The Visual Politics of the Woman Suffrage Movement from American Independence through the Nineteenth Amendment

FAIN: FT-254705-17

Allison Lange
Wentworth Institute of Technology (Boston, MA 02115-5901)

A book-length study about the strategic use of images in the woman suffrage movement from the 1780s through 1920.

Images of Change will be the first book to demonstrate the centrality of visual politics—the strategic use of images to promote a cause or candidate—to US woman’s rights campaigns from the late 18th century through 1920, when the 19th Amendment granted women suffrage. Reformers used images to contest women’s relationships with the state, while opponents used them to reinforce existing ones. In response to pictures satirizing political women as masculine threats to society, suffragists changed their public image with visual campaigns that laid the foundations for modern ones. I analyze the visual and historical contexts of popular public images, ranging from engraved cartoons and photographic portraits to the earliest newspaper halftones and colorful propaganda posters. My work expands on recent studies of race, pictures, and politics by focusing on gender. This book and exhibition will promote a better understanding of the gendered political images that still spark public debates.

Media Coverage

The Suffragists Fought to Redefine Femininity. The Debate Isn’t Over (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Alisha Haridasani Gupta
Publication: The New York Times
Date: 8/26/2020
URL: http://https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/us/womens-suffrage-femininity.html

Fighting for the Vote With Cartoons (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Anna Diamond
Publication: The New York Times
Date: 8/14/2020
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/suffrage-cartoons.html

Associated Products

Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement (Book)
Title: Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement
Author: Allison Lange
Editor: Tim Mennell
Abstract: For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images—whether illustrations, engravings, photographs, or colorful chromolithograph posters. Some of these pictures have been flattering, many have been condescending, and others downright incendiary. They have drawn upon prevailing cultural ideas of women’s perceived roles and abilities and often have been circulated with pointedly political objectives. Picturing Political Power offers perhaps the most comprehensive analysis yet of the connection between images, gender, and power. In this examination of the fights that led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Allison K. Lange explores how suffragists pioneered one of the first extensive visual campaigns in modern American history. She shows how pictures, from early engravings and photographs to colorful posters, proved central to suffragists’ efforts to change expectations for women, fighting back against the accepted norms of their times. In seeking to transform notions of womanhood and win the right to vote, white suffragists emphasized the compatibility of voting and motherhood, while Sojourner Truth and other leading suffragists of color employed pictures to secure respect and authority. Picturing Political Power demonstrates the centrality of visual politics to American women’s campaigns throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing the power of images to change history.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo50270913.html
Primary URL Description: University of Chicago Press website
Access Model: Hardcover, ebook
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780226703244
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Massachusetts Debates a Woman’s Right to Vote (Exhibition)
Title: Massachusetts Debates a Woman’s Right to Vote
Curator: Allison Lange
Abstract: For over a century Americans debated whether women should vote. They wondered: was voting compatible with women’s traditional domestic work? If women participated in politics, would men continue as heads of the family? Would women remain virtuous and “feminine” or would they start to look and act like men? In Massachusetts, suffragists were especially powerful. In 1850, Worcester hosted the first national women’s rights convention. Later, Lucy Stone led the nation’s largest suffrage organization and edited the longest-running women’s rights newspaper from her Park Street office. In 1895, fellow Bostonian Josephine Ruffin founded one of the first national groups to advocate for the rights of women of color. Local anti-suffragists proved influential too. Their arguments against extending the vote to women dominated legislative debates and newspaper articles. In 1895, Massachusetts men and women formed the nation’s first organized anti-suffrage association. This online presentation highlights the fight over a woman’s right to vote in Massachusetts by illustrating the arguments made by suffragists and their opponents. Women at the polls might seem unremarkable today; but these contentious campaigns prove that suffragists had to work hard to persuade men to vote to share the ballot. These century-old arguments formed the foundations for today’s debates about gender and politics. Please note: This online presentation was derived from an exhibition, "Can She Do It?": Massachusetts Debates A Woman's Right to Vote, which was on display at the Massachusetts Historical Society between 26 April 2019 and 21 September 2019. This website does not show everything that was part of the exhibition.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://www.masshist.org/features/suffrage
Primary URL Description: This is the URL for the digital version of the exhibition.

