Ken Burns’ Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Stanton & Susan Anthony

This two-part documentary film shown on PBS tells the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the duo that brought the suffrage cause to widespread attention in the United States.

The film, directed by Ken Burns, shows how the two leaders—despite their widely divergent personalities and backgrounds—came together to fight for women’s voting rights, though both died before their dream was realized.

Stanton grew up with wealth and privilege, the daughter of a well-known judge. Anthony grew up in a Quaker household, the daughter of a factory owner. The two met in 1851, and went on to found multiple suffrage organizations to advance their cause. As historian Judith Harper explains in a PBS article:

The two women not only developed a deep friendship but also helped each other prepare themselves to change women’s lives. Anthony thrived under Stanton’s tutelage—soaking up her knowledge of politics, the law, philosophy, and rhetoric. Stanton, confined to her home by motherhood (she gave birth to her seventh and last child in 1859), was stimulated by Anthony’s thoughtful critiques of her ideas.

Burns’ film traces their personal lives, places them in historical context, and underscores how the impact of their activism stretched far beyond their deaths.

The documentary garnered positive reviews in Variety and the New York Times, which latter called it “a vibrant and extremely moving portrait of a lifelong friendship and the political strategies that defined the women’s rights movement.”

The PBS website on the film is filled with teaching resources, companion articles, and historical documents. The IMBD entry contains a list of the experts featured in the film.

You can buy the film from PBS or Amazon, or search on WorldCat to see if your local library carries it.

Burns and Geoffrey Ward also wrote a companion book to the film which is also available on Amazon.

UK National Archives Footage of British Suffrage Movement

NOTE TO READERS: Some videos in this archive contain potentially disturbing scenes of violence

This UK National Archives film collection contains only four brief, silent film clips. It nonetheless offers valuable on-the-ground documentation of some important moments in the British suffrage movement, along with helpful facts about the videos: Each is accompanied by a description of the film, an explanation of its context within the greater movement for women’s voting rights, and information about “interesting or important points about the film.”

The struggle in Great Britain preceded, and in many ways inspired, the women’s suffrage movement in the US. One notable difference was that in some instances British suffragettes’ tactics were more militant—and even violent—than those of their American counterparts.

One video, for instance, shows the sensational death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. As the site explains:

Davidson was a militant Suffragette who was well known for her daring and dangerous exploits in trying to promote the cause of women’s suffrage. At the Derby race in June 1913 she tried to grab the reins of the King’s horse but was struck and killed in the attempt. Nobody really knows whether she was trying to commit suicide or was trying to stop the horse in a sensational protest.

For a more extensive account of some British suffragists’ use of militant tactics, see Andrew Rosen’s Rise Up, Women!: The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914.

If you want to learn more about film’s role in the suffrage movements, see Kay Sloan’s documentary film Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, and watch the brief silent film A Busy Day, which stars a cross-dressing Charlie Chaplin in an unflattering portrayal of a woman suffragist.

For a more light-hearted, fictional story about the British suffrage movement, check out Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons, a graphic novel trilogy.

Every Woman’s Problem, a Silent Film Imagining the First Woman Governor

Suffragists used every type of media to hammer home their message: magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, and more. But not all these polemics included words. Film—at that point still a silent medium—was a potent weapon in the suffragist arsenal.

One of those films was Mothers of Men, which came out in 1917 and was re-released in 1921 with the title Every Woman’s Problem. The plot centers on lawyer Clara Madison (played by Dorothy Davenport), and takes place in a future in which women can vote. Madison, a suffragist, is voted into office twice: first as a judge in a western state, and eventually as governor.

The silent film’s drama is explained in a 1921 review in Moving Picture World: After Madison is elected as judge, “a yellow newspaper opposes her to such an extent that her husband threatens the life of the editor. Bootleggers whom the paper has also opposed concoct a scheme by which the newspaper office is destroyed by a bomb and the editor killed. Circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to the guilt of Clara’s husband, and with the two bootleggers, he is sentenced to death.”

As governor, Madison faces an awful dilemma: Should she pardon her husband, whom she loves, or allow the law to decide his fate? Madison is saved from making a choice when one of the bootleggers confesses to the crime, saving her husband.

An essay written by Shelley Stamp, a film scholar who specializes in women and early film culture, explains the themes that the movie explores:

Mothers of Men addressed some of the most contentious questions surrounding the issue of women’s suffrage. Can women provide effective political leadership without their emotions getting in the way? Will women bring a stronger moral compass to public office? Can female leadership curtail political corruption? How will the press treat women in elected office?

Like many films of the early 20th century, Mothers of Men/Every Woman’s Man was long thought to be lost. But in the late 1990s, James Mockoski, an archivist, discovered a copy of the film at the British Film Institute, according to an article about the effort in the The Mercury News. About two decades later, Mockoski raised enough money to digitally restore the film.

It was first shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2016. While there is no online copy available, you can access the film at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. It is listed in their archives under the title Every Woman’s Problem, but is cross-listed under Mothers of Men. To set up a viewing, you need to make an appointment with the Library of Congress far in advance. The film is not listed in the library’s online catalog, but you can direct a reference librarian to look for it by using the title. Directions for setting up a viewing appointment can be found here.

Watch a slideshow put together by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival about the film here:

Iron Jawed Angels, a Film About Suffragist Alice Paul

Iron Jawed Angels is a made-for-TV historical drama that tells the story of how a key leader in the US suffrage movement, Alice Paul (played by Hilary Swank), took the voting rights fight to Washington, DC. The movie first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004 before being shown on HBO.

The film follows Paul and fellow militant activist Lucy Burns as the pair clash with old-guard suffragists from the National American Woman Suffrage Association—or NAWSA—over tactics and strategy. Paul and Burns wanted, for instance, to push for an amendment to the US Constitution guaranteeing women’s voting rights. (Though it also lobbied Congress for a constitutional amendment, NAWSA put at least as much energy into its parallel effort to change the constitutions of individual states.) Paul and Burns break off from NAWSA and eventually turn to confrontational protests that land them in jail.

The movie shows how, while locked up in the Occoquan women’s prison in Virginia, Paul and her National Woman’s Party co-activists go on a hunger strike and are force-fed in response—hence the moniker “iron-jawed angels.”

In the film, the hunger strike pays off. Public sympathy for the suffragists grew after word leaked out about the hunger strike and the brutal tactics used to break it.

The official website for Iron Jawed Angels is informative, filled with links to reviews, a detailed synopsis, video clips, and information on where to buy the movie. You can also see the movie’s IMDB page for more information.

An academic review of the film, written by Kristy Maddux, appeared in the February 23, 2009 issue of the journal Feminist Media Studies (vol. 9, issue 1), pp. 73-94. You can access the review’s abstract—and purchase access to the full piece—here, via Taylor & Francis Online.