward they shoot

And neither “to hold nor to bind;”

So freely they move in their chosen ellipse,

The “Lords of Creation” do fear an eclipse.

They’ve taken a notion to speak for themselves,

And are wielding the tongue and the pen;

They’ve mounted the rostrum, the termagant elves,

And, O horrid, are talking to men!

With faces unblanched in our presence they come

To harangue us, they say, in behalf of the dumb.

They insist on their right to petition and pray;

That St. Paul, in Corinthians, has given them rules

For appearing in public; despite what those say

Whom we’ve trained to instruct them in orthodox schools.

But vain such instruction, if women may scan

And quote texts of Scripture to favor their plan.

Our grandmothers’ learning consisted of yore,

In spreading their generous boards;

In twisting the distaff or mopping the floor,

And obeying the will of their lords.

Now, misses may reason, and think, and debate,

Till unquestioned submission is quite out of date.

Our clergy have preached on the sin and the shame

Of woman when out of “her sphere”

And labored, divinely, to ruin her fame,

And shorten this horrid career;

But for spiritual guidance, no longer they look

To Folsom, or Winslow, or learned Parsons Cooke.

Our wise men have tried to exorcise in vain 

The turbulent spirits abroad;

As well might we deal with the fetterless main,

Or conquer ethereal essence with sword;

Like the devils of Milton they rise from each blow,

Wish spirit unbroken insulting the foe.

Our patriot fathers, of eloquent fame

,

Waged war against tangible forms;

Ay, their foes were men—and if ours were the same
10

We might speedily quiet their storms;

But, ah! their descendants enjoy not such bliss—

The assumptions of Britain were nothing to this.

Could we but array all our force in the field,

We’d teach these usurpers of power

That their bodily safety demands they should yield,

And in presence of manhood should cower;

But, alas! for our tethered and impotent state,

Chained by notions of knighthood—we can but debate

Oh! shade of the prophet Mahomet, arise!

Place woman again in “her sphere,”

And teach that her soul was not born for the skies,

But to flutter a brief moment here.

This doctrine of Jesus, as preached up by Paul,

If embraced in its spirit, will ruin us all.

Lords of Creation11

Chapman’s poem is an 

example of the satirical writing 

that would later become a 

hallmark of the suffrage 

movement. By drawing 

attention to the absurdity of 

those who disapproved of 

women’s rights conventions, 

Chapman undermines the idea 

that a woman’s place is in the 

home.

In the years following the 

Seneca Falls Convention, 

women’s rights conventions 

were held all around the 

country, providing ample 

opportunity for more suffrage 

oratory. In 1851, for example, 

the formerly enslaved 

prominent women’s rights 

advocate Sojourner Truth (fig. 

10) gave a stirring speech at a 

women’s rights convention 

held in Akron, Ohio. The 

journalist Marius Robinson 

published what is considered 

the closest account of that 

Figure 9. Front page of the report of 

the Woman’s Rights Convention, held 

at Seneca Falls, New York, July 19th 

and 20th, 1848. Courtesy of Seneca 

Falls Historical Society

11 Maria W. Chapman, “The Times That Try Men’s Souls,” The Living Age, August 26, 1848, 424, available at 

Hathi Trust Digital Library, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.55226143&view=1up&seq=434.
11

speech a few weeks after it was delivered. Although it is generally referred to as a 

speech, Truth’s lyrical skill and talent elevate her prose to the realm of poetry. 

Tellingly, when her speech was published in the Anti-Slavery Bugle, the newspaper 

reported that it was “impossible to transfer to paper, or convey any adequate idea 

of the effect it produced upon the audience.”12 Truth’s words are as follows:

May I say a few words? I 

want to say a few words 

about this matter. 

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? 

I have heard much 

about the sexes being 

equal; I can carry as 

much as any man, and 

can eat as much too, if I 

can get it. I am as strong 

as any man that is now. 

As for intellect, all I 

can say is, if women 

have a pint and a man 

a quart—why can’t she 

have her little pint full? 

You need not be afraid 

to give us our rights for 

fear we will take too much, for we can’t take more than our pint’ll hold. 

The poor men seem to be all in confusion, and don’t know what to do. Why 

children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. 

You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble. 

I can’t read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that 

Eve caused man to sin. Well if woman upset the world, do give her a 

chance to set it right side up again. 

The Lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, 

and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with 

faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept—and 

Lazarus came forth. 

Figure 10. Portrait of Sojourner 

Truth, undated, photomechanical 

reproduction, Library of Congress, 

Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 

1897-1911, Rare Book And Special 

Collections Division, Washington, DC

12 “Women’s Rights Convention: Sojourner Truth,” Anti-Slavery Bugle, June 21, 1851, 160, available online at 

Library of Congress (website), https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/1851-06-21/ed-1/seq-4/.
12

And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and 

woman who bore him. Man, where is your part? 

But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are 

coming up with them. 

But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on 

him, and he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.13

Truth addresses her status as not just an American woman but as a Black American 

woman, alluding to the multiple social inequities inherent in American culture in 

the years before the Civil War. Both during and after the Civil War, the women’s 

suffrage and the abolitionist and Black suffrage movements were intertwined, 

linked by a unified cause. The unity of Black suffrage and women’s suffrage would 

later break down, especially with the passage of the 15th amendment, which 

granted suffrage to Black men but excluded women. 

Truth’s speech was filled with power and conviction, and it is easy to imagine 

how it must have affected listeners at the Akron convention. That her rhetoric was 

subsequently published attests to its potency, and testifies to its capacity to move 

women, and men, who did not attend 

women’s rights conventions.

Another version of this poem-speech 

was published by suffragist Frances 

Gage (fig. 11) in 1863, 12 years after 

Truth first delivered it. It has come to 

be called “Ain’t I a Woman?,” and 

though it is less faithful to Truth’s 

words, it circulated widely on behalf 

of the women’s rights movement and 

is arguably the better known version 

of the speech.14 In Gage’s version 

of Truth’s observations about her 

experience of being a Black woman 

in America, she punctuates those 

observations with the refrain, “And 

ain’t I a woman?”15

Another poet-orator whose words had 

a powerful impact in the early years 

of the movement was Frances Ellen 

Watkins Harper (fig. 12). A prominent abolitionist and writer, her work addresses 

slavery, being Black in America, and suffrage. She delivered a moving, eloquent, 

and stinging speech at the 11th National Women’s Rights Convention in 1866. 

Figure 11. Portrait of Frances Dana 

Gage, 1865, photographic print, 

Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division, Washington, DC

13 “Woman’s Rights Convention: Sojourner Truth.”

14 See “Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman,” Woman’s Rights National Historic Park (website), https://www.nps.

gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm. 

15 See “Sojourner’s Words and Music,” Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee (website), accessed March 31, 

2020, https://sojournertruthmemorial.org/sojourner-truth/her-words/; and “Compare the Two Speeches,” The 

Sojourner Truth Project (website), https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/.
13

After first addressing her 

struggles as a Black American 

woman, she appealed to her 

audience, saying, “We are all 

bound up together in one great 

bundle of humanity, and society 

cannot trample on the weakest 

and feeblest of its members 

without receiving the curse in its 

own soul.”16

In her published poetry too, 

Harper gives a sense of the 

unique role of Black women in 

post-Civil War America and the 

ways White and Black suffragists 

were often at odds with each 

other. Her poem “Aunt Chloe’s 

Politics” (1872) is a good 

example:

Of course, I don’t know 

very much

About these politics,

But I think that some who run ’em

Do mighty ugly tricks.

I’ve seen ’em honey-fugle round,

And talk so awful sweet,

That you’d think them full of kindness,

As an egg is full of meat.

Now I don’t believe in looking

Honest people in the face,

And saying when you’re doing wrong,

That “I haven’t sold my race.”

When we want to school our children,

If the money isn’t there,

Whether black or white have took it,

The loss we all must share.

And this buying up each other

Is something worse than mean,

Though I thinks a heap of voting,

I go for voting clean.17

Figure 12. Frances E. W. Harper, 

1872, engraving, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC

16 “(1866) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, ‘We Are All Bound Up Together,’” BlackPast (website), November 7, 

2011, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1866-frances-ellenwatkins-harper-we-are-all-bound-together/.

17 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “Aunt Chloe’s Politics” (1827), Academy of American Poets (website), https://

poets.org/poem/aunt-chloes-politics.
14

Although much of Harper’s poetry doesn’t directly address suffrage, women’s 

issues are a constant theme in her work. Her poetry reached many distant corners 

of American society and filled a distinct space in the young American literary 

world, paving the way for some of the bolder feminist writers of the 20th century.

Another influential poet whose words affected the suffrage movement was 

suffragist Julia Ward Howe (fig. 13), whose most famous poem is the American 

classic “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” still a battle cry for activists today. Howe 

was inspired to write the poem, which was adapted and sung to the melody of the 

popular war tune “John Brown’s Body,” after she visited a Civil War encampment 

and was moved by what she saw there.18

The poem combines religious and militaristic imagery that captured something 

of the spirit of 19th-century American culture. The poem, especially its famous 

opening lines, had broad general appeal: 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; 

He hath loosed the faithful lightnings of His terrible swift sword: 

His truth is marching on. 

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah! 

Glory, glory, hallelujah, 

His truth is marching on.”19

Since the poem contains no language that specifically ties it to the Civil War, it 

was adopted by many different causes, including women’s suffrage. It was part of 

the opening pages of a leaflet of rally songs sold in the 1890s,20 and was even 

adapted into a suffragist anthem of its own, “The Battle Hymn of the Suffragists,” 

by Catharine Weed Campbell in 1890.21

18 Dominic Tierney, “‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’: America’s Song of Itself,” The Atlantic, November 4, 

2010, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic-americas-song-ofitself/66070/.

19 An image of the poem as it was published in the Atlantic Monthly is available online at Dominic Tierney, “‘The 

Battle Hymn of the Republic’: America’s Song of Itself,” The Atlantic, November 4, 2010, https://www.theatlantic.

com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/the-battle-hymn-of-the-republic-americas-song-of-itself/66070/.

20 Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated Historical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 

2013), 166.

21 Annie J. Randall, Music, Power, and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2005), 22n39; See: Francie Wolff, Give 

the Ballot to the Mothers: Songs of the Suffragists: A History in Song (Denlinger’s Publishers, 1998).

(Opposite page) Figure 13. John 

Elliott and William Henry Cotton, 

Portrait of Julia Ward Howe, 1910–

1925, painting, National Portrait 

Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 

Washington, DC
15
16

MUSIC OF THE MOVEMENT

As Howe’s poem shows, the reach of poetry in the suffrage movement extended 

well beyond convention halls and the printed page. Music was a favorite form of 

entertainment both in and outside of the home. Sheet music could be enjoyed in 

private settings, and standalone lyrics, such as Howe’s “Battle Hymn,” could be 

passed around at rallies and sung to the tune of well-known melodies.22 Both kinds 

of music had the potential to persuade listeners. 

Songs like the 1853 “Woman’s Rights” were inspired by the conventions being 

held all around the country, and worked to further the cause. The second verse of 

“Woman’s Rights” laments:

’Tis woman’s right to counsel man in sorrow’s crushing hour,

Her right to raise his sinking heart by love’s transcendant [sic] power,

Her right upon life’s troubled sea the darkest storm to brave,

But not her right to guide our ships upon the ocean wave.”23

As the 25th anniversary of the Seneca Falls convention approached, there was a 

renewed interest in music relating to women’s rights conventions. “Daughters of 

Freedom the Ballot Be Yours,” with lyrics by accomplished poet George Cooper, is 

a famous example.24 The lyrics read in part:

Daughters of freedom, the Ballot be yours

Wield it with wisdom, your hopes it secures.

‘Rights that are equal’ this ye claim,

Bright by your guerdon, fair your fame!”25

As in the earlier song, the lyrics are unequivocally supportive and show how the 

issue of suffrage had fully entered the sphere of music. 

Other examples, such as “March of the Suffragettes” (fig. 14) and “She’s Good 

Enough to Be Your Baby’s Mother and She’s Good Enough to Vote with You” (fig. 

15), make use of powerful imagery on the sheet music to call attention to their 

message. As such, music brought the women’s suffrage debate into people’s 

homes as well as being used at rallies in service of advancing the argument for 

women’s suffrage. 

22 Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated Historical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 

2013), 163–65.

23 Fanny Fern, “Woman’s Rights,” song lyrics (New York: William Hall and Son, 1853).

24 Mary E. Tyson, “George Cooper,” The Magazine of Poetry: A Quarterly Review 3, (January–October 1891), 11.

25 George Cooper, “Daughters of Freedom!”, sheet music lyrics (Boston: Ditson & Co., Oliver, 1871).

(Opposite page) Figure 14. 

Edmund Braham, “March of the 

Suffragettes,” official suffrage 

sheet music, 1912, cover, Library 

of Congress, Music Division, 

Washington, DC
17
18
19

(Opposite page) Figure 15. Herman 

Paley, Alfred Bryan, “She’s Good 

Enough to Be Your Baby’s Mother 

and She’s Good Enough to Vote with 

You,” 1916, sheet music cover, 

Library of Congress, Music Division, 

Washington, DC

FASHION 

Fashion also reveals a great deal about the women’s suffrage movement, since it gives 

clues as to how people functioned in society. Most women’s dresses from the 19th 

century sought to exaggerate the natural female form, with narrow waists over wide 

skirts and tight sleeves that sometimes flared out below the elbow. The use of bulky 

fabrics and a tight waist severely restricted a woman’s freedom of movement; 

cumbersome clothing made it impossible for women to participate in the same kinds of 

physical activities as men. Fashion had a tangible effect on women’s experiences of the 

world, which therefore carried real political implications and the opportunity to 

broadcast a statement. 

It’s not surprising, then, that 

a new style was introduced 

shortly after the start of the 

suffrage movement: loose 

trousers worn under a kneelength skirt.26 By 1851 this 

new attire was popularized 

in magazines and 

newspapers, most notably 

in The Lily, a newspaper 

published by Seneca Falls 

resident Amelia Bloomer 

(fig. 16) who also adopted 

the fashion. Her role in 

popularizing these new 

trousers gave them their 

name: “bloomers.”27

Bloomers were both a 

fashion trend and a 

practical solution to 

women’s complaints with 

mainstream fashion, but 

they were also a feminist 

statement. Women liked 

them because they allowed 

for greater freedom of 

movement, a goal that 

in itself suggests a feminist perspective. Unsurprisingly, the fashion was adopted by 

the leading figures of the early women’s rights movement, including Elizabeth Cady 

Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony.28 Bloomers became a sensation and were 

the subject of illustrations published in magazines and on the covers of sheet music.

26 Smith and Greig, Women in Pants, 28.

27 Lorraine Boissoneault, “Amelia Bloomer Didn’t Mean to Start a Fashion Revolution, But Her Name Became 

Synonymous with Trousers,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 24, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ameliabloomer-didnt-mean-start-fashion-revolution-her-name-became-synonymous-trousers-180969164/

28 See Gayle V. Fischer, Pantaloons and Power: Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform in the United States (Kent, OH: 

Kent State University Press, 2001), 79–80.

