Overview

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party presents images that depict the tactics used by the militant wing of the suffrage movement in the United States—including picketing, petitioning, pageants, parades and demonstrations, hunger strikes and imprisonment---as well as individual portraits of organization leaders and members. The photographs document the National Woman’s Party’s push for ratification of the 19th Amendment as well as its later efforts for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. There are 448 digitized photographs selected from approximately 2,650 print photographs in the Records of the National Woman’s Party, a collection of more than 438,000 items, housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.  The images span from 1875 to 1938 but largely were created in the years between 1913 and 1922.

Founded in 1913 as the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), the National Woman’s Party (NWP) introduced tactics and strategies to the American women’s suffrage campaign that were inspired by its leaders’ experiences with the militant wing of the British suffrage movement (see Historical Overview). The NWP sought to attract publicity, generate public interest, and pressure government officials to support women's suffrage in order to win passage of a federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing women the right to vote. Its tactics included holding open-air demonstrations; distributing pamphlets; organizing elaborate parades and pageants; circulating suffrage petitions; mounting billboards on public highways; orchestrating nationwide automobile and train tours of suffrage speakers; picketing the White House and congressional office buildings; burning watch fires; conducting hunger strikes; and facing arrest, imprisonment, and force-feedings. After suffrage was achieved, the NWP launched a campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment and dedicated itself to achieving social, political, and economic equality for women throughout the world.

Because so many of the NWP’s activities were designed to attract attention to its campaigns for suffrage and equal rights, there is a rich photographic archive within the NWP records, which was used by the organization for publicity purposes. In some cases, the NWP published the images in its weekly journals–The Suffragist (November 1913- January 1921) and Equal Rights (February 1923-November 1954)–or in its annual reports, postcards, and other illustrated publications. In other instances, the NWP distributed copies of the images across the country to various local newspapers to publicize the activities of area women, to promote an upcoming lecture by a visiting speaker, or to accompany a news story about a regional suffrage or post-suffrage event. In still other cases, the NWP received file copies of images taken by independent news services featured in contemporary news accounts of NWP protests, demonstrations, and other activities in Washington and nationwide. Since these images were part of a working photo morgue, they sometimes have crop markings or other notations on the front or verso and occasionally exhibit signs of repeated handling and use.

Throughout its history, the NWP frequently requested that its members submit photographs of themselves. The party also collected portraits of 19th-century suffrage pioneers, international feminists, and women active in related reform movements or profiled in an NWP publication. Collectively, these portraits form a significant part of the overall collection. Of the 2,650 images in the NWP records, approximately 60 percent–or 1,590 images, are formal or informal portraits, representing more than 1,015 individual women. A list of portraits (PDF) identifies the number of images per woman and the container numbers where they are located in the NWP records. The digitized portraits are hyperlinked.

NWP correspondence indicates that the organization frequently alerted the media or hired its own photographers to cover events and activities with the likely intention of distributing images to news agencies. The collection often contains multiple copies of the same photograph, each affixed with an identical caption, as if "ready" to be mailed out for distribution or publication. Caption information is recorded in the bibliographic records, but the captions themselves are not included in the digital images.

Also noted in the bibliographic records are citations to published versions of the images in The Suffragist and Equal Rights, and in two books published by NWP members shortly after ratification of the 19th Amendment in August 1920: Doris Stevens, Jailed For Freedom (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920) and Inez Haynes Irwin, The Story of the Woman’s Party (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921).

Related Resources

Library of Congress Resources

Electronic

  • American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States.
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/index.html
  • An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rbpehtml/
  • By Popular Demand: “Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html
  • List of Individual Portraits Contained in the Records of the National Woman's Party (Groups I and II), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (PDF)
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/portrait_list.pdf
  • Photographs from The Chicago Daily News, 1902-1933
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html
  • Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html
  • “Women, Their Rights, and Nothing Less”: The Suffrage Movement from 1840-1920
    http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/women-rights/

    • Archival

    The Manuscript Division holds the records of the following leading suffrage organizations:

    Among other suffrage-related collections in the Manuscript Division are the personal papers of the following:

    The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds the personal library and scrapbooks of Susan B. Anthony as well as scrapbooks compiled by Matilda Gage, Ida Husted Harper, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Anne Fitzhugh Miller, and May Wright Sewall. It also maintains NAWSA’s reference library containing pamphlets, serials, convention proceedings, and scrapbooks, some formerly owned by Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone.

    Sheet music, motion pictures, photographs, posters, newspapers, books, pamphlets, and other materials may also be found throughout the Library’s General Collections and in its other custodial divisions.

