A Gallery of Suffrage, for Your Voting Pleasure: Political Cartoons From Before Women Could Vote

This small digital gallery from The Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum and The Archive (published online on The Nib) showcases full-color political cartoons from the suffrage era.

If you’d like to see more suffrage-era cartoons, check out the Catherine H. Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive, Puck magazine’s suffrage issue, and Jill Lepore’s book The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

Elisabeth Freeman and Media Stunts for Suffrage (1911-1916)

Elisabeth Freeman was an English suffragette born in 1876. She told the story of her dedication to suffrage being piqued by this incident: “I saw a big burly policeman beating up on a woman, and I ran to help her, and we were both arrested. I found out in jail what cause we were fighting for.” This rich interactive scrapbook of Freeman’s life tells the story of her struggles as a Suffragette, Civil Rights Worker, and Militant Pacifist.

Of particular relevance to those interested in suffrage and the media is the section on Freeman’s media stunts for suffrage. Freeman, adept at using the media to her advantage, became known for “finding some activity that would capture media attention and guarantee press.” She was often personally involved in protests and even got arrested a number of times. She also used other newsworthy events to “piggy back” onto another story, for instance, speaking between rounds of prize fights.

Some highlights from this fascinating repository of “stunts” include Freeman pictured with a bear and Freeman arrested at a strike.  

Letter to the Editor from Melinda Hall Gardner: The Suffrage Pickets

Matilda Hall Gardner was a suffragist who was a member of the national executive committee of the militant National Women’s Party, the pro-suffrage group founded by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.

In a June 4, 1917 letter to the New York Evening Post, Gardner takes on the objections to suffrage voiced by members of Congress and the Post‘s Washington correspondent.

Gardner wrote that congressional opponents to suffrage had objected to every type of tactic activists used, from parades to letters to the editor. She further noted that there was now a new type of World War I-related objection appearing, both from pro-war figures and those opposed to the conflict. Pro-war figures, in her telling, said that women’s “‘hysterical'” objections to war showed they were not fit to weigh in on the “‘great questions'” of the day. Anti-war figures, meanwhile, argued that some women’s demands for war proved that women should not participate in public life.

Lastly, she noted that David Lawrence, the Washington-based reporter for the Post, wrote in a dispatch that women should wait on men to grant them voting rights after the war. Her rejoinder reads, in part: “Can Mr. Lawrence or any other man cite any right which ever was achieved by men or women as a result of ceasing their demands and relying on the gratitude of their superiors in power?”

You can access the letter here at the Fulton History newspaper database, or read it by downloading the image below or opening the link for the original, digitized version from Fulton History.

New York Times Letters: Should Women Have the Vote in New York State?

In 1915, the usually anti-suffrage New York Times produced a six-page supplement for its readers, bannered at the top of every page with the words: “Should Women Have the Vote in New York State?” The Times published the piece after the New York State Legislature decided to put a suffrage referendum to the popular vote in the upcoming November election. The feature, which comprised six essays in letters-to-the-editor format, included the views of major suffrage and anti-suffrage figures.

Despite a passionate, rousing campaign conducted in the streets, in lecture and concert halls, and in the media, the November 1915 referendum failed and did not come up again for consideration by the state’s all-male electorate until November 1917, when it passed.

You can find out more about the 1915 New York State referendum here, and you can read about Puck magazine’s milestone suffrage issue—produced as part of the push to approve the referendum—here. 

Race, Gender, and the Fight for Votes for Women: W.E.B. Du Bois On Suffrage

W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most important early 20th century US scholars and activists, is best known as a key figure in the the fight for African-Americans’ civil rights. But he was also a prominent supporter of the women’s suffrage movement, and used the magazine he edited, the NAACP’s The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, to advance the movement for women’s voting rights.

In the pages of the Crisis, between 1911 to 1920, Du Bois published essays, commentary—his own and others’—and compiled symposia from leading women’s suffrage advocates, both black and white. The magazine also highlighted fierce debates in the black community over support for suffrage, as well as controversies over race within the women’s suffrage movement.

In one October 1911 editorial (click here and go to page 243), Du Bois took aim at Anna Howard Shaw, the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, or NAWSA, who had asserted publicly that all African-Americans opposed suffrage, and that the suffrage movement should “not touch the Negro problem” because it would “offend the South.” Du Bois’ riposte was that the suffrage movement’s lack of support for civil rights was hypocritical, and that it undermined American democracy. 

In a March 1912 article (click here and go to page 195), Du Bois quotes from a resolution he submitted to NAWSA, which argues that blacks and women were “fighting the same battle” for voting rights and should therefore be in solidarity with one another. 