Figure 16. Portrait of Amelia Jenks 

Bloomer, 1850s, daguerreotype. 

Property of the Seneca Falls 

Historical Society
20

One excellent example is The Bloomer Costume (fig. 17) published by Currier & 

Ives Lithography in 1851, which shows a young woman in an elegant lace- and 

embroidery-trimmed outfit, with prominent bloomers poking out beneath a short 

skirt.

Although the popularity of bloomers certainly changed thinking about women’s 

dress, criticism prevented them from becoming normalized or even from changing 

fashion of the time. Women eventually stopped wearing bloomers because they 

were perceived as a distraction from the issues that really mattered.29 Nonetheless, 

a seed had been planted, and an interest in dress reform continued to simmer in 

American culture. 

It wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that a revitalized interest in dress reform 

appeared. The revival was largely borne out of an interest in a new generation 

of young women 

who were forthright 

in their declaration 

of independence. 

The “New Woman,” 

as she came to be 

called, was educated, 

sought fulfillment 

for herself outside 

of the home, and 

was often physically 

active in ways 

previous generations 

never would have 

imagined—she rode 

a bicycle and played 

sports. She was also 

politically engaged 

and pursued a career. 

All of these things 

required a novel style 

of dress to fit the new 

realities of life for the 

turn-of-the-century 

American woman.30

Figure 17. N. Currier, The Bloomer 

Costume, 1851, New York, 

lithograph, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC

29 Kate Clarke Lemay, Votes for Women!: A Portrait of Persistence (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 

Smithsonian Institution, 2019), 105.

30 See: Gail Finney, Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 196–96; Ruth Birgitta Anderson Bordin, Alice Freeman Palmer: The 

Evolution of a New Woman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 2.

(Opposite page) Figure 18. Charles 

Dana Gibson, Scribner’s for June, 

1895, illustration, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC
21
22

The safety bicycle, developed at the end of the 1880s, played an important role in 

the evolution of the new woman. The popularity of bicycling necessitated a change 

in women’s dress, since riding a bicycle in the restrictive clothing of the previous 

era was not only impractical but even dangerous. New fashions with looser skirts 

that had back pleats to accommodate a bicycle seat emerged as a solution.31 Unlike 

the bloomers of the 1850s, the new style endured, changing the direction of 

fashion. Charles Dana Gibson captured the modern spirit associated with women 

riding bicycles in his illustration (fig. 18) for Scribner’s magazine in 1895.32

At the same time that the image of the New Woman became normalized, the 

suffragists were also learning to use fashion as a tool to advance their cause. Some 

of the movement’s early leaders had been anti-fashion, associating such vanity 

with the perception of women as weak and inferior.33 Most, however, embraced 

traditional standards of feminine beauty as a way of countering the attacks of 

their detractors who tried to discredit them with images that depicted them as 

unfashionable, ugly, and old.34 Rodney Thompson’s Militants (fig. 19) is a classic 

example of this trope.

As will be discussed in Part Three, fashion was increasingly exploited by 

suffragists, mainly in the context of the parades and marches that became common 

features of the movement in the first decades of the 20th century. They wore white 

because of its association with purity,35 as well as the other official colors of the 

suffrage movement—purple and yellow/gold.36 Suffragists also dressed in vaguely 

medieval and militaristic costumes, alluding to Joan of Arc, the medieval martyr 

who was adopted as a symbol for a number of women’s causes at the turn of the 

century.37

In the context of both pageantry and everyday life, women’s fashion then changed 

with the rapidly modernizing lives of American women who sought out new 

fashions to achieve greater freedom. Thus, fashion both reflected change and 

helped to bring it about in the suffragist fight for independence. By the turn of the 

20th century, there was no returning to the hoop skirt and the restrictive world it 

represented.

31 See: Patricia Campbell Warner, When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear (Boston: 

University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 123–25.

32 “The Gibson Girl as the ‘New Woman’,” The Gibson Girl’s America: Drawings by Charles Dana Gibson 

(website), Library of Congress Exhibitions, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/gibson-girls-america/the-gibson-girl-as-thenew-woman.html.

33 Jenny Cobb, “The Fashion of Suffrage,” the Bullock Museum (website), https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/

discover/artifacts/suffrage-dress-shoes.

34 Cally Blackman, “How the Suffragists Used Fashion to Further the Cause,” The Guardian, October 8, 2015, 

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/oct/08/suffragette-style-movement-embraced-fashion-branding.

35 Alden O’Brien, “Part 1: Great Strides for the ‘New Woman,’ Suffrage, and Fashion,” O Say Can You See?

(blog), National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, March 7, 2013, https://americanhistory.

si.edu/blog/2013/03/guest-post-great-strides-for-the-new-woman-suffrage-and-fashion.html.

36 See Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 

104; and O’Brien, “Great Strides for the ‘New Woman’.”

37 See Elsie Y. Heung, “Women’s Suffrage in American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900–1920,” (PhD 

diss, City University of New York, 2018), 74–79.

(Opposite page) Figure 19. Rodney 

Thomson, Militants, Life magazine, 

1913, New York, cartoon
23
24

EMERGING GRAPHIC ART 

Until the first decade of the 20th century, the women’s suffrage movement did not 

make use of the graphic arts as a platform, with the exception of the odd magazine 

illustration or newspaper cartoon, where the question of women’s suffrage, like 

virtually all contemporary debates, found its way into these publications. Those 

critical of women’s suffrage were especially vocal at the start. 

A cartoon (fig. 20) from 1859 showing a woman giving a speech as a group of men 

seem to jeer and protest is a good early example. The cartoon’s title reads, “Ye May 

session of ye woman’s rights convention—ye orator of ye day denouncing ye lords of 

creation.”38 “Lords of Creation” is a clear reference to the imagined speaker of the 

poem “The Times That Try Men’s Souls,” which was read at the women’s rights 

convention in Rochester, New York, in 1848. The women in the illustration are 

portrayed with sneering, haughty expressions, and their femininity is 

overemphasized, through fashion, as if to make them seem out of place. 

Figure 20. “Ye May session of ye 

woman’s rights convention—ye 

orator of ye day denouncing ye lords 

of creation,” Harper’s Weekly, 1859, 

illustration. Courtesy of the Prints 

and Photographs Division, Library of 

Congress, Washington, DC

38 Harper’s Weekly 3, June 11, 1859, 372.
25

Another type of anti-suffrage cartoon popular around midcentury depicted a husband 

who has been neglected by his selfish and uncaring suffragist wife. Currier and Ives 

published a lithograph of this type, The Age of Iron (fig. 21), in 1869. The image is 

quite direct: it shows a hapless man sewing and sitting next to a baby in a cradle 

while a male servant does the family’s laundry nearby. Meanwhile, the man’s wife 

turns away from them as she enters a waiting coach.

Figure 21. Currier and Ives, The Age 

of Iron, 1869, New York, lithograph, 

Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division Washington, DC
26

Anti-suffrage illustrations continued in this vein for decades, growing more vocal and 

critical as the movement grew. An example from 1880 (fig. 22) includes eight 

different images, each of which uses a slightly different approach to criticize the 

suffragists. In each of the images, women act and dress like men, resulting in such 

adverse outcomes as men being left alone to tend to children and housework, 

women voting for politicians based on how handsome they are, and women 

behaving in generally unbecoming and unladylike ways.

Figure 22. Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, 

A Female Suffrage Fancy, Puck, 

1880, cartoon, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Washington, DC

In spite of the fact that anti-suffrage cartoons and illustrations were common during 

the 19th century, pro-suffrage imagery also contributed to the visual discourse. Two 

noteworthy examples from the 1880s celebrate the early rights of women to vote in 

the U.S. In New Jersey, voting had initially been legal for women before that right 

was revoked. Artist Howard Pyle commemorated this in his Women at the Polls in 

the Good Old Times (fig 23). Similarly, supporters of the movement called attention 

to the fact that women in the western U.S. were given the vote ahead of the rest of 

the country. Woman Suffrage in Wyoming Territory (fig. 24) celebrates the fact that 

women in Wyoming territory had suffrage since 1869.

These early examples foreshadow the art that would be produced for—as well as 

against—the women’s suffrage movement in the coming decades. By the beginning 

of the 20th century, the women’s suffrage movement had built a sturdy foundation, 

supported in no small part by the poetry, music, fashion, and art that made the 

movement meaningful to many different kinds of people. As the movement entered 

the new century, it built upon those foundations to make something that was both 

powerful and beautiful—visual art and poetry that would captivate and change minds 

the world over.
27

Figure 23. Howard Pyle, Women 

at the Polls in the Good Old 

Times, Harper’s Weekly, 1880, 

hand-colored engraving, from the 

Suffrage Collection of Ann Lewis & 

Mike Sponder

(Following page) Figure 24. Woman 

Suffrage in Wyoming Territory, Frank 

Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1888, 

wood engraving, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division 

Washington, DC
28
29

PART 2: THE SUFFRAGE ART EXPLOSION “The time has 

passed for 

discussion about 

the desirability of 

having the women 

actively participate 

in politics. They are 

in politics, and it is 

their duty to make 

their participation 

effective.... This 

necessarily means 

that much and 

aggressive effort is 

needed to maintain 

their interest, 

and to inform 

them concerning 

issues and public 

problems.” 

FLORENCE 

HARDING

UNITED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE: THE VISUAL INFLUENCE OF 

THE U.K. SUFFRAGETTES

I

n contrast to what was going on in the U.S., the suffrage movement in the United 

Kingdom distinguished itself early on by using the visual arts in a deliberate 

and organized way. Its use of visual art affected the tone and reach of the 

movement both within and well beyond the U.K.’s borders, particularly in the 

United States. One of the main forces driving the creation of visual art in the U.K. 

was the Artists’ Suffrage League (ASL), an informal organization of professional 

women artists who worked to further the cause of women’s suffrage. Their work 

sent powerful messages with bold statements in an easily legible visual language.39

Images such as Emily J. Harding’s Convicts, Lunatics, and Women (fig. 25), which 

shows a woman in a cap and gown caged along with both a socially outcast 

convict and “lunatic,” draws a clear distinction between the woman’s virtue and 

dignity and the “subhuman” status of her companions. A placard in the foreground 

reads, “Convicts and lunatics have no vote for Parliament. Should all women be 

classed with these?” Near the woman’s head is text indicating the woman’s inner 

monologue: “It is time I got out of this place. Where shall I find the key?” The 

dehumanizing of criminals and lunatics is off-putting by modern standards but 

would have been quite affecting and effective visual shorthand when the image 

was made in 1908.

39 Kenneth Florey, Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia: An Illustrated Historical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 

2013), 75, 141–42.
30
31

(Opposite page) Figure 25. Emily 

J. Harding, Convicts, Lunatics, and 

Women!, 1908, poster, Schlesinger 

Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard 

University

Other images produced by the ASL, most notably those by founder Mary Lowndes, 

used personifications of Justice to make a similar point. In her Justice at the Door 

(fig. 26), suffragists themselves are equated with the figure of Justice, who is 

denied equal rights. The image uses text to strengthen the message. Blind Justice 

herself stands at the door of the House of Commons, with the words “Justice—at 

the door: I, surely am not excluded” written under her feet. The imagery in all 

of these ASL posters is easily understood and had a powerful effect. Many of the 

ASL’s illustrations were published in the British newspaper Votes for Women, which 

had a wide reach and thus tremendous potential to affect opinion. At its peak the 

newspaper had a circulation of more than 30,000, including readers in the U.S. 

Figure 26. Mary Lowndes, Justice at 

the Door, Artists’ Suffrage League, 

1912, poster
32

Another suffrage arts organization, the Suffrage Atelier, was formed just two years 

after the Artists’ Suffrage League in 1909. It employed both professional and amateur 

artists; paying them a percentage of the sales profits for their work allowed many 

women to gain a foothold in the professional arts world. Most of the atelier’s work 

found its way onto postcards that circulated widely in the U.K. to support the 

movement.40 The atelier also produced posters, such as the 1913 What a Woman May 

Be (fig. 27). The poster consists of two rows of five images. The top row, labeled 

“What a Woman may be and yet not have the Vote,” shows a distinguished row of 

women representing the following positions: mayor, nurse, mother, doctor or 

teacher, and factory hand. The lower row, headed with the words “What a Man may 

have been & yet not lose the Vote,” depicts five men of lesser positions: convict, 

lunatic, proprietor of white slaves, unfit for service, and drunkard. The message is 

straightforward and effective. 

Figure 27. Suffrage Atelier, What a 

Woman May Be, and yet Not Have 

the Vote, 1913, poster, Schlesinger 

Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard 

University

40 Florey, 143.
33

Suffrage groups frequently held poster competitions, the winners of which were 

widely circulated. The subjects of these contests usually referenced current political 

debates in England. For example, Dora Meeson Coates won a poster contest 

in 1907 for her work Political Help. The image shows the wife of John Bull (the 

British equivalent of America’s “Uncle Sam”) refusing to feed her “children,” who 

bear labels such as “Trade Unions,” until she herself has been fed. The familiar 

domestic scene made into a scathing political metaphor was easily understood and 

sent a message with a powerful emotional impact.

Coates’ image was one of seven British posters purchased by the National 

American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1911 for inclusion in its 

Woman’s Journal, where they were reprinted and advertised for sale. Clearly the 

suffrage movement in America was aware of the powerful visual imagery being 

generated across the Atlantic and sought to channel the power of these images 

into their own campaigns at home. The six other posters included in the Woman’s 

Journal were just as potent as Coates’, although they touched on different political 

messages and each used different visual language.41 Those six posters were Factory 

Acts by Emily Ford, What’s Sauce for the Gander Is Sauce for the Goose by Mary 

Sargent Florence, Votes for Workers by W. F. Winter, Handicapped by Duncan 

Grant, Coming In With the Tide/Mrs. Paddington, by Emily J. Harding Andrews, 

and Won’t You Let Me Help You, John? by John Harvey Drew.42

Most of these images emphasize the absurdity and injustice of gender inequality—

although they come at that message from distinct perspectives. Mary Sargent 

Florence’s What’s Sauce for the Gander (fig. 28) makes use of the popular 

expression about parity to make a point about women’s rights. She depicts two 

geese in her illustration; one eats from a bowl marked “votes” as it spurns the 

other goose from the bowl. Bringing a widely used expression into the context of 

women’s suffrage and visually connecting it to the issue of votes helped to make it 

seem absurd that women were not permitted to vote. 

Duncan Grant’s Handicapped (fig. 29) takes another approach, calling attention 

to the tremendous injustice of inequality. He shows a woman doing the hard work 

of rowing a boat (in the direction of the Houses of Parliament) as a massive wave 

threatens to overtake her boat. Riding atop that same wave is a sailboat with a 

sail labelled “votes.” Unlike the struggling woman, the man in the sailboat leans 

back nearly nonchalantly, trailing his hand in the water and letting the wind move 

his vote-advantaged boat toward the same destination. Grant graphically and 

dramatically renders the disparity in their positions. This poster was an enormously 

effective image in broadcasting a larger message about voting rights and 

inequality.

41 Florey, 153.

42 See Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907–14 (Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press, 1988), 250.