"Picture It: The Women's Suffrage Movement" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: "Picture It: The Women's Suffrage Movement"
Abstract: For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images. Join us for a discussion with Allison K. Lange about her new book, Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Historians and American Girls podcast hosts Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney will lead a Q&A with our burning questions about women’s voting rights. Why is Susan B. Anthony one of the most famous female activists in US history? Did Americans really think that suffragists were as masculine and aggressive as anti-suffrage cartoons suggested? And, a century later, what is the legacy of these visual debates about gender and power? At the end, we’ll invite you to propose your own questions!
Author: Allison Lange, Allison Horrocks, Mary Mahoney
Date: 06/04/2020
Location: American Antiquarian Society hosted this virtual event.
Primary URL: https://www.americanantiquarian.org/virtual-public-program-lange
Primary URL Description: This URL links to a description of the event and the recorded event.

Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement
Abstract: - Allison K. Lange, Wentworth Institute of Technology, in conversation with Catherine Allgor, MHS Picturing Political Power offers a comprehensive analysis of the connection between images, gender, and power. This examination of the fights that led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment explores how suffragists pioneered one of the first extensive visual campaigns in modern American history. Prof. Allison Lange shows how pictures, from early engravings and photographs to colorful posters, proved central to suffragists’ efforts to change expectations for women, fighting back against the accepted norms of their times. Picturing Political Power demonstrates the centrality of visual politics to American women’s campaigns throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, revealing the power of images to change history.
Author: Allison Lange
Date: 06/03/2020
Location: Hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, virtual event
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kTN7VOx3EY&feature=emb_title
Primary URL Description: Link to recorded version of the event.

How Susan B. Anthony Became the Most Recognizable Suffragist (Blog Post)
Title: How Susan B. Anthony Became the Most Recognizable Suffragist
Author: Allison Lange
Abstract: When I ask my college students to name a suffragist, most of them name Susan B. Anthony. Over a century after her death, many even recognize her picture. In 1979, she became the first woman whose portrait appeared on a circulating coin in the United States. A recent study by the National Women’s History Museum reveals that many states require students to learn about her. Soon, the first statue of historical women in Central Park will feature Anthony and fellow reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth. How did Anthony’s face become so visible? Anthony was one of many women’s rights activists, but she was one of the few who dedicated her time to distributing portraits of reformers like herself. Anthony spent significant effort and money to mold the public image of the women’s rights movement. Anthony borrowed visual strategies from the antislavery reformers, especially from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. Douglass and Truth sold their portraits to provide a model of black leadership that countered racist and sexist cartoons. Similarly, Anthony wanted to challenge cartoons that mocked female reformers. She distributed portraits to define the leaders of the movement and emphasize that women—especially well-off white women—could be public leaders, perhaps even president. Anthony’s portraits established a model for female leadership and defined which suffragists we most often remember today.
Date: 06/13/2020
Primary URL: https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/21/how-susan-b-anthony-became-the-most-recognizable-suffragist
Primary URL Description: Link to blog post.
Blog Title: The Suff Buffs
Website: The Suff Buffs website (for the US Congress's Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission)

“Seeing Citizens: Picturing American Women’s Fight for the Vote” (Exhibition)
Title: “Seeing Citizens: Picturing American Women’s Fight for the Vote”
Curator: Allison Lange
Abstract: In response to decades of sexist pictures, suffragists constructed a visual vocabulary that challenged ideas of women’s place in society, expanded notions of citizenship, and laid the foundation for modern media politics. This exhibition presents the images that leading activists wanted the public to see—and some that they wanted to hide. White suffragists portrayed themselves as elite, educated, and moral women. Some aspects of their campaign assured skeptics that the amendment would preserve white supremacy and pose no challenges to the disfranchisement strategies which affected black women and men alike in the Jim Crow South. Lacking funds and support from the white-dominated press, suffragists of color typically employed images on a smaller scale. Their pictures are less familiar but no less powerful. They demonstrate the movement’s breadth, emphasis, and savvy for visual politics. Pro– and anti–women’s rights images offer more than a look at the past: they illustrate the vibrant debates about the status of women in the United States that continue in images today.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://long19.radcliffe.harvard.edu/projects/exhibit_seeingcitizens/
Primary URL Description: Link to digital version of exhibition.

