Primary Source
Bertha Damaris Knobe, Spectacular Woman Suffrage in America
Bertha Damaris Knobe. "Spectacular Woman Suffrage in America." The Independent [New York] October 12, 1911, Vol. 71, p. 801.
Era: Suffrage Era | Media: Magazines
Bertha Damaris Knobe, a chronicler of the women’s movement for voting rights, penned a striking account of suffragist activism for The Independent magazine in October 1911.
Setting out to document the diversity of tactics the suffragists used—from parades to soapbox speeches to automobile tours—Knobe takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the United States to show how suffrage advocates took inspiration from their British counterparts and transformed their cause from an “academic” exercise preaching to the choir to a public-facing mass movement. She reports on a women’s suffrage parade in New York, an automobile tour in Illinois, and a Baltimore parade that “trampled on Southern pride and prejudice.”
Google Books has a public, digitized copy of this article, contained in a collection of issues from The Independent.
For more on Bertha Damaris Knobe’s journalism on the suffrage movement, see her account of a May 1911 suffrage parade in New York City, and her article on the suffrage victory in California.