(Following pages ) Figure 28 (on 

left). Mary Sargent Florence, What’s 

Sauce for the Gander Is Sauce 

for the Goose, 1907–18, poster, 

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University. 

Figure 29 (on right). Duncan Grant, 

Handicapped, 1907–18, poster, 

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University
34
35
36

Another affecting poster was Emily J. Harding Andrews’ Coming in With the Tide

(fig. 30), which rather than focusing on inequality calls attention to the futility of 

fighting women’s suffrage. Her image seems to say the battle is all but won for the 

suffragettes: an older, anti-suffrage woman stands at her front stoop, pointlessly 

sweeping the incoming tide away as it washes up against and floods her house. 

The “tide” here, of course, is women’s suffrage, and the words “womens suffrage” 

[sic], “votes,” and “votes for women” are stylistically used to create the wave 

patterns of the tide encroaching on the house. To drive the message home, a boat 

marked “womens suffrage” [sic] carrying a group of young women, sails toward 

the older woman’s house along with the rising tide. In contrast to the women on 

the sailboat, the older woman looks tired and desperate, the words “Coming in 

with the tide indeed! I’LL SOON STOP THEIR TIDE!!” pasted on the wall behind 

her. Andrews is yet another ASL artist who used art to suggest the absurdity of not 

allowing women to vote. Her image deftly communicated a powerful message in a 

visual format that took but an instant to “read” and understand.

We know there was strong demand for these posters in the U.S. because after their 

initial publication in the Woman’s Journal, NAWSA sold even more ASL posters 

in their national catalogue that was published just a few years later. There is also 

evidence that these posters influenced public opinion. In the U.K., restrictions were 

put into effect regulating which ASL images could be shown where, since they 

depicted a distinctly unflattering view of British government.43 

There were other examples of art created in Britain beyond the seven initially 

sold by NAWSA that also had a lasting effect on the suffrage arts of the U.S. For 

example, Caroline Watts created her iconic image The Bugler Girl (fig. 31) for the 

ASL in 1908 to promote a suffrage rally. Her “bugler” became something of an 

emblem for women’s suffrage, especially in the U.S. where artists borrowed from it. 

The moving image combines motifs from militaristic and classical art, creating an 

allegorical figure of Liberty in the service of justice.

Between the arrival of the seven ASL posters on American soil and the general 

profusion of suffrage imagery coming out of the U.K. in the first decade of the 

twentieth century, the tenor of the women’s suffrage movement in the U.S. also 

began to change. As women continued to fight for suffrage, American artists built 

on their awareness of this new visual language and began to make more of their 

own striking images to use in the fight for the rights of American women. Soon, 

suffrage art was being created on a massive scale that amounted to an organized 

campaign of visual propaganda. Art was changing the way people viewed the 

issue of suffrage. And how could it not? Suffrage art so saturated American culture 

that it became almost unavoidable. As we’ll see in the next section, the women’s 

suffrage movement began to use the visual arts in almost every conceivable way, 

taking the debate out of the convention halls and protest rallies and bringing it into 

American women’s private lives, even those less politically engaged. The spark of 

the movement was turning into a blaze.

43 Florey, 153.

(Opposite page) Figure 30. Emily J. 

Harding Andrews, Coming In with the 

Tide, 1907–18, poster, Schlesinger 

Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard 

University
37
38
39

(Opposite page) Figure 31. Caroline 

Watts, The Bugler Girl, 1908, poster, 

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University

VISUAL ART PROPELS THE AMERICAN MOVEMENT

In the first decade of the 20th century, invigorated by the vitality of the U.K. suffrage 

movement, the U.S. women’s right to vote campaign assumed an even more 

visible presence in American culture. Via mass-market prints, such as cartoons and 

illustrations, as well as the high arts formats of painting and sculpture, suffragists 

used art to persuasively make the case for the equality of women. Many artists, of 

course, also used these outlets to argue against women’s suffrage.

Magazine and newspaper illustrations, some of the first avenues for suffrage-related 

visual art, were now widespread at the start of the 20th century. Whereas previously 

an image may have only been published in a magazine or newspaper, now it might 

appear in different forms, including posters or the novel medium of postcards. 

Images were also now being simultaneously printed in multiple formats. 

Figure 32. Woman Suffrage 

Party of New York City, Paupers, 

Lunatics, Criminals, and Idiots, ca. 

1910, postcard. From the Suffrage 

Collection of Dr. Kenneth Florey
40

Many of the illustrations made in the first decades of the 20th century were clearly 

influenced by suffrage arts in the U.K. Specifically, several surviving examples show 

that American artists borrowed the theme of contrasting “lesser” kinds of people 

who are denied the vote with its dignified heroines. The postcard Paupers, Lunatics, 

Criminals, and Idiots (fig. 32) made for the Woman Suffrage Party of New York is 

very similar to Emily J. Harding’s Convicts, Lunatics, and Women, made just a few 

years earlier for the ASL in the U.K. Instead of a cage, however, here a woman 

stands close to the disenfranchised, looking toward a building resembling the U.S. 

Capitol. The words “We pray you to remove your women constituents from the 

disenfranchised class of paupers, lunatics, criminals and idiots . . .” emphasize the 

postcard’s message. Linked Together by the Law (fig. 33) by May Wilson Preston, 

shows a dignified young woman and a small child chained to two men, presumably a 

convict and a “lunatic.”

Figure 33. May Wilson Preston, 

Linked Together by the Law, 1911, 

postcard. Courtesy of Special 

Collections and Archives, Virginia 

Commonwealth University Libraries. 

Online: Social Welfare History 

Image Portal

The dignity of the woman and child are, of course, contrasted with the indignity of 

their companions. A broadside (fig. 34) published by the Women’s Political Union 

took the same approach in its attempt to call attention to the injustice of New York 

voting laws. The text beneath the image addresses the injustice of allowing former 

convicts to vote while denying that right to women. The image shows two different 

types of women: an educated woman in a cap and gown and an idealized mother 

with a baby. Both women are being physically held back from voting by a police 

officer proclaiming, “Stand back, Ladies!” in order to allow a line of men wearing 

striped prison uniforms to drop their votes in the ballot box.
41

Figure 34. Women’s Political Union, 

Votes for Women, 1911, broadside, 

Library of Congress, Miller NAWSA 

Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, 

Rare Book And Special Collections 

Division, Washington, DC

Another broadside, The Trumpeter Awaking New York (fig. 35), produced by the 

Women’s Political Union for New York City, borrows directly from Caroline Watts’ 

Bugler Girl (see fig. 31) and depicts a female bugler in a distinctly American context. 

Bearing a flag with five stars, representing the five states where women enjoyed 

suffrage at the time, she is trumpeting the battle call to New York women. The 

caption under the image reads, “The trumpeter realizing all the achievements of the 

women of the past, bearing a banner which in the number of the stars emblazoned 

on it suggests the five States in which women have won political freedom, calls in 

bugle notes upon the women of New York to march on May sixth in solemn protest 

against their continued disfranchisement.” This was but one of many instances of 

Watts’ Bugler Girl being adopted and serving as shorthand for women’s suffrage.
42
43

(Opposite page) Figure 35. Women’s 

Political Union, Trumpeter Awakening 

New York, 1911, broadside, Library 

of Congress, Miller NAWSA Suffrage 

Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, Rare Book 

and Special Collections Division, 

Washington, DC

Figure 36. Clifford K. Berryman, 

illustration, 1900, postcard. From the 

Suffrage Collection of Dr. Kenneth 

Florey

While these new cartoons borrowed messaging from their U.K. sisters, the earlier 

tradition of the newspaper-style political cartoon also persisted—and flourished. 

Such images were less focused on big ideas and were more concerned with making 

acute political critiques. One striking example, an illustration (fig. 36) by Pulitzer 

Prize-winning cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman, critiques the common political usage 

of the term “the people.” The image shows President Roosevelt declaring, “Let the 

people rule!” A group of men carry a sign reading, “We’re the people,” while the 

sign hoisted by a group of animals reads, “We’re the animals.” A group of women 

excluded from either category carry a sign reading, “We’re what?”
44

Figure 37. Illustrations, Library of 

Congress, Miller NAWSA Suffrage 

Scrapbooks, 1897-1911, Rare Book 

and Special Collections Division, 

Washington, DC

A pair of similar cartoons (fig. 37) survives from a NAWSA scrapbook collection. 

In Woman’s Sphere, a woman peers over a fence in a walled-in space marked 

“Woman’s sphere,” neglecting her toys—a doll labelled “fashion” and a top labelled 

“gossip.” The cartoon’s caption reads, “Woman Devotes Her Time to Gossip and 

Clothes Because She Has Nothing Else to Talk About. Give Her Broader Interests 

and She Will Cease to Be Vain and Frivolous.” Although the image supports the 

broadening of the concept of the “woman’s sphere,” it is damning in its perception 

of contemporary woman. The other image is less pointed; it shows a fashionable 

young woman pushing a baby carriage as she casts her vote.
45

Still another set of surviving clippings (fig. 38) from the NAWSA Suffrage 

Scrapbooks shows the more journalistic side of newspaper cartoons: prominent 

suffrage leaders are depicted alongside laudatory text about the suffrage movement, 

and another clipping shows a woman’s suffrage meeting in New York City.

Naturally, there continued to be naysayers and they contributed to the flourishing 

visual discourse with their own illustrations. Such anti-suffrage imagery was especially 

widespread in the form of postcards. By the turn of the century, postcards were quite 

a popular new print medium; people collected them and displayed them in their 

homes.44 Illustrations and cartoons initially published elsewhere often subsequently 

appeared on these fashionable new cards, but many images were also specifically 

produced with this format in mind. 

Figure 38. “Give Us the Ballot”, 

New York Press, 1909, clipping 

illustrations. Courtesy of the Rare 

Book and Special Collections 

Division, Library of Congress, 

Washington, DC

44 Florey, 115.
46
47

(Opposite page, clockwise from top 

left) Figure 39. Suffragette Series 

No 11: I Want to Vote, but My Wife 

Won’t Let Me. 

Figure 40. Suffragette Series No 7: 

Election Day. 

Figure 41. Suffragette Series No 6: 

Uncle Sam, Suffragee. 

Figure 42. Suffragette Series No 1: 

Suffragette Madonna. 

All by the Dunston-Weiler 

Lithograph Company, New York, 

1909, postcard, Catherine H. 

Palczewski Suffrage Postcard 

Archive, University of Northern 

Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa

Commercial companies often created postcards in series, and one of the most popular 

sets of anti-suffrage postcards was produced by Dunston-Weiler Lithograph Company 

in 1909. The “Suffragette Series,” as it was called, consisted of 12 postcards, all 

relying on the subversion of gender roles, a trope wielded by anti-suffragettes since 

the movement’s early days. Some of the most notable examples are I Want to Vote but 

My Wife Won’t Let Me (fig. 39), Election Day (fig. 40), Uncle Sam, Suffragee (fig. 41), 

Suffragette Madonna (fig. 42), and Suffragette Vote-Getting (fig. 43). Cards like these, 

issued in sets, were the most popular, and as they were publicly circulated, clearly 

played a prominent role in the women’s suffrage debate.45 Indeed, as one scholar 

points out, the popularity of postcards in the early 20th century “rivals the power of the 

internet in contemporary times.”46

Although the anti-suffragists were prolific producers of postcards, so were those in 

favor of suffrage. Women’s suffrage groups first began using postcards as an easy way 

to spread textual information, 

especially regarding 

organization meetings. These 

cards, however, were purely 

text-based and did not 

include graphic art. Another 

type of pro-suffrage 

postcard—quite popular, 

especially for its use of new, 

exciting technology—was the 

photo card. 

Photo cards were often 

event-specific, created to 

commemorate an event such 

as a meeting or march.47

Suffragists also created 

“message cards” postcards 

with visual images and 

propagandistic messaging. 

Suffrage historian Kenneth 

Florey calls these “an 

extremely effective form of 

advertising and persuasion 

to the general public.” Florey 

also points out that these prosuffrage cards were widely 

available: advertised in 

publications, sold in-person 

and via mail order, and 

distributed at rallies.48

45 Florey, 131.

46 “Postcard History,” Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive (website), https://sites.uni.edu/palczews/postcard_

archive.html#fn4.

47 See Florey, 115–24; and “Postcard History.”

48 Florey 117–18.

Figure 43. Suffragette Series No 4: 

Suffragette Vote-Getting. DunstonWeiler Lithograph Company, New 

York, 1909, postcard, Catherine 

H. Palczewski Suffrage Postcard 

Archive, University of Northern Iowa, 

Cedar Falls, Iowa
48
49

(Opposite page, clockwise from top 

left) Figure 44. National American 

Woman Suffrage Association, The 

Blot on the Escutcheon, 1910, 

postcard, Catherine H. Palczewski 

Suffrage Postcard Archive, University 

of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. 

Figure 45. Votes for Women, 1913, 

postcard, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC. 

Figure 46. National Woman Suffrage 

Publishing Company, Give Mother the 

Vote, We Need It, New York, undated, 

poster, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University

NAWSA was one of the leading producers of message cards, and their messaging 

was concise and effective, as The Blot on the Escutcheon (fig. 44) shows. In this 

postcard there is quite 

literally a “blot” on the 

American federal 

shield, that blot being 

the fact that “the ballot 

is denied to woman.” 

Suffrage debates acted 

out by cute boys and 

girls was another 

popular postcard 

theme. Votes for Women

(fig. 45) is an excellent 

example of this type, 

which was especially 

favored because it 

made the suffrage 

debates seem 

harmless.49 Many 

postcards also used 

babies to request the 

vote for their mothers, 

appealing to the idea 

that a mother should 

undeniably have legal 

input into how her child 

is fed, schooled, and 

raised. A perfect 

example of this category 

is Give Mother the Vote

(fig. 46), which shows a 

group of babies 

marching with a flag 

reading, “Votes For Our 

Mothers.” They further 

explain their request in 

the text below them: 

“Our food, our health, 

our play, our homes, 

our school, our work are ruled by men’s votes. Isn’t it a funny thing that father 

cannot see why mother ought to have a vote on how these things should be? Think 

it over.”

Postcards were one of the most prominent and beloved modes of pro-suffrage 

messaging, but these sorts of images were also featured in other kinds of massmarket products, from buttons and badges to paper napkins. The calendar was 

one of the first such kinds of suffrage ephemera. The Collegiate Equal Suffrage 

Figure 47. Collegiate Equal 

Suffrage League of New York, 

“Woman Suffrage Calendar, 1910,” 

advertisement card. Courtesy of the 

Rare Book and Special Collections 

Division, Library of Congress, 

Washington, DC

49 Florey, 115–16.
50

League of New York State sold one, containing “450 pertinent quotations,” in 

1910 (fig. 47). It uses the simple visual devices of scales and classical architectural 

columns to allude to the American legal system as well as to the abstract concept of 

justice, supplemented by the text, “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” Set 

within this imagery the names of the states Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado 

surround the central image, a reminder of the fact that women could vote in those 

four states, and an appeal to bring such justice to the rest of the country. 