An August 1912 piece (click here and go to page 234) makes the case that “votes for women means votes for black women”—and that women’s suffrage would increase the black voting population.

And in August 1915, Du Bois’ Crisis published (click here and go to page 178) a symposium of articles by “leading thinkers of colored America” in favor of suffrage. 

For more on Du Bois’ thinking on suffrage as exhibited in Crisis, see Garth E. Pauley’s work in the Journal of Black Studies (accessible through JStor here) and Jean Fagan Yellin’s article in The Massachusetts Review (also accessible through JStor).

Brooke Kroeger’s book The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote also has more on the Crisis and women’s suffrage. See: pp. 81, 90-91, 124-126, 150, 162, 165, 172.

Lastly, pages 289-290 and 369-70 in David Levering Lewis’ book W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race discuss Du Bois and the women’s movement for voting rights.

Here’s a linked list of Crisis editorials on women’s suffrage:

October 1911, pp. 243-244.

March 1912, pp. 195-196.

June 1912, pp. 76-77.

August 1912, pp. 181-182.

September 1912, p. 234.

May 1913, p. 29.

August 1914, pp.179-180.

April 1915, p. 285.

August 1915, pp. 177-192.

February 1915, p. 182.

November 1915, pp. 29-30.

November 1917, p. 8.

March 1920, p. 234.

Historical Connections: The Weird Familiarity of 100-Year-Old Feminism Memes

This 2016 Atlantic article by Adrienne LaFrance links today’s political memes to suffrage and anti-suffrage propaganda imagery from the early 20th century. LaFrance argues that politics often clashes with gender norms, particularly when women and women’s issues are poised to make history—such as when women were fighting to get the vote or when Hillary Clinton was running for president. Both the images of yesterday (pamphlets, postcards, posters, and the like) and images of today (memes) often rely on humor to either support or oppose women’s role in politics.

You can find many examples of suffrage-era propaganda of the sort LaFrance describes in the Catherine H. Palczewski Suffrage Postcard Archive.

Cartoon Against Women’s Suffrage

This cartoon from the New Zealand History government website contains typical anti-suffrage imagery, warning how changing gender roles could harm society. In it, a harrassed and brow-beaten husband wears women’s clothing while making a mess of domestic chores. Meanwhile, his domineering wife—just returned from somewhere outside the domestic realm—criticizes his housekeeping. Though the scene is humorous, it argued that giving women the vote could upset traditional gender roles—to the detriment of men.

Archive: Suffrage Resources of the National Woman’s Party

The National Woman’s Party collection at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington, DC has a vast collection of books, periodicals, cartoons, scrapbooks, artifacts, and ephemera from the NWP’s history.  As the site describes its collection on its homepage:

The National Woman’s Party (NWP) collection housed at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument is an important resource for the study of the suffrage movement and the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). This unique collection, including the nation’s first feminist library, documents the mass political movement for women’s full citizenship in the 20th century, both in the United States and throughout the world. The collection contains books, scrapbooks, political cartoons, textiles, photographs, organizational records, fine arts, decorative arts, and artifacts produced primarily by women, about women.

The extensive holdings outline the history of the militant wing of the women’s movement in the United States, documenting the strategies and tactics of the movement, demonstrating the use of visual images as effective publicity tactics in a pre-electronic age, and revealing the international work of the National Woman’s Party in its historic quest for complete equality for American women.

You can read more about the tactics and techniques of the NWP here.

Henry B. Blackwell Essay: Objections to Woman Suffrage Answered

Relatively early demonstrations of prominent male support for suffrage was critically important to the movement. Henry B. Blackwell (1825-1909) was among the founders of the Republican Party and of the American Woman Suffrage Association. In this essay, he cites 19 common anti-suffrage arguments and offers point-by-point refutations of each. A copy of both pages of the leaflet is appended below.

The essay appeared in the March 1896 issue of the Woman Suffrage Leaflet, a bi-monthly publication of the Woman’s Journal. Blackwell co-edited Woman’s Journal, which his wife, the suffragist Lucy Stone, founded in 1870.

You can find a free online version here, via the National Archives. (National Archives Identifier: 306657)

You can read more about the Woman’s Journal here.

Tactics and Techniques of the National Woman’s Party Suffrage Campaign

This essay from the Library of Congress explores how the National Woman’s Party, or NWP, used various techniques to raise public awareness of the woman’s suffrage campaign. Traditional lobbying and petitioning were mainstays of NWP members, but these activities were supplemented by other more public actions—including parades, pageants, street speaking, and demonstrations.

You can also access an archive of NWP suffrage resources here.