The State of Equality: Wyoming Women Get the Vote (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: The State of Equality: Wyoming Women Get the Vote
Writer: Wyoming PBS
Director: Wyoming PBS
Producer: Wyoming PBS
Abstract: On December 10th, 1869 the territory of Wyoming ratified into law the right for women to vote. Stories abound across the state regarding the reasons why Wyoming women were granted the right to vote 150 years ago. Was it a question of statehood; or did citizens respect the vital role women played in ranching, farming, community, business and family rearing; or did it have to do with a tie breaking vote by a controversial brothel owner from South Pass City? These are all questions that WyomingPBS, in partnership with Caldera Productions, address in “The State of Equality.”
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neHJl0jH9zA&feature=emb_title
Primary URL Description: The link is to the documentary that features me as one of the historians.
Format: Video
Format: Digital File

12 Women Who Shaped America: 1619 to 1920 (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: 12 Women Who Shaped America: 1619 to 1920
Writer: Allison Lange
Director: N/A
Producer: Wondrium
Abstract: Too often, historical narratives overlook the contributions of women. Museums, documentaries, historical sites, and even textbooks omit essential parts of the whole because they leave out her story. Join Allison K. Lange, historian and professor, as she guides you through the fascinating lives of 12 early Americans in 12 Women Who Shaped America: 1619 to 1920 and shares their stories which are crucial to a better understanding of American history. With a deft talent for bringing history to life, Allison explores the complex and often controversial lives of these American women who shaped the United States as we know it today.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.wondrium.com/12-women-who-shaped-america-1619-to-1920
Primary URL Description: Wondrium home page for this series
Access Model: Subscription
Format: DVD
Format: Web

Visual Culture of Women’s Suffrage (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Visual Culture of Women’s Suffrage
Writer: Allison Lange
Director: N/A
Producer: C-SPAN American History TV
Abstract: Wentworth Institute of Technology professor Allison Lange taught a class about the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Professor Lange drew from her book, Picturing Political Power, to describe how women’s voting rights activists and their opponents used images to support their causes. This class was part of a National Endowment for the Humanities institute for college and university teachers hosted by the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.c-span.org/video/?514829-1/womens-suffrage-movement
Primary URL Description: URL for video
Access Model: Open access
Format: Web

And Nothing Less: The Untold Stories of Women’s Fight for the Vote (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: And Nothing Less: The Untold Stories of Women’s Fight for the Vote
Writer: N/A
Director: N/A
Producer: PRX and the U.S. Congress’s Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission
Abstract: "Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” Written by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women’s rights activists used this rallying cry to demand voting equality. But the suffrage movement included far more voices and perspectives than these two well-known names: throughout the fight for women’s right to vote, generations of diverse activists demanded full access to the ballot box. Hosts Rosario Dawson and Retta guide us through this seven-part series, bringing us the stories we didn’t learn in our history books. And Nothing Less is a production of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, the National Park Service, and PRX. It is the official podcast commemorating 100 years of the 19th Amendment and women's constitutional right to vote.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://open.spotify.com/show/2QAZrj5tRPstkvixfBEs7o
Primary URL Description: Spotify page for podcast
Access Model: Open access podcast
Format: Other

Suffrage movement convinced women they could ‘have it all’ (Article)
Title: Suffrage movement convinced women they could ‘have it all’
Author: Allison Lange
Abstract: Article about the history of suffrage and its connections to the present
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/25/suffrage-movement-convinced-women-they-could-have-it-all/
Primary URL Description: Article website
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: The Washington Post
Publisher: The Washington Post

Truth Be Told: Stories of Black Women’s Fight for the Vote (Exhibition)
Title: Truth Be Told: Stories of Black Women’s Fight for the Vote
Curator: Allison Lange
Abstract: Digital exhibition about the history of Black women in the suffrage movement
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.evoke.org/truthbetold
Primary URL Description: Digital exhibition

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