Figure 48. “Suffrage Stamp,” 1902, 

clipping and stamp. Courtesy of the 

Rare Book and Special Collections 

Division, Library of Congress, 

Washington, DC

Suffrage imagery also began to appear on the suffrage stamp, which borrowed 

from the 19th-century tradition of using political stamps in support of a political 

candidate.50 An early example (fig. 48) archived in the Miller NAWSA Suffrage 

Scrapbooks at the Library of Congress shows a woman wearing a cap and gown 

standing next to a placard that reads, “In Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho 

women vote on equal terms with men.” The clipping accompanying this stamp in 

the Library of Congress provides an explanation for how it could be used: “These 

stamps will be placed on the lower left-hand corner of letters sent by those who 

believe in political equality.”

To elevate the cause of women’s suffrage, more and more trained artists were 

producing works that could be used as part of the mass-market print culture of 

posters, postcards, and pamphlets as well as artworks on their own.

50 Florey, 175.

(Opposite page) Figure 49. Evelyn 

Rumsey Cary, Woman’s Suffrage, 

1905, oil painting, Schlesinger 

Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard 

University
51
52

One early example is the 1905 oil painting Woman’s Suffrage by Evelyn Rumsey 

Cary (fig. 49). Cary was a native of Buffalo, New York. Although little is known of 

her early artistic career, she established a modest name for herself as a painter. 

She rose to fame overnight in 1901 when she painted The Spirit of Niagara, 

depicting Niagara Falls in the form of a woman. Cary’s painting became the official 

emblem of the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, and more than 100,000 copies 

of her image were printed and distributed around the country in anticipation of this 

spectacular World’s Fair.51 Having used the female form as allegory to masterful 

effect in that painting, Cary later used this skill in Woman’s Suffrage, featuring a 

female figure whose flowing dress and laurel crown reference classical antiquity. 

Morphing into a tree, she sprouts branches from her fingertips and roots at her 

feet. Cary thus lends the figure authority by associating her with classical values 

and virtues while also making her into an iconic Mother Nature figure. Placing her 

in front of a classical building suggested the importance of women’s involvement in 

the country’s most important institutions. Cary also references the story of Daphne 

and Apollo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an archetypal subject in art history. The 

story of the Greek goddess being turned into a tree as a means of evading the 

unwanted romantic pursuit of the god Apollo has obvious feminist undertones. 

That Cary references this story in the context of a painting about women’s suffrage 

seems significant. Further strengthening the message of this already powerful 

image is the Biblical quotation from Proverbs 31:31: “Give her of the fruit of 

her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.” Cary’s painting was 

reproduced in posters, pamphlets, magazine covers, and other formats. For 

example, a copy of the painting graced the back cover of the Woman Citizen

in 1918. Cary’s tremendously popular image became an important icon for the 

American suffrage movement.52

Bertha Margaret Boyé of Oakland, California, created another iconic work of art 

with her Votes for Women poster (fig. 50) in 1911. Her image was selected as the 

winner for a 1911 poster contest hosted by the San Francisco College Equal 

Suffrage League in support of suffrage rights in California.53 Boyé’s image is at 

once bold and subtle. She depicts a woman standing in front of San Francisco’s 

bay and hills. The sun creates a halo around her head, and gently sloping hills rise 

up on either side of her shoulders, creating the appearance of a religious icon. 

Boyé’s treatment of the woman’s body is such that most of it appears flattened and 

transparent, blending in with the water in the foreground of this scenic, striking 

landscape. At her head and shoulders, however, she takes on greater threedimensionality, seeming to meld into the robust California hillside. The neckline of 

her dress perfectly matches up with the shoreline at the base of the hills on either 

side of her, creating the illusion of a bridge between them. As with Cary’s image, 

this figure is physically rooted to the land in which she is depicted. The image was 

displayed in storefronts all over San Francisco in the week leading up to the vote, 

which was ultimately successful, giving California women suffrage in 1911. The 

51 “Evelyn Rumsey Cary, 1855–1924,” The History of Buffalo, New York (website), https://buffaloah.com/h/

carye/carye.html. 

52 “Evelyn Rumsey Cary ‘Woman Suffrage’ Poster, ca. 1905,” appraisal transcript, Antiques Roadshow: 

Discovering America’s Hidden Treasures (website), PBS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/13/hartfordct/appraisals/woman-suffrage-poster-ca-1905--200806A31/.

53 Kate Clarke Lemay, Votes for Women!: A Portrait of Persistence (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 

Smithsonian Institution, 2019), 186.

(Opposite page) Figure 50. Bertha 

Margaret Boyé, Votes for Women, 

Sierra Art Engraving Co. Press and 

Hansen Company, 1911, poster, 

Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University
53
54

image was reproduced and used by suffrage campaigns across the country until 

federal suffrage was won nine years later.54

The artist Cornelia Cassady-Davis produced an extremely popular poster (fig. 51) for 

the Ohio “Votes for Women” campaign in 1912 using imagery and techniques similar 

to those used by Boyé in her successful California poster.55 Cassady-Davis’ woman 

stands in front of a group of hills, her shoulders and head blending into the landscape. 

Like Boyé’s woman, 

this woman’s head is 

also framed by the 

sun, creating a halo 

effect. At either side 

of her are sheaves of 

wheat, symbolic of 

the earth’s abundance. 

Like most successful 

posters, this image 

was printed on 

many different kinds 

of suffrage items, 

including postcards.

The use of a woman 

within an allegorical 

context became a 

recurring theme in 

much of the prosuffrage imagery 

of the early 20th 

century. Indeed, it 

became something 

of a shorthand for 

the twin ideals of 

justice and virtue 

as associated with 

the suffrage cause. 

This kind of imagery 

appeared throughout 

the movement from 

the work of woman 

cartoonists to posters 

to campaign fliers and 

pamphlets. 

Figure 51. Cornelia Cassady-Davis, 

Let Ohio Women Vote, 1912, 

postcard. From the Suffrage 

Collection of Dr. Kenneth Florey

54 Robert P. J. Cooney Jr., “California Women Suffrage Centennial: A Brief Summary of the 1911 Campaign,” 

Alex Padilla, California Secretary of State (website), https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/celebrating-womens-suffrage/

california-women-suffrage-centennial/. 

55 “Let Ohio Women Vote Postcard,” Ohio History Connection Selections (website), https://ohiomemory.org/

digital/collection/p267401coll32/id/16226/. 

(Opposite page) Figure 52. Broad 

Street Theatre Philadelphia, 

“suffrage plays matinee,” 1911, 

poster, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University
55
56

Figure 53. Ella Buchanan, The 

Suffragist Arousing Her Sisters, 

statuette, The Elman Art Company, 

1911, postcard, Catherine H. 

Palczewski Suffrage Postcard 

Archive, University of Northern Iowa, 

Cedar Falls, Iowa

Theatrical work and its advertising were also conduits for the cause. Actors not only 

performed in feminist-minded plays but also wrote and performed in suffrage shows 

written and inspired by movement members and supporters.56 A poster advertising a 

matinee performance of “suffrage plays” at the Broad Street Theater in Philadelphia 

(fig. 52) is also a beautiful work of art in the tradition of artists like Cary, Boyé, and 

Cassady-Davis, featuring a woman in classical garb standing atop the earth in front of 

Philadelphia’s famed Liberty Bell—a clear reference to the liberty sought by 

suffragists. As the graphic arts had begun to blossom in the early 20th century, even 

advertisements like this were carefully crafted and borrowed themes from the history 

of art to inspire its audience.

56 Introduction to On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement, ed. Bettina Friedl (Boston: 

Northeastern University Press, 1987), 7–9.
57

Even the field of sculpture entered into the conversation about women’s suffrage. The 

sculptor Ella Buchanan’s contribution had a wide reach in the movement. She 

sculpted The Suffragist Arousing Her Sisters (fig. 53) in 1911. As with so much of the 

art being produced for the suffrage movement in this era, her work borrows from 

allegorical tropes used over centuries of art history to connect the cause of women’s 

suffrage to some of the great and just causes of human history. The woman in the 

center of the group is the suffragist, blowing her metaphoric horn to awaken her 

sisters. The downtrodden figures around her represent the concepts of Degradation, 

Vanity, Conventionality, and the Wage Earner, all of whom rely on the suffragist to lift 

them up.57 Buchanan’s sculpture also references Caroline Watts’ famous Bugler Girl, 

which originated in the U.K. and 

became something of a suffrage 

icon in the U.S. Buchanan’s work 

actively circulated in the form of 

suffrage merchandise, from 

photographs that were printed on 

postcards to cast statuette 

replicas.58

The first decades of the 20th 

century were also notable for the 

rise of the woman cartoonist. A 

number of trained women artists—

who were also suffragists—were 

recognized for their talents 

and published in newspapers 

and magazines around the 

country. Most importantly, these 

cartoons were not one-offs; many 

artists were valued enough that 

they were retained as regular 

contributors, enabling them the 

latitude to develop a distinct 

creative style and messaging 

aesthetic. Lou Rogers was one of 

the most notable of these early 

woman cartoonists, and one of 

the very first American women 

to make a career as a cartoonist. 

She was also a suffragist who was 

actively involved in the National 

Woman Suffrage Association.59

She regularly contributed to the 

Woman’s Journal among other 

publications and was eventually 

57 Florey, 181.

58 Florey.

59 Maren Williams, “She Changed Comics: Lou Rogers, Advocate for Women’s Rights,” Comic Book League 

Defense Fund (website), March 17, 2017, http://cbldf.org/2017/03/she-changed-comics-lou-rogers-advocate-forwomens-rights/.

Figure 54. Lou Rogers, Tearing off 

the Bonds, Judge magazine, 1912, 

cartoon
58

hired as the main cartoonist 

for Judge magazine’s “Modern 

Woman” section.60

It is easy to see why Rogers 

enjoyed such a successful 

career. Her images are not 

only appealing but they also 

are suffused with a sense of 

empowerment. The women in 

her cartoons in Judge

magazine all take decisive 

action to correct whatever 

wrong they are being faced 

with, literally breaking free 

from shackles, disciplining 

bad politicians, vacuuming 

away old-fashioned ideas, and 

engaging in other 

empowering activities (see 

figs. 54–57). Rogers also 

created satirical images, like 

her Dispossessed (fig. 58) in 

which a hen appears at a 

“government demonstration” 

on “how to run a nest without 

waste” and finds a rooster 

there. In an article in Cartoons 

magazine in 1913 that featured 

this young cartoonist who was 

“destined to win battles for the 

Woman’s Movement,” Rogers 

quite tellingly said, “Better 

than almost any other medium, 

the picture can make a woman 

see the truth about the 

conditions into which her 

daughter and her neighbor’s 

daughter go, and into which, 

through changes of 

circumstances, she herself may 

be forced to go.”61 

Figure 55. Lou Rogers, Welding 

the Missing Link, Judge magazine, 

1912, cartoon

Figure 56. Lou Rogers, Transferring 

the Mother Habit to Politics, Judge

magazine, 1914, cartoon

60 Williams.

61 “A Woman Destined to Do Big 

Things: Her Unique Point of View in an 

Entirely New Field,” Cartoons 3, no. 2 

(February 1913): 76–77.
59

Figure 57. Lou Rogers, Rushing the 

Growlers, Judge magazine, 1913, 

cartoon

Rogers was but one of many cartoonists who rose to fame in the 20th century. 

Blanche Ames Ames, like Rogers, was a trained artist and passionate suffragist 

whose cartoons were published in suffrage magazines. Ames would become an art

editor for the Woman’s Journal in 1915. Unsurprisingly, her cartoons are incisive 

and often stinging, as in Meanwhile They Drown (fig. 59). Cartoons like Double the 

Power of the Home (fig. 60), however, show Ames’ range; when necessary, she 

could make her point in sentimental images that were less pointed. A number of 

women joined the ranks of professional cartoonists in the 1910s, and their work 

contributed to changing perceptions of women and women’s suffrage, helping 

change public opinion in myriad far-reaching and subtle ways. 
60

Figure 58. Lou Rogers, Dispossessed, 

1911, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe 

Institute, Harvard University, 

lithograph

Figure 59. Blanche Ames Ames, 

Meanwhile They Drown, 1915, cartoon. 

Courtesy of Special Collections and 

Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social 

Welfare History Image Portal

(Opposite page) Figure 60. Blanche 

Ames Ames, Double the Power of 

the Home, 1915, cartoon. Courtesy 

of Special Collections and Archives, 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

Libraries. Online: Social Welfare 

History Image Portal
61
62

20TH-CENTURY SUFFRAGE POETRY 

Figure 61. Woman Suffrage Party 

of New York City, Cover of Mother 

Goose as a Suffragette, 1912, 

booklet of suffrage-themed poems, 

Schlesinger Library on the History of 

Women in America

Wielding the 

spoken and written 

word since the 

earliest days of the 

movement, 

American 

suffragists 

continued to 

innovate how and 

where they could 

spread their 

message. Art 

increasingly 

became a 

component in that 

effort. Turn-of-thecentury illustrators 

now frequently 

collaborated with 

their writer 

colleagues, 

combining their 

subversive 

commentary with a 

newfound visual 

confidence. One 

apt example of this 

is the book Mother 

Goose as a 

Suffragette, 

published by the 

New York State 

Woman Suffrage 

Party in 1912 (fig. 61). While it is, as the New York Times described it, “a pretty 

book for children,” it is demonstrably more than that. A retelling of the Mother 

Goose stories through a pro-suffrage lens, the book pairs each poem with a 

whimsical drawing. The famous Hickory Dickory Dock nursery rhyme, for 

example, is changed as follows:

Dickory, dickory, dub,

The mouse ran under the tub. 

He stays there yet,

For a suffragette

Is after him with a club.
63

The pairing of engaging visual images with poetry also became a feature of many 

suffrage postcards, such as these two cards produced by the Equal Suffrage 

League of Virginia in 1912 (figs. 62 and 63).The first postcard featured the 

anonymous poem “The Awakening.”62

Figure 62. Equal Suffrage League 

of Virginia, “The Awakening,” 

1912, postcard. Courtesy of Special 

Collections and Archives, Virginia 

Commonwealth University Libraries. 

Online: Social Welfare History 

Image Portal

62 “The Awakening,” suffrage postcard, published by the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, Virginia 

Commonwealth University Libraries, Social Welfare History Project (website), https://images.socialwelfare.library.vcu.

edu/items/show/66.
64

The second postcard featured the writing of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (with artwork 

by Corneille Clarke). The poem, “Woman’s Hour,” is short but powerful, and 

touches on some of the issues dearest to Gilman’s heart: 

Not for herself! Though sweet the air of freedom,

Not for herself! Though dear the newborn power,

But for the child who needs a nobler mother,

For the whole people needing one another,

Comes woman to her hour.”63

Through this widespread distribution Gilman’s captivating words were given the 

chance to spread, and her words captivated people, since her bold voice matched 

the turbulence of the historical moment.

