Suffragists: Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement

Contemporary placards, cartoons, pictures and editorials demonstrate the obstacles women faced as they struggled for political freedom. And it wasn’t just men who opposed granting women the right to vote. Some American women thought the whole suffrage movement was foolishness.

• In the last year of his life, the artist George Yost Coffin gave Brumidi’s famous fresco The Apotheosis of George Washington (located in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capital) a different look when he published (in the January 26, 1896 issue of the Washington Post) a cartoon, The Apotheosis of Suffrage, spoofing the women’s movement.
  
  
• Susan Anthony was often the target of unflattering cartoons and descriptions.
  
  
• Election Day! - a caricature from 1909 - depicts a mother on her way to the polls, leaving her husband behind to care for the children.
  
  
• The National Anti-Suffrage Association, in approximately 1911, displayed a sign in the window of its headquarters: "Opposed to Woman Suffrage."
  
  
• 1912: "Men of Ohio! Give the Women a Square Deal. Come in and Learn Why Women Ought to Vote"
  
  
• Washington, D.C. was the scene of a freedom march on 3/13/13.  Alice Paul had conceived the idea of a suffragette parade to coincide with the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson.  Not everyone was pleased with the results.
  
  
• Women from the National Women Suffrage Association lobbied for voting rights on April 22, 1913.
  
  
• While some women marched for the cause in New York City (in 1912 and 1913), others learned how to be effective speakers.
  
  
• Women expressed their plea - “Help us to Win the Vote” - in a 1914 placard.
  
  
• Suffragettes picketed in front of the White House in February, 1917.

Despite 150 years of failure and disappointment, Abigail Adams' prediction (that women would ultimately have their say in American politics) finally became reality in 1920.