    The Prints and Photographs Division holds a small collection of Visual Materials from the Records of the National Woman’s Party. It consists of about 450 posters, postcards, printing plates, and photographs (primarily portraits), which were transferred from the Manuscript Division in 1986. A finding aid for this collection is available online from the Prints and Photographs Division. Digitized images of selected items may be found in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog by searching on the call number or title. Additional images relating to the NWP sometimes appear in other Prints and Photographs Division collections, especially in the photo archives of news agencies and photographers, such as those of the National Photo Company, George Grantham Bain, and Harris & Ewing.

    External Resources

    Electronic

    • The Gerritsen Collection: Women’s History Online, 1543-1945. Chadwyk Healey. Online subscription database (available only at purchasing institutions) of the earlier microform set (17,556 microfiche and 241 reels) titled The Gerritsen Collection of Women’s History (Glen Rock, NJ: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1975). Includes The Suffragist, Equal Rights, and other suffrage literature in digital format.

    The selected sites listed below all relate in some way to women’s history and suffrage in the United States. The sites were chosen for their educational content and broad accessibility. The Library of Congress neither endorses nor maintains these Internet sites. Users should direct any problems with these sites to the particular administrator or Webmaster responsible.

    Other Resources

    Book

    • Adams, Colleen. Woman’s Suffrage: A Primary Source History. New York: Rosen, 2003.
    • Baker, Jean H., ed. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
    • Bausum, Ann. With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2004.
    • Becker, Susan. The Origins of the Equal Rights Amendment: American Feminism between the Wars. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981.
    • Bolden, Tonya, ed. 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History: From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the ERA. New York: Crown, 2002.
    • Buhle, Mari Jo, and Paul Buhle. The Concise History of Woman Suffrage. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
    • Butler, Amy E. Two Paths to Equality: Alice Paul and Ethel M. Smith in the ERA Debate, 1921-1929. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2002.
    • Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
    • DuBois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848-1969. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
    • DuBois, Ellen Carol. Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
    • DuBois, Ellen Carol. Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
    • Dumbeck, Kristina. Leaders of Women’s Suffrage. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 2001.
    • Finnegan, Margaret. Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
    • Ford, Linda G. Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman’s Party, 1912-1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991.
    • Friedl, Bettina, ed. On to Victory: Propaganda Plays of the Woman Suffrage Movement. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
    • Gluck, Sherna Berger, ed. From Parlor to Prison: Five American Suffragists Talk about their Lives. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985.
    • Gordon, Ann D., with Bettye Collier-Thomas, eds. African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
    • Guernsey, JoAnn Bren. Voices of Feminism: Past, Present, and Future. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner, 1996.
    • Helmer, Diana Star. Women Suffragists. New York: Facts on File, 1998.
    • Irwin, Inez Haynes. The Story of the Woman’s Party. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1921. (New editions published as Up Hill With Banners Flying. Penobscott, ME: Traversity Press, 1964; The Story of Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party. Fairfax, VA: Denlinger’s, 1977).
    • Lasky, Kathryn. A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen. New York: Scholastic, 2002. (fiction)
    • Lumsden, Linda J. Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.
    • Lumsden, Linda J. Rampant Women: Suffragists and the Right of Assembly. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1997.
    • Lunardini, Christine A. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910-1928. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
    • Marcus, Jane, ed. Suffrage and the Pankhursts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. (British suffrage movement)
    • Meyers, Madeleine, ed. Forward into Light: The Struggle for Woman’s Suffrage. Lowell, MA: Discovery Enterprises, 1994.
    • Raumm, Elizabeth. Alice Paul. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2004.
    • Sheppard, Alice. Cartooning for Suffrage. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.
    • Stevens, Doris. Jailed for Freedom. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920. Revised and abridged reprint, Carol O’Hare, ed. Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote. Troutdale, OR: New Sage Press, 1995.
    • Sullivan, George. The Day the Women Got the Vote: A Photo History of the Women’s Rights Movement. New York: Scholastic, 1994.
    • Tickner, Lisa. The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-14. London: Chatto & Windus, 1987. (British suffrage movement)
    • Weatherford, Doris. A History of the American Suffragist Movement. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998.

    Periodical

    • Equal Rights. Weekly bulletin of the National Woman’s Party. Washington, D.C., 1922-54. Available in microfilm.
    • The Suffragist. Publication of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage/National Woman’s Party. 9 vols. Washington, D.C., 1913-21. Available in microfilm.

    Microfilm

    • Haggerty, Donald L. National Woman’s Party Papers: The Suffrage Years, 1913-1920. Sanford, NC.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1981.
    • Pardo, Thomas C. National Woman’s Party Papers, 1913-1974. Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1979.

    Misc.

    • Burns, Ken, and Paul Barnes. Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. A General Motors Mark of Excellence Presentation. PBS, 1999. Videocassette. (http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/ external link)
    • Knight, Elizabeth. Songs of the