Gilman was one of the most prominent suffrage literary voices emerging at the turn 

of the 20th century. A New England native, Gilman was a passionate advocate for 

women’s rights, even arguing for women’s financial independence and the shared 

responsibility for childrearing and housework, unlike many suffragists.64 She was a 

prolific writer, publishing short stories, novels, essays, nonfiction books about 

gender and society, and poetry. Her most famous work, the short story The Yellow 

Wallpaper (1892), examines the mental strain of motherhood and the confines of the 

traditional domestic world, and is one of the most important early American literary 

works to present these issues. 

Figure 63. Equal Suffrage League of 

Virginia, “Woman’s Hour,” 1912, 

postcard. Special Collections and 

Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social 

Welfare History Image Portal

63 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Woman’s Hour,” suffrage postcard, published by the Equal Suffrage League of 

Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries, Social Welfare History Project (website), https://images.

socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/items/show/65.

64 Kate Bolick, introduction to The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

(New York: Penguin 2019), vii–xi.
65

By the last decade of the 19th century, Gilman shifted her focus entirely to women’s 

issues, publishing a number of books on gender issues, including Concerning 

Children in 1900 and The Home: Its Work and Influence in 1903.65 Where her 

passion for women’s equality had its greatest effect, however, was with her 1911 

Suffrage Songs and Verses, a collection of poems advocating for the rights of 

women. The poems, with titles like “The Anti-Suffragists,” “Boys Will Be Boys,” 

“Locked Inside,” and “To the Indifferent Women,” tackle suffrage and feminism 

head-on. Many of the poems in the collection also include critiques of those opposed 

to the cause. In the last stanza of “The Anti-Suffragists,” for example, she describes 

such women as:

A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace, 

Women uniting against womanhood,

And using that great name to hide their sin! 

Vain are their words as that old king’s command

Who set his will against the rising tide.

But who shall measure the historic shame 

Of these poor traitors—traitors are they all—

To great Democracy and Womanhood!66

Another moving poem from the collection, “Song for Equal Suffrage,” takes its 

inspiration from Julia Ward Howe’s famous Civil War-era poem, “The Battle Hymn 

of the Republic,” adapting the inspirational anthem for a suffrage context. The first 

stanza reads:

Day of hope and day of glory! After slavery and woe,

Comes the dawn of woman’s freedom, and the light shall grow and grow

Until every man and woman equal liberty shall know,

In Freedom Marching on!”67

“Song for Equal Suffrage” appropriates the fervor of Howe’s poem, applying it 

directly to the cause of the suffrage movement. 

Another poet whose work aligned with the interests of the movement was a 

contemporary of Gilman’s, Alice Duer Miller (fig. 64). One of her most powerful 

books was the scathing Are Women People?: A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times 

(1915), a collection of satirical poetry from Miller’s weekly column in the New 

York Tribune that bore the same name.68 The title of the column and her book was 

derived from Woodrow Wilson’s claim in a campaign speech that he would return 

“government to the people.” Wilson opposed women’s suffrage, however, and Miller 

honed in on the fact that he clearly meant men when he said people, criticism that 

had been leveled by suffragists before. Miller’s biting and humorous poems were 

65 Kate Bolick, “The Equivocal Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” New York Review of Books, April 1, 2019, 

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/04/01/the-equivocal-legacy-of-charlotte-perkins-gilman/.

66 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Suffrage Songs and Verses (New York: Charlton, 1911), 17–19, digitized at UPenn 

Digital Library, https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gilman/suffrage/suffrage.html.

67 Gilman, Suffrage Songs and Verses, 22.

68 Mary Chapman, “Are Women People? Alice Duer Miller’s Message Still Rings True 100 Years On,” in The 

Conversation (website), December 30, 2015, http://theconversation.com/are-women-people-alice-duer-millersmessage-still-rings-true-100-years-on-52280. 
66

so popular among readers that her column in the New York Tribune was eventually 

moved from the Woman’s Page to the general section for editorials.69

Miller’s poetry breaks from tradition in its use of informal language. Further, her 

use of rhyme and meter seems tongue-in-cheek—used to highlight the absurdity 

of anti-suffragists—as in “Our Idea of Nothing at All,” which was written as a 

rebuttal to a Mr. Webb who stated, “I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not 

opposed to woman.”70

O women, have you heard the news

of charity and grace?

Look, look how joy and gratitude

Are beaming in my face!

For Mr. Webb is not opposed

To woman in her place!

O Mr. Webb, how kind you are

To let us live at all,

To let us light the kitchen range

And tidy up the hall;

To tolerate the female sex

In spite of Adam’s fall.

O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb

Should alter his decree!

Suppose he were opposed to us—

Opposed to you and me.

What would be left for us to do—

Except to cease to be?71

In another section of the book titled “Campaign Material,” she explains why men 

should be denied the vote and also why women should be denied pockets. The 

latter poem, “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women,” reads as follows:

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.

2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did 

they would have them.

3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.

4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the 

additional burden of pockets.

5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to 

whose pockets were to be filled.

6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not 

have to carry all her things in his pockets.

7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the 

face of nature.

8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, 

69 Chapman, “Are Women People?” 

70 Alice Duer Miller, “Our Idea of Nothing at All,” Are Women People?: A Book of Rhymes for Suffrage Times, 

Project Gutenberg eBook, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11689/11689-h/11689-h.htm. 

71 Miller, “Our Idea of Nothing at All.”
67

whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no 

reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.72

Two years later Miller published a follow-up collection of poems titled Women Are 

People, as if in answer to her earlier collection’s question. Like the earlier 

collection, this later work uses humor to tremendous effect in a collection of poems 

lso entertaining to read. 

Miller also wrote more 

traditional poetry. One of her 

most celebrated poems, 

which will be discussed in 

Part Three, follows the 

traditional mode of 19thcentury poetry and was 

paired with an inspiring 

visual image, resulting in 

what is arguably one of the 

most affecting pieces of 

suffragist propaganda ever 

created.

Another important writer 

working on behalf of the 

suffrage movement was 

Katharine Rolston Fisher, 

a passionate and deeply 

involved suffragist, whose 

poetry and essays were 

published in the Suffragist, 

for whom she also worked as 

an editor.73 Her involvement 

in the suffrage movement was 

fearless, and she was even 

arrested for picketing for 

voting rights, serving 30 days 

at the infamous Occoquan 

that makes the case for women’s equality and that is a

Workhouse.74 She wrote several poems while at Occoquan that serve as reflections 

on the injustice of her imprisonment, most famously “The Empty Cup,” whose lines 

“Through the dark, above the rain, rings out a cry. / We listen at the windows. 

(Oh, those cries from punishment cells!)” throb with the misery of the workhouse.75

Other poems were written as tributes to some of the leaders of the movement, most 

Figure 64. Paynter Bros., Alice Duer 

Miller and her son Denning Duer 

Miller, 1900, photograph. From 

the Collection of Macculloch Hall 

Historical Museum, Morristown, 

New Jersey

72 Alice Duer Miller, “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women,” Are Women People?: A Book of Rhymes for 

Suffrage Times, Project Gutenberg eBook, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11689/11689-h/11689-h.htm.

73 “Poetry and the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” Academy of American Poets (website), March 31, 2020, 

https://poets.org/text/poetry-and-womens-suffrage-movement; and “Katharine Rolston Fisher,” Academy of American 

Poets (website), https://poets.org/poet/katharine-rolston-fisher.

74 “Katharine Rolston Fisher,” The Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association (website), 

https://suffragistmemorial.org/about-turning-point-suffragist-memorial/. 

75 Katharine Rolston Fisher, “The Empty Cup,” Academy of American Poets (website), https://poets.org/poem/

empty-cup.
68

notably “Susan B. Anthony” and “Alice Paul” (fig. 65). The latter poem, which was 

published in the Suffragist in 1917, reads:

I watched a river of women,

Rippling purple, white and golden,

Stream toward the National Capitol.

Along its border, 

Like a purple flower floating,

Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike.

All eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers.

Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely,

Few appeared even to see her;

No one saluted her.

Yet commander was she of the column, its leader;

She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river of women

Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol.76

Her poem evokes the 

excitement and sense of 

purpose of the women’s 

marches that became 

such a powerful force 

in the women’s suffrage 

movement at the start of 

the 20th century. Fisher’s 

imagery of a river 

“rippling purple, white 

and golden,” alludes to 

the hordes of women 

who would participate 

in these marches, 

dressed in the official 

colors of the suffrage 

movement: purple 

symbolizing loyalty, white 

symbolizing purity, and 

gold symbolizing light 

and life.77 Fisher’s poetry 

celebrated the victories 

and mourned the 

struggles of the suffrage 

movement, and hers was 

one of the most inspiring 

voices helping to connect American readers to the activity of the movement itself.

Figure 65. Portrait of Suffragist Alice 

Paul, 1913, photograph, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

76 Katharine Rolston Fisher, “Alice Paul,” Academy of American Poets (website), https://poets.org/poem/

alice-paul.

77 “Symbols of the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” National Park Service (website), https://www.nps.gov/

articles/symbols-of-the-women-s-suffrage-movement.htm.
69

Margaret Widdemer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, wrote novels, nonfiction, 

and children’s literature, but was most celebrated for her poetry, which addressed 

pressing social concerns, particularly child labor, which was the primary subject 

of her lauded 1915 book The Factories.

78 Included in that collection was “The 

Woman’s Litany,” which begins: 

Let us in through the guarded gate,

Let us in for our pain’s sake!

Lips set smiling and face made fair

Still for you through the pain we bare,

We have hid till our hearts were sore

Blacker things than you ever bore:

Let us in through the guarded gate, Let us in for our pain’s sake!”79

The refrain Let us in through the guarded gate is repeated throughout the poem, 

creating what was in effect a stirring rallying cry. She also famously wrote “The Old 

Suffragist,” which addresses the sacrifices made by the women of the movement. 

The poem concludes with the lines:

She strove for an unvisioned, far-off good, 

For one far hope she knew she could not see: 

These—not her daughters—crowned with motherhood

And love and beauty—free.”80

Widdemer’s words, like those of her peers, praised the movement and cheered for 

the movement. 

The words of all of these outspoken women served as powerful weapons wielded 

by the suffragist soldiers of the early 20th century. As the final years of the 

movement came into view, the work of these women continued to resound, 

bolstering the many other works of art that continued to be made in the ongoing 

fight for the vote.

78 “Margaret Widdemer,” Poetry Foundation (website), https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaretwiddemer.

79 Margaret Widdemer, “The Woman’s Litany,” Academy of American Poets (website), https://poets.org/poem/

womens-litany.

80 Margaret Widdemer, “The Old Suffragist,” Academy of American Poets (website), https://poets.org/poem/

old-suffragist.
70

Figure 66. Benjamin M. Dale, 

Official Program—Woman Suffrage 

Procession, Washington, DC, March 

3, 1913, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC
71

“We make our 

own history. The 

course of history 

is directed by the 

choices we make...”

ELEANOR 

ROOSEVELT

PART 3: THE AWAKENING

ART AND THE 1913 SUFFRAGE PARADE

A

new era in the women’s suffrage campaign dawned in 1913, in no small part 

thanks to suffragist Alice Paul and the impressive spectacle she engineered 

at the “Woman Suffrage Procession” in Washington, DC. Paul was a devoted 

suffragist who had spent time in England during the early days of the 

20th century, where she witnessed the more aggressive militant approach of U.K. 

suffragists.81 Paul witnessed firsthand the attention and excitement the U.K. suffragists 

were able to achieve using these methods and sought to infuse the U.S. suffrage 

movement with that same energy—and invigorate its public image through action as 

well as art. The first step was a massive parade in Washington, DC, scheduled for the 

day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration. Between 5,000 and 8,000 

participants attended, making it the largest procession the city had seen to date.82

The parade was a powerful stirring display of women’s power and the support for the 

movement; it cleverly incorporated new symbols and imagery to create a celebratory 

pageant-style performance. That it was scheduled for the day before Wilson’s 

inauguration, of course, was no accident either, since Wilson’s support for women’s 

suffrage was lackluster at best.83 The procession, which followed the same route that 

the inaugural parade would follow the next day, gave the suffragettes the opportunity 

to steal the spotlight from Wilson in order to further their cause. The cover of the 

procession program (fig. 66), painted by Benjamin Moran Dale, conveyed the epic 

significance of the event with its beautiful and majestic imagery.

81 “Start of the Suffragette Movement,” in Women and the Vote, parliament.uk (website), https://www.parliament.

uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/womenvote/overview/startsuffragette-/.

82 Kate Clarke Lemay, Votes for Women!: A Portrait of Persistence (Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, 

Smithsonian Institution, 2019), 169.

83 Lemay, 177.
72

The procession was in itself a 

tremendous organizational 

feat (fig. 67). The route 

followed Pennsylvania Avenue 

and ended at the U.S. 

Treasury Building, where a 

tableau was staged. The 

marchers themselves were led 

by prominent figures from 

various suffrage factions and 

divided into different groups. 

It included several floats on 

which women acted out 

important stories of women 

from history and showed 

women as professionals in 

daily life (fig. 68).84

Women dressed for the 

occasion, wearing the 

suffrage colors purple, white, 

and gold. The ribbons and 

sashes they wore indicated 

their allegiances and they 

carried gold banners with 

uplifting words in purple 

text. Some even dressed 

like Joan of Arc, who had 

become a heroine of the 

suffrage movement. The 

15th-century girl warrior was 

a fascination in turn-of-thecentury America, and the 

suffragists found that she was 

an excellent metaphor for 

their own women warriors.85

Not only did Benjamin Moran 

Dale’s program image depict 

a Joan of Arc figure (clad in 

suffrage purple and gold) on 

horseback, trumpeting a call 

to her fellow “warriors,” but 

one of the most prominent 

figures leading the procession 

was dressed as Joan of Arc 

as well. Inez Milholland 

Figure 67. Winsor McCay, Suffrage 

March Line, 1913, illustration, Library 

of Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

84 Lemay, 170.

85 Elsie Y. Heung, “Women’s Suffrage in American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900–1920,” 

(PhD diss., The Graduate Center, City University of New York), 77–78.
73

Boissevain, a devoted suffragist and prominent lawyer and public figure, rode 

astride a white horse (fig. 69). Dressed all in white, with a cape and a helmet 

adorned with a “star of hope,” not only did her clothing allude to Joan of Arc but 

Milholland Boissevain herself served as a symbol of the promising new future 

awaiting women.86

The tableau (figs. 70 and 71) at the Treasury Building served as a dramatic cap to 

the pageantry of the procession. The figure of Columbia, a female personification 

of America played by Broadway actor Hedwig Reicher, greeted other allegorical 

figures: Justice, Charity, Liberty, Peace, Plenty, and Hope. 

The procession was a turning point in the movement, for it revealed the support 

and involvement of so many women, their ability to organize on a grand scale, 

and their ability to create effective and inspirational messaging in myriad forms. 

It was a sign that the suffragists’ efforts were working—that the tide was turning. 

The procession was indeed so successful that there would be others like it in the 

coming years. Along with that success, however, came resistance. The parade was 

not entirely peaceful, and in spite of Alice Paul’s earlier entreaties to the police 

Figure 68. The Suffrage Procession 

on Pennsylvania Avenue, 1913, 

photograph, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC

86 “1913 Woman Suffrage Procession,” National Park Service (website), https://www.nps.gov/articles/womansuffrage-procession1913.htm.
74

to keep the participants safe, the parade was essentially unpoliced. Hundreds of 

thousands of spectators, a large proportion of them hostile men, thronged the 

streets. The parade route became blocked by the crowd and groups of angry men 

began to harass and assault the marchers (fig. 72).87 A hundred marchers had to 

be hospitalized as a result of this aggression.88 Ambulances called to the scene 

struggled to move through the uncontrolled crowd (fig. 73). 

Unfortunate though this turn of events was, it increased newspaper coverage of the 

event. Indeed, the abuse of the marchers and the indifference of the police 

became a leading news story, garnering sympathy for the suffragists.89 The day 

after the procession, the Washington Post gave equal front-page space to the 

procession and the inauguration planned for that day, crowing “Woman’s Beauty, 

Grace, and Art Bewilder the Capital.”90

Figure 69. Inez Milholland Boissevain 

preparing to lead the suffrage 

parade in Washington, DC, 1913, 

photograph, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, 

Washington, DC

87 “1913 Woman Suffrage Procession,” National Park Service.

88 Alan Taylor, “The 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade,” The Atlantic, March 1, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/

photo/2013/03/100-years-ago-the-1913-womens-suffrage-parade/100465/#img01; and Lemay, 180.

89 Taylor, “1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade.”

90 Washington Post, March 4, 1913.
75

Figure 70. German actress Hedwig 

Reicher wearing costume of 

“Columbia” in front of the Treasury 

Building, 1913, photograph, Library 

of Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

Figure 71. Tableau presented by the Women’s 

Suffrage Association on the Treasury steps, 

1913, photograph, Library of Congress Prints 

and Photographs Division, Washington, DC 
76

Figure 72. Crowd converging on 

marchers and blocking parade 

route during the inaugural suffrage 

procession, 1913, photograph, Library 

of Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC
77

Other features from the procession had a lasting effect on the movement as well. 

Inez Milholland Boissevain, for example, became an icon for the movement. 

Indeed, much like Joan of Arc, whom she referenced in the costume she wore 

for the procession, she became a martyr for suffrage. She tirelessly advocated for 

women’s rights and suffrage, even in the face of personal health struggles, eventually 

collapsing while giving a speech in California. She died shortly thereafter when she 

was only 30 years old.91 Thereafter, Milholland Boissevain was a celebrated symbol 

of the suffrage movement, as exemplified by a striking poster (fig. 74) created by 

the National Woman’s Party. The poster shows her as she looked on the day of the 

parade, dressed in the same white costume with a star on her helmet astride her 

white horse. The text at the top and bottom reads, “Inez Milholland Boissevain... who 

died for the freedom of women.” She gazes into the distance, carrying a banner 

reading “Forward into Light.” The creation of the image of a woman in white on a 

white horse, accented with gold and set against a purple background, demonstrated 

a use of suffrage colors and iconic imagery that memorialized its heroine into the 

visual language of suffrage propaganda. 

Figure 73. The crowd surrounds and 

slows a Red Cross ambulance during 

the Women’s Suffrage Procession, 

1913, photograph, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

91 “Inez Milholland,” National Park Service (website), https://www.nps.gov/people/inez-milholland.htm.
78
79

(Opposite page) Figure 74. Suffrage 

poster depicting Inez Milholland 

Boissevain dressed in white, riding 

a white horse, as she did for the 

March 3, 1913 suffrage parade in 

Washington, DC, Schlesinger Library, 

Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

Cartoonists were inspired by the procession as well. Three cartoons (fig. 75) show 

a particular interest in the 17-day march by a group of suffragists from New York to 

Washington to participate in the procession. Spirit of ’13 shows the tireless suffragists 

marching to Washington, a reference to the famous image Spirit of ’76, a patriotic 

painting of marching soldiers. Another cartoon, The Spirit of 1913, shows a group of 

weary women marching through a blizzard while they envision themselves voting for 

the first time. A third cartoon, Gen. Jones Crossing the Delaware, refers to one of the 

women who participated in the march, “General” Rosalie Jones, and shows her in the 

role of George Washington after the famous painting of George Washington crossing 

the Delaware in his Revolutionary War campaign.92

The procession in Washington itself and the coverage it received after the fact helped 

spur the movement tremendously. The suffragists were clearly a powerful, organized 

force to be taken seriously. The procession also helped to bolster the imagery of the 

campaign. There was a new, bolder tone to the movement and its art. Women were no 

longer just playing suffrage music for friends in their parlors; they were now marching 

the streets, dressed as warriors. As art continued to be created for the movement in 

the coming years, it too became bolder, working on behalf of a new generation of 

suffragists who knew what they wanted and would stop at almost nothing to get it. They 

were emboldened and were no longer willing to hold back.

Figure 75. Clifford Berryman, Robert 

W. Satterfield, and J. H. Donahey, 

The March to Washington, 

Washington Star, 1913, cartoons, 

Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division, Washington, DC

92 Lemay, 183.
80

THE MASS MOVEMENT

In the wake of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, there was an 

emboldened spirit in the suffrage movement and the art that it inspired. There was 

a sense that the energy and urgency present at the procession was gaining 

momentum. New suffrage publications created fresh outlets for suffrage artists, 

which increased their output. In addition, as the argument for women’s suffrage 

was no longer new, women having made the case for suffrage during the 

preceding decades, the movement now entered a new phase in which it assumed a 

broader awareness of the issues. The combination of these factors resulted in a 

greater complexity in suffrage art made after 1913, reflecting a palpable new 

passion and determination in the movement and a sense that victory was inevitable. 

Increasingly, by contrast, the opposition was seen as old-fashioned, clinging 

desperately to outdated views. 

A profusion of suffrage art was created in the years after the Suffrage Procession, 

much of it faithful to the tradition of earlier suffrage artists. A familiar kind of 

image is typified by the 

postcard image by Emily 

Hall Chamberlain (fig. 76), 

which shows Columbia and 

Uncle Sam as children. 

Uncle Sam declares, “She’s 

good enough for me!” This 

card was part of a collection 

that set the suffrage debate 

among children to diffuse 

the issue’s tensions, while 

also making the argument 

that women’s suffrage was 

not a threat to men.93

As these familiar tropes 

continued, the emergence of 

new outlets for suffrage art 

resulted in tremendous 

artistic innovation. 

Publications like the National 

Woman’s Party’s newspaper 

the Suffragist, created by 

Alice Paul in 1913, published 

cartoons and illustrations in 

addition to essays and news 

stories. It also notably served 

as a platform for the artist 

Nina Allender, one of the 

most important suffrage 

Figure 76. Emily Hall Chamberlain, 

She’s Good Enough for Me, 1915, 

postcard. From the Suffrage 

Collection of Dr. Kenneth Florey

93 Kenneth Florey, “Suffrage Postcards,” Women’s Suffrage Memorabilia (website), http://

womansuffragememorabilia.com/woman-suffrage-memorabilia/suffrage-postcards/.

(Opposite page) Figure 77. Nina 

Allender, The Inspiration of the 

Suffrage Workers, 1914, cartoon, 

Nina Allender Collection, National 

Woman’s Party at Belmont Paul 

Women’s Equality National Monument
81
82

cartoonists of the early 20th century. Allender produced more than 200 cartoons for 

the Suffragist, introducing a new manner of visual representation for propaganda 

serving the women’s suffrage movement.94

There was an immediacy and realism to Allender’s images that, combined with the 

charisma of her protagonists, made them not just appealing but also quite persuasive. 

In The Inspiration of the Suffrage Workers from 1914 (fig. 77) Allender shows a young 

mother standing on a dirty street in front of an overflowing garbage can, holding her 

young child as her other child plays with a cat. In spite of the squalid conditions of the 

woman’s surroundings, she is not depicted as a pathetic figure. She looks frankly at 

the viewer, resolute rather than resigned. In another artist’s hands, this subject might 

have been portrayed with pathos veering into sentimentality. Allender, while 

sympathetic, does not attempt to wring pity from the image; instead she empowers the 

mother, who appears resilient and ready to fight for her children. Paired with the 

caption “Votes for Women!”, the image suggests a simple solution to her problem: 

with the power of the vote, she could improve her family’s condition. 

Figure 78. Nina Allender, Child Saving 

Is Woman’s Work, 1914, cartoon, 

Nina Allender Collection, National 

Woman’s Party at Belmont Paul 

Women’s Equality National Monument

94 “Propagandist,” in Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party (website), 

Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/selected-leaders-of-thenational-womans-party/propagandist/.
83

Allender’s 1914 illustration Child Saving Is Woman’s Work (fig. 78) strikes a similar 

tone. The illustration shows women leading a large group of children toward safety, 

away from a cluster of smoking factories in the background. These children are literally 

being rescued from lives of misery and exploitation. Allender extended the factories 

beyond the page’s edge and the line of children seems also to infinitely continue, 

referencing the enormity of the problem of child exploitation, a very real problem as 

millions of children were being exploited in grueling jobs across the country by 1910. 

Allender employs the trope of woman as inherently maternal to show that allowing 

women to vote would help children survive, and thrive. Allender posits an easily won 

argument in this image, once again representing women as more than just sentimental 

ideals; her subjects are instead actual women getting things done.

Allender also created allegorical illustrations, as in her 1914 Call to the Women Voters

(fig. 79), which borrows from the bugler tradition imported from the U.K. It depicts an 

allegorical female figure in classical robes, trumpeting a clarion call to women to join 

the cause. In a later illustration, The Spirit of ’76 On to the Senate (fig. 80), she borrows 

from that same allegorical tradition, but instead uses real women who seem to answer 

the earlier illustration’s “call,” by beating drums, playing a fife, and waving a flag 

emblazoned with “Constitutional Amendment.” Allender’s women represented “the 

young and zealous women of a new generation determined to wait no longer for a just 

right,” as one of Allender’s contemporaries explained. “It was Mrs. Allender’s cartoons, 

more than any other one thing, that in the newspapers of this country began to change 

the cartoonist’s idea of a suffragist.”95

The Allender Woman was purposeful, she was moral, she was maternal, and she was 

accomplished and intelligent. Most importantly, she was willing to take charge and 

better her world, in spite of the obstacles in her path. By bringing women like this into 

the public eye, Allender played a crucial role in changing public opinion of women 

and womanhood at a crucial moment in the suffrage movement. She normalized 

the idea of a forceful young woman changing the world for the good of the people, 

marking yet another decisive step toward women’s suffrage.

Nell Brinkley was another prominent woman cartoonist who made her mark on the 

graphic arts in the early 20th century while also affecting the public view of women. 

Her prolific output reached Americans all across the country. Brinkley’s images 

featured free-spirited young women who were distinguished by their voluminous curly 

hair. Her Three Graces of 1916 (fig. 81), which is patriotic yet eschews sentimentality, 

is an icon of suffrage imagery.96 The three graces are clearly identified: Suffrage looks 

into the distance and holds suffragist literature; Preparedness, front and center, stands 

ready to face whatever may come her way; and Americanism, bedecked in stars and 

stripes and holding sparklers is an embodiment of patriotic celebration. Perhaps the 

most delightful aspect of these allegorical figures is how they are made to look like 

real-life modern American women, unwavering and resolute. The self-possessed curlyhaired woman of Brinkley’s images who came to be known as the “Brinkley Girl” took 

American culture by storm. She was incorporated into theatrical performances, she 

became the subject of popular songs, and she inspired a fashion for curled hair.97

95 “‘The Suffragist’ as a Publicity Medium,” 1918, quoted in Hilde Hein and Carolyn C. Korsmeyer eds., 

Aesthetics in Feminist Perspective (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 83.

96 “The Three Graces,” El Paso Herald, July 15, 1916, accessed on The Portal to Texas History, https://

texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth138378/m1/13/sizes/.

97 “Introduction,” Nell Brinkley collection, the Billy Ireland Library and Museum, The Ohio State University 

Libraries (website), https://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_albums/nellbrinkley/index.php.
84

Figure 79. Nina Allender, Call to the Women Voters, 

1914, cartoon, Nina Allender Collection, National 

Woman’s Party at Belmont Paul Women’s Equality 

National Monument
85

Figure 80. Nina Allender, The Spirit ’76 On to the Senate, 

1915, cartoon, Nina Allender Collection, National 

Woman’s Party at Belmont Paul Women’s Equality 

National Monument
86

Figure 81. Nell Brinkley, The Three 

Graces, El Paso Herald, 1916, cartoon

Other women cartoonists who had already broken through the male-dominated 

industry continued to have an important role in the changing discourse about 

women’s suffrage. Blanche Ames Ames’ Anti-Allies and the Dog (fig. 82), for 

example, was published in the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News in 1915 and 

employed a strategy that was increasingly popular in the years after the Suffrage 

Procession: attacking the anti-suffragists to reveal their hypocrisy, selfishness, and 

viciousness. In this cartoon a suffragist undoubtedly modelled after Inez Milholland 

Boissevain is riding on a horse draped in a banner reading “Progress” and carrying 

a banner reading “Woman Suffrage.” An “Anti” ties a rope around the hoof of the 

suffragist’s horse, and she and a group of her supporters pull on the rope in the 

shadows around the corner of a nearby building. Their trickery is contrasted with the 

nobility of the suffragist.
87

Figure 82. Blanche Ames Ames, AntiAllies and the Dog, Woman’s Journal 

and Suffrage News, October 2, 1915,

cartoon, Special Collections and 

Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social 

Welfare History Image Portal

Images like Ames’, in which the anti-suffragists are treated with the same sort of scorn 

that had previously been leveled at the suffragists, became a favorite motif in the art 

of this period. By this point, the suffragists had already made—and in many minds 

won—their arguments; the next step was to examine those who remained stubbornly 

rooted against suffrage and to expose the flaws in their logic. 

The cover of the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News featured such a cartoon (fig. 

83) in 1915. Here a group of young girls representing the states already granted 

suffrage play outside as another young girl peers out of a door being blocked by a 

stern old woman labeled “anti-suffrage.” From inside, the caption tells us, those states 

not yet granted suffrage call out “Why can’t we play, too?” The Woman’s Journal 

and Suffrage News published another scathing critique of anti-suffragists with its At 

the Sepulchre by Fredrikke S. Palmer (fig. 84), which shows Justice weeping at a 

sepulcher as a personification of greed leans a massive legislative bill that denied 

workers a lesser work load on the back of a small child. 

Other images took a more lighthearted approach to the anti-suffragists. Puck 

magazine was a popular outlet for this kind of image. An Anti-Suffrage Viewpoint 

(fig. 85) calls out the hypocrisy of philandering men, while Making the Polls Attractive 
88

to the Anti-Suffragists (fig. 86) shows a group of lazy, rich women drinking and 

playing cards, only casting their votes because the ballot box is brought to them. 

Another image (fig. 87) from Puck shows an opera singer labelled “Anti” performing 

in the spotlight as the “political boss” conducts her and a group of nefarious men 

cheer her on from behind.

Figure 83. William H. “Bill” Sykes 

cartoon in Woman’s Journal and 

Suffrage News, May 29, 1915, 

cartoon, Special Collections and 

Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social 

Welfare History Image Portal

The Masses magazine published a special suffrage issue in 1917, which includes 

images such as Stuart Davis’ affecting Types of Suffragists (fig. 88), a two-page 

spread that showed entitled women, in some cases cluelessly addressing working 

women, saying things like, “We’ve got better things to do, haven’t we?” Similarly, 

Elizabeth Grieg’s cartoon from the same issue shows two entitled women on a park 

bench (fig. 89). One says to the other, “Look at that suffragette, Madge—right out in 

the street—wouldn’t you think she’d die of shame?” All of these images successfully 

critizied anti-suffragists as out of step with the times, unconcerned with the problems 

of others, and selfish. 

Another popular theme of this period was the concern about suffrage as an issue 

affecting the domestic realm and its children who were powerless to fight for 

themselves. This idea of suffrage as a mother’s issue was not new, but it did increase 

in popularity and vigor in these final years of the movement. Indeed, it was the 

emotional force behind so many of Nina Allender’s moving cartoons. An illustration 

(fig. 90) from Puck magazine’s special suffrage issue in 1915—one year after the start 

of World War I—shows a mother and children walking through a bombed-out 
89

landscape, clothed in 

rags. The caption makes 

a powerful statement: 

“Who says that war is 

man’s business?” Two 

other images also 

address this issue. The 

cover of the Woman 

Citizen depicted a 

sword-wielding 

personification of 

suffrage protecting a 

group of small children 

from a faceless mob of 

“exploiters of children” 

(fig. 91), and a NAWSA 

poster from 1917, What 

Breaks Up the Home, 

shows the effects of 

unjust labor laws on the 

home, with children 

shown suffering in poor 

households and being 

forced to work (fig. 92). 

The NAWSA even 

published a pamphlet 

called “Better Babies” 

dedicated to explaining 

how women’s suffrage 

would benefit babies 

and children. It shows 

statistics on infant 

Figure 84. Frederikke S. Palmer, 

At the Sepulchre, Woman’s Journal 

and Suffrage News, 1915, cartoon, 

Special Collections and Archives, 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

Libraries. Online: Social Welfare 

History Image Portal

Figure 85. William Ely Hill, An 

Anti-Suffrage Viewpoint, Puck, 

1915, Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division, Washington, DC
90
91

(Opposite page) Figure 86. Ralph 

Barton, Making the Polls Attractive 

to the Anti-Suffragists, Puck, 1915, 

illustration. Courtesy of Hathi Trust

mortality rates around the world and argues that a lower mortality rate is linked 

to countries where women had suffrage. The cover (fig. 93), illustrated by Rose 

O’Neill—famous for her use of babies in suffrage imagery—shows a baby who has 

dropped a toy as an immense crowd of cartoon germs looks on, ready to engulf it.

Many images in this period also borrowed from the energized spirit of the Suffrage 

Procession, suffusing their work with an inspirational quality rooted in allegory and 

patriotism. These images also often incorporated militaristic imagery, in the vein of 

Nina Allender’s The Spirit of 

’76 On to the Senate. A 

striking example was made to 

accompany journalist George 

Creel’s argument in favor of 

women’s suffrage, which was 

published in a pamphlet by 

National Woman’s Suffrage 

Publishing in 1915.98 At the 

center of the text is a Joan of 

Arc-like figure (fig. 94), 

dressed in white; she has a 

sword at her side but is 

bound. She reaches her 

shackled arms out in a 

gesture that is at once 

plaintive and resistant. Text 

and image here are 

combined to marvelous 

effect. Another image that 

speaks to higher ideals while 

also borrowing patriotic 

imagery is Taxation Without 

Representation from the cover 

of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated 

Newspaper (fig. 95). Here a 

suffragist dressed as a 

Revolutionary minuteman 

holding a musket wears a 

“Votes for Women” sash and 

stands next to a sign reading 

“Taxation Without Representation.” 

In these final years after the Suffrage Procession in Washington, the art produced for 

the suffrage movement featured more coherent imagery and messaging than ever 

before, and it addressed sensitive issues that were most likely to affect the average 

American. In the final push to win the vote, suffrage artists would use the most 

powerful imagery in their arsenals while also referencing the contemporary events 

that were so crucial to their cause. But before that last push to victory, the suffragists 

turned their attention to one last untapped medium: moving pictures.

Figure 87. I Did Not Raise My Girl 

to be a Voter, Puck, 1915, cartoon, 

Library of Congress Prints and 

Photographs Division, Washington, DC

98 “George Creel, ‘Chivalry Versus Justice,’” Women’s Suffrage and the Media (website), 

http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/george-creel-chivalry-v-justice-pictorial-review-march-1915/.
92

Figure 88. Stuart Davis, Types of Anti-Suffragists, 

The Masses, p.14, 1915, cartoon
93

Figure 89. Elizabeth Grieg, Types of 

Anti-Suffragists, The Masses, 1915, 

cartoon

Figure 90. Nina Allender, Who Says 

That War is Man’s Business?, Puck, 

1915, cartoon. Courtesy of Hathi Trust
94

Figure 91. C. D. Batchelor, They Shall Not Pass, The Woman Citizen, 

1917, cartoon, Special Collections and Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social Welfare History Image Portal
95

Figure 92. What Breaks Up the Home, 

1917, cartoon

Figure 93. Rose O’Neill, Better 

Babies, NAWSA, 1916, pamphlet, 

Special Collections and Archives, 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

Libraries. Online: Social Welfare 

History Image Portal
96
97

(Opposite page) Figure 94. George Creel, 

“Chivalry v. Justice,” National Woman’s 

Suffrage Publishing, April 1915, pamphlet

Figure 95 James Montgomery Flagg, Taxation 

without Representation, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated 

Newspaper, 1915, illustration
98

MOTION PICTURES

Just as public interest in women’s suffrage escalated within mainstream culture, a 

nascent industry was quietly transforming the media landscape in America. Like the 

magazines and newspapers that had until then served as the main avenues for 

spreading art and opinion, the new medium of film began reaching into the many 

diverse corners of popular culture. As early as 1899, when silent cinema was still a 

mostly unknown novelty, the topic of women’s suffrage was introduced in film with 

Women’s Rights, which mocks two young suffragists.99 The first nickelodeon 

Figure 96. A Lively Affair, Vitagraph 

Studios, USA, 1912, film

99 Simon Popple and Joe Kember, Early Cinema: From Factory Gate to Dream Factory (London: Wallflower Press, 

2004), 51.
99

theater—a storefront for viewing films at the cost of a nickel—did not open until 

1905, but in the coming years tens of thousands of new storefront theaters opened 

all across the country. Americans had quite an appetite for this new mode of 

entertainment, which continued to grow as the century wore on.100 With intensified 

interest in this groundbreaking form of art and technology, the debate about women’s 

suffrage found its way into film.

Most of the explosion of suffrage films produced between 1909 and 1915 consisted 

of negative, or anti-suffrage, films mocking and making light of suffragists and their 

cause.101 One early suffrage film, A Lively Affair (fig. 96), was produced in 1912 by 

an unknown director and producer. Only seven minutes long, it is essentially a silent 

film version of the popular anti-suffrage postcards in which suffragists subvert gender 

roles: women dress like men in bloomers (instead of trousers) and blazers, women 

abandon their children and husbands to go to suffrage meetings, and women drink 

and gamble and behave in unladylike ways. By the end, the suffragists have been 

jailed, a fact that their hapless husbands celebrate, since they seem to rather dislike 

them anyhow.102 Many anti-suffrage films of this period took the same approach, such 

as A Busy Day (1914), which starred Charlie Chaplin as a suffragist who subverts 

gender roles and acts in all manner of “unfeminine” ways.103

Figure 97. Caricature from animation 

in The Strong Arm Squad of the 

Future, USA, 1912, film

100 See Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1994), 1–6; and Emily Scarbrough, “‘Fine Dignity, Picturesque Beauty, and Serious Purpose’: The Reorientation of 

Suffrage Media in the Twentieth Century,” (Masters thesis, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, 2015), 72–74.

101 Scott Simmon, “The Strong Arm Squad of the Future (ca. 1912): Film Notes,” National Film Preservation 

Foundation (website), https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-strong-arm-squad-of-thefuture-ca-1912#.

102 “Film: ‘A Lively Affair,’ (1912),” Women’s Suffrage and the Media (website), http://suffrageandthemedia.org/

source/film-lively-affair-1912/. 

103 Scarbrough, “‘Fine Dignity’,” 74.
100

Figure 98. Advert from Moving 

Picture World magazine for The 

Suffragette Sheriff, 1912

An early example of film 

animation, the antisuffrage The Strong Arm 

Squad of the Future (fig. 

97), takes a pronounced 

anti-suffrage stance.104 Just 

one minute long, the film 

parades a cast of six 

“strong-arm” women 

across the screen. The 

term “strong-arm squad” is 

a reference to the militant 

suffragettes who were 

causing such a stir in 

England. Here the 

producers have 

envisioned a world in 

which these kinds of 

women have taken 

control—once again it is a 

display of the favored 

anti-suffrage theme of the 

subversion of gender 

roles. Excepting the third 

woman, a beautiful young 

Gibson Girl, all of these 

women are depicted as 

old and monstrouslooking, recalling the other favorite anti-suffrage tradition of discrediting suffragists by 

denying them their femininity.105

Another suffrage film from this era is the absurd comedy of errors, The Suffragette 

Sheriff (fig. 98). The feminist wife and sister-in-law of the protagonist, Bill, 

inadvertently get him into trouble. His sister-in-law, a “spinster” suffragist, manages to 

get her sister, Bill’s wife, elected as mayor and sheriff. The predictable subversion of 

gender roles ensues, with Bill feeling neglected and wanting to go back to the way 

things were before. In an attempt to return things to normal, Bill pretends to commit 

murder, thinking that his wife would then have to abandon her duties and return to 

the womanly domestic sphere. Naturally Bill’s plot goes awry when his wife learns 

of his plan and decides to follow through with her pursuit of Bill as a murderer. He 

is only saved with a surprise “gag” at the end of the film, when he falls into a tub of 

water at the gallows.106 The film is neither pro- nor anti-suffrage but shows that the 

suffrage movement was well-known enough to merit being subject matter for this 

burgeoning art form. 

104 The film is available on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJM5Pe2ocfc.

105 Scott Simmon, “The Strong Arm Squad of the Future (ca. 1912): Film Notes,” National Film Preservation 

Foundation (website), accessed May 12, 2020, https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/

the-strong-arm-squad-of-the-future-ca-1912#.

106 Maggie Hennefeld, “Early Cinema and the Comedy of Female Catastrophe,” in Specters of Slapstick and 

Silent Film Comediennes (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), np.
101

A Suffragette in Spite of Himself (fig. 99) is another neutral suffrage film from this 

period, and as the title suggests, another comedy of errors.107 The anti-suffragist 

protagonist winds up with a “Votes for Women” sign on his back after a pair of kids 

play a prank on him. At an anti-suffrage rally, the unknowing victim is rebuffed by 

the other men, and he then stumbles upon a pro-suffrage rally where he is confused 

to find himself treated well. The story and message of the film is somewhat anti-antisuffragist, although it does not make a strong case for suffrage. Many films of this 

period wanted to remain neutral so as to appeal to as many viewers as possible.108 

Figure 99. A Suffragette in Spite of 

Himself, directed by Ashley Miller, 

Edison Studios, USA, 1912, film

Although film was especially favored by the anti-suffragists, pro-suffrage groups had 

their say too. Pro-suffrage films were largely made as rebuttals to the films created by 

their opponents. One of the earliest, produced by NAWSA, was the well-received 

Votes for Women, a two-reel film that viewed women and their enfranchisement as a 

solution to societal ills.109 The following year, 1913, the Women’s Political Union 

produced What 80 Million Women Want—?, a drama in which a suffragist exposes 

the corruption and injustice of a man in a position of power (fig. 100).110 The 

suffragists Emmaline Pankhurst and Harriot Stanton Blatch make appearances as 

themselves, which was clearly a tactic to garner attention for the film. The film was a 

critical success, marking a minor victory for the women’s suffrage movement.111

107 The film is available on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxOpJJLJIGA&feature=youtube.

108 “A Suffragette in Spite of Himself,” Century Film Project blog, https://centuryfilmproject.org/2018/01/10/asuffragette-in-spite-of-himself-1912/.

109 Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 

66. Most scholars believe the film no longer exists. See “Film: Votes for Women (1912),” Suffrage and the Media 

(website), http://suffrageandthemedia.org/source/film-votes-women-1912/.

110 “What Eighty Million Women Want (1913)” Internet Movie Database (website), https://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0002822/.

111 Mahar, 67.
102

Figure 100. Advert for What 80 

Million Women Want—?, directed 

by Willard Louis, Unique Film Co. 

in partnership with the Women’s 

Political Union, USA, 1913

Your Girl or Mine, one of the most important pro-suffrage films, was produced 

the following year in collaboration with NAWSA. The film illustrates the injustices 

inherent in the American legal system.112 To make matters worse, when conditions 

in her marriage become so bad that the woman attempts to leave with her children, 

the law demands she return to her husband’s house. The film touches on many of 

the issues that had become touchstones of the women’s suffrage movement: labor, 

especially child labor and exploitation, and the idea of women as protectors of 

children and the home.113 The film was promoted by local suffrage groups and left 

a lasting impression on its viewers as well as earning rave reviews and was cited as 

an essential film to help the public understand the importance of giving women the 

vote.114

By about 1915, the fervent attacks on suffragists in films slowed down significantly, 

perhaps a sign that the tide was turning in their favor.115 This allowed pro-suffrage 

films like the 1917 Mothers of Men (fig. 101) to take the spotlight and be heard 

without protest. The plot of this film is similar to the The Suffragette Sheriff, but 

the story is told in a serious and believable way.116 The film follows one woman’s 

rise to political power—Clara Madison is elected as a judge and eventually as a 

governor. While serving as governor, she is faced with the question of whether she 

112 Alice W. Campbell, “Your Girl and Mine (Suffrage Film),” Social Welfare History Project, Virginia 

Commonwealth University Libraries (website), https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/woman-suffrage/your-girl-andmine-suffrage-film/.

113 Scarbrough, “‘Fine Dignity,’” 64.

114 Campbell, “Your Girl and Mine.”

115 Scott Simmon, “The Strong Arm Squad of the Future (ca. 1912): Film Notes,” National Film Preservation 

Foundation (website), https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-strong-arm-squad-of-thefuture-ca-1912#.

116 The 1917 film no longer survives, but it was re-released as Every Woman’s Problem in 1921. That film can be 

viewed on the San Francisco Silent Film Festival website: https://silentfilm.org/preservation/mothers-of-men/.
103

will intervene on behalf of her husband, who is accused of murder, or whether she 

will allow the legal system to follow its due process. The film is ultimately about her 

personal struggle and her integrity, and a portrait of female strength, an example of 

the dignity women would bring to positions of political power and, by implication, the 

voting booth as well.117

Figure 101. Mothers of Men, directed 

by Willis Robards, Plymouth Pictures 

Corporation, USA, 1917, film

Created in the very final years of the suffrage campaign, this film was a source of 

pride and inspiration for supporters of the movement and made a powerful case for 

women’s suffrage through its effective and affecting storytelling. Not unlike the 

inspiring illustrations created by pro-suffrage artists, the film was hopeful and 

supportive. As suffragists made their final push before the passage of the 19th 

amendment, suffrage art became a cacophony of soaring hopes and determination. 

Film was something of a microcosm of the broader debate about women’s suffrage: 

although suffragists initially faced harsh criticism in film, they ultimately took 

ownership of the debate. The same thing was happening throughout American 

culture. The suffragists were at the final stretch before reaching the finish line. They 

saw victory in sight.

117 “Mothers of Men,” San Francisco Silent Film Festival (website), https://silentfilm.org/preservation/mothersof-men/.
104

ART IN THE FINAL PUSH FORWARD

The final years of the women’s suffrage campaign were marked by an intense burst of 

activity. Not only did suffragists ratchet up their activism, but they also worked in the 

shadows of an unprecedented world war. Toward the end of the second decade of the 

20th century, the world was quickly changing, and it was in this context that women’s 

suffrage began to seem inevitable. Art produced during these final years reflects that 

sense of inevitability with an unprecedented urgency and passion. Using motifs and 

themes that had been developed over the course of the movement, artists began to 

more directly address the cause’s urgent political campaigns, using metaphor and 

allegory to make their importance immediately understandable. Artists also pulled 

Figure 102. Kenneth R. Chamberlain, 

Woman’s Sphere, The Masses, 1915, 

cartoon
105

back to make grand statements about women’s roles in society. K. R. Chamberlain’s 

powerful Woman’s Sphere (fig. 102), which was on the back cover of the 1917 

suffrage issue of the Masses, is an example of the latter type of image. It simply shows 

a spotlight on the earth with the words “Woman’s Sphere” below. No, it implies, a 

woman’s sphere is not limited to the home. Women have a right to the world just like 

men. Things had changed, it asserted. The argument for women’s suffrage was 

already won; now it was a matter of making women’s suffrage a tangible reality.

While bold, sweeping images like Chamberlain’s were powerful, suffragist artists 

also made art that used simpler images to make their point. They examined policy 

and political campaigns that were vital to their cause, suffusing them with the same 

sense of inspiration and intensity. Much of this art related to the work being done at 

the state level to win women’s suffrage, which women’s rights advocates had turned 

their attention to after the failure of the federal suffrage amendment in 1887. By 1915, 

Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Kansas, Oregon, Arizona, 

Montana, and Nevada had granted suffrage to women, and suffragists looked to these 

states for inspiration. Artists seized on this, making moving images that spoke to the 

importance of other states doing the same. 

Nina Allender’s cartoon Wise Women of the West (fig. 103), for example, shows 

three “wise women” from the enlightened West before the U.S. Capitol, over which 

shines a star, referencing the star of Bethlehem in the Biblical story of the three wise 

men. Instead of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, however, these wise women bring 

Loyalty, Power, and Courage to Washington. They exude grit and determination, and 

in the context of this rather spiritual image, the message is hopeful and persuasive. 

Figure 103. Nina Allender, The Wise 

Women of the West Come Bearing 

Votes, 1915, cartoon, Nina Allender 

Collection, National Woman’s Party 

at Belmont Paul Women’s Equality 

National Monument
106

Another powerful approach to the topic was created by chief cartoonist for Puck 

magazine Henry Mayer in 1915 for the magazine’s suffrage issue. The Awakening 

(fig. 104) uses allegory and symbolism to make the case for women’s suffrage in the 

East and is arguably one of the most iconic and powerful images created on behalf 

of the women’s suffrage movement. Mayer’s illustration shows a large map of the 

United States with those states in which suffrage had been adopted colored white 

and marked clearly with the state’s name; the eastern states where suffrage had not 

been granted were depicted as a murky black purgatory out of which suffering 

women struggled to rise up. Lady Liberty herself strides eastward across the more 

enlightened western states, bearing a torch to shed the light of justice on the rest of 

the nation. Her billowing golden cape bears the words “Votes for Women.” The 

image succinctly suggests that the country will not be whole until all women are 

granted suffrage, and while the women in the blackened eastern states seem to 

struggle, there is an optimistic sense that Lady Liberty is coming to their aid.

As if Mayer’s image weren’t powerful enough, it is paired with a poem by Alice Duer 

Miller, whose moving words march across the page with a pronounced rhythm to 

match that of the striding Lady Liberty:

Figure 104. Henry Mayer, The 

Awakening, Puck, centerfold 

illustration, 1915, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC
107

Look forward, women, always; utterly cast away 

The memory of hate and struggle and bitterness; 

Bonds may endure for a night, but freedom comes with the day, 

And the free must remember nothing less.

Forget the strife; remember those who strove— 

The first defeated women, gallant and few, 

Who gave us hope, as a mother gives us love, 

Forget them not, and this remember, too:

How at the later call to come forth and unite, 

Women untaught, uncounselled, alone and apart, 

Rank upon rank came forth in unguessed might, 

Each one answering the call of her own wise heart

They came from toil and want, from leisure and ease, 

Those who knew only life, and learned women of fame, 

Girls and mothers of girls, and the mothers of these, 

No one knew whence or how, but they came, they came.

The faces of some were stern, and some were gay, 

And some were pale with the terror of unreal dangers; 

But their hearts knew this: that hereafter come what may, 

Women to women would never again be strangers.

Miller’s stirring poem, utterly lacking the irony of her famous satirical poetry, is 

inspirational and aspirational. It captures the passion and urgency of this crucial 

moment in the fight for women’s suffrage.

Another powerful image produced for a NAWSA poster contest captured the 

same passion and urgency that was specific to this late moment in the women’s 

suffrage campaign. Edward A. Poucher’s The Woman’s Hour Has Struck (fig. 105) 

shows a suffragist pulling on a rope to ring a massive bell. There is no context or 

complex storytelling in the image, as the large text around her explains: “Woman 

suffrage is coming in 1917.” The sense of inevitability in Poucher’s image made it 

tremendously effective for the suffrage movement, especially in New York, where 

women were finally granted full suffrage that year.

Another work in the same spirit was published in Puck magazine the same year. 

Revised (fig. 106), by the same Chamberlain responsible for the powerful image 

Woman’s Sphere, uses allegory paired along with tangible women’s rights issues 

to create another uncommonly affecting illustration that touches once again on the 

question of “woman’s sphere.” Chamberlain depicts an allegorical woman standing 

at a wall, editing the sentence “Woman’s sphere is the home” to read “Woman’s 

sphere is wherever she makes good.” She holds a list of other possible options 

to explain what “woman’s sphere” is: “the home, the law, industry, the school, the 

stage, business, the arts.” In sum, women should not be limited in their roles but 

instead allowed to ”make good” in service to their unique calling—just as men 

do. The woman, although unidentified, is dressed in a robe and flowing cloak that 

suggest classical mythology; she resembles a personification of one of the virtues. 

By linking this woman to classical mythology, however vaguely, Chamberlain 

elevates the subject matter here and by extension all women. Clearly, the image 
108

suggests, women are on the side of justice and righteousness. On another level, 

Chamberlain adds to the growing chorus of voices saying that the writing was on 

the wall, so to speak, and that women’s suffrage was inevitable.

Figure 105. The Woman’s Hour 

Has Struck, Cover of NAWSA 

Headquarters Newsletter, 1917, 

illustration, Special Collections and 

Archives, Virginia Commonwealth 

University Libraries. Online: Social 

Welfare History Image Portal

(Opposite page) Figure 106 (top). 

Kenneth R. Chamberlain, Revised, 

Puck, 1917, cartoon, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC. 

Figure 107 (bottom). Charles H. 

Winner, Help! I Can’t Keep It Down!, 

The Woman Citizen, 1919, cartoon, 

Special Collections and Archives, 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

Libraries. Online: Social Welfare 

History Image Portal
109

Even as women’s suffrage became 

more of a foregone conclusion, 

many stubbornly resisted. A 

cartoon published on the cover of 

the Woman Citizen (fig. 107) after 

the passage of the 19th 

amendment—but before its 

ratification—alludes to this. A man 

identified as “Anti” sits on top of 

the globe looking desperate and 

panicked. He struggles to keep a 

lid on the earth as a whole slew of 

forces, including “suffrage 

sentiment,” “votes for women,” 

“sex equality,” and “woman 

suffrage in Denmark and Sweden” 

threaten to blow that lid—and the 

Anti himself—right off. The man 

shouts, “Help! I can’t keep it 

down.” 

Other images address the 

inevitability of women’s suffrage 

by attacking the capriciousness 

of men who had so long fought 

against suffrage, only to support 

it when it was sure to happen. 

Puck magazine’s suffrage issue 

published a cartoon called BandWagon Biography (fig. 108) 

that shows the evolution of an 

anti-suffragist. As a small boy, 

he laughed at the suffragists, as 

a college student he spoke out 

against suffragists, later he railed 

against the “militant suffragists,” 

“but when suffrage became 

imminent,” the cartoon explains, 

“he said, ‘My friends, we have 

lived to see reason triumph over 

prejudice.’” In this last phase of 

his evolution, the man smilingly 

hops onto the “Votes for women 

bandwagon.” Similarly, a cartoon 

published in the Washington 

Evening Star in 1918 (fig. 109) 

shows a crowd of men boarding 

the “Votes for women band 

wagon,” which is headed toward 

the U.S. Capitol Building, as a 

horn urgently blasts its “last call.”
110

(This page) Figure 108. John T. 

McCutcheon, Band-Wagon Biography, 

Puck, 1915. Courtesy of Hathi Trust

Figure 109. Clifford Kennedy 

Berryman, Votes for Women 

Bandwagon, Washington Evening 

Star, 1918, cartoon, Library of 

Congress Prints and Photographs 

Division, Washington, DC

(Opposite page) Figure 110 (top). 

James Montgomery Flagg, Women 

Bring All Voters Into the World, 

Cover of The Woman Citizen, 1917, 

illustration. 

Figure 111 (bottom). C.D. Batchelor, 

Handing on the Work, Cover 

of The Woman Citizen, 1920, 

illustration, both from the Special 

Collections and Archives, Virginia 

Commonwealth University Libraries. 

Online: Social Welfare History 

Image Portal
111

The image of the suffragist as a 

mother-protector was also 

employed to powerful effect in the 

final days of the movement. These 

women came to symbolize not just 

suffragists themselves, but the 

positive effects women would have 

on policy and the realities of life in 

general. The October 27, 1917 

issue of the Woman Citizen

featured such an image on its 

cover (fig. 110). It shows a tender 

young mother, holding her infant 

and gazing lovingly into its eyes. 

The caption makes for a simple but 

incontestable argument: “Women 

Bring All Voters Into the World. Let 

Women Vote.” A similar message 

published on the cover of the 

same magazine in February of 

1920, after the amendment was 

passed but before it was ratified, 

makes explicit the metaphor of 

suffragist as mother (fig. 111). 

Here a maternal figure, wearing a 

sash with the words “suffrage 

organization” holds a small child 

with a sash marked “citizenship” 

on her lap. The caption at the 

bottom clarifies the metaphor: 

“Handing on the work.” 

As the tide was turning in the 

very last days of the women’s 

suffrage campaign, women’s 

voices had risen from a murmur 

into a veritable roar on the public 

stage. The woman’s hour had 

indeed struck, and Congress 

finally embraced the inevitability 

of women’s suffrage, passing 

the 19th amendment on June 4, 

1919, and sending it to the states 

for ratification. Although it would 

be more than a year before the 

amendment was ratified, there 

was clearly no turning back. The 

suffragists had won their hardfought, multi-decade battle. Victory 

was finally theirs.
112
113

ART EVOKES JOY AND OPTIMISM AFTER THE 19TH AMENDMENT

As soon as the 19th Amendment was passed, there was an overwhelming sense of 

joy and optimism in the art that was circulating around the country. Magazine covers 

featured especially poignant images celebrating this historic moment. Just weeks after 

the amendment was approved, the cover of the Suffragist (fig. 112) featured Justice 

and American Womanhood in an emotional embrace. The caption simply reads, “At 

Last.” The image expresses the collective sense of joy and relief of women across the 

country.

Similar images graced the covers of magazines and newspapers after the 

amendment was ratified. Nina Allender’s, Victory, for example (fig. 113), appeared 

on the cover of the Suffragist in September of 1920. The image depicts an allegorical 

female figure standing on top of the world. The woman wears a laurel wreath and a 

banner reading “VICTORY.” It is an image of victorious womanhood—of the victory 

of women everywhere. Delightfully simple, the image revels in the pure joy of this 

moment for American women.

Other magazine covers followed suit. Charles Dana Gibson’s illustration on the cover 

of Life magazine featured an allegorical image of a woman handing the ballot to 

a young woman (fig. 114). This image is more businesslike than emotional, as the 

allegorical figure encourages this young woman to go forth and use her newly won 

rights. The word “Congratulations” appears at the bottom of the image. Another 

image, on the cover of the Woman Citizen, featured a young woman dressed in the 

red, white, and blue of the American flag, standing in front of prominent government 

buildings (fig. 116). She is resolute, and determined, ready to participate in the 

workings of her government. The message is enhanced by its caption, which is a call 

to arms: “Suffrage Won—Forward, March!”

Other images, such as Elmer Andrews Bushnell’s The Sky Is Now Her Limit, 

celebrated women’s suffrage while also alluding to the inequity women continued to 

face (fig. 116). Bushnell’s young woman stands at the bottom of a ladder that rises 

out of darkness, seemingly infinitely, toward a bright sky above. She is dressed in 

work clothes and is burdened with two heavy buckets, but she looks hopefully up 

toward the highest rungs in the light above. Each rung of the ladder is marked with 

a different position: “slavery” at the bottom rung, “equal suffrage” beyond that, and 

“presidency” at the highest visible rung. Although “the sky is now her limit,” this 

woman still has a lot of climbing yet to do and bears a heavy burden. For the first 

time, though, a ladder has been extended to her, and she has the opportunity to rise 

out of the darkness.

By 1920, despite chaotic events enveloping the world, victory for American 

women was at hand. From forward-thinking women finding new clothing for new 

lifestyles to painters and filmmakers creating moving images to generate common 

understanding, enthusiasm for the social movement, and powerful, clear, and easily 

heard voices, art helped redefine women’s role in society and, as a result, changed 

America and the world for the better.

(Opposite page) Figure 112. At Last, 

Cover of The Suffragist, June 21, 

1919, illustration, Bryn Mawr College 

Libraries, Special Collections
114

Figure 113. Victory, Nina Allender Collection, 

National Woman’s Party at Belmont Paul 

Women’s Equality National Monument
115

Figure 114. Charles Dana Gibson, Congratulations, 

Cover of Life magazine, 1920, illustration. From the 

suffrage collection of Ann Lewis & Mike Sponder
116 Figure 115. C.D. Batchelor, Cover of The 

Woman Citizen, December 4, 1920, illustration
117

Figure 116. Elmer Andrews Bushnell, The Sky Is Now 

Her Limit, October 1920, cartoon, Library of Congress 

Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC
118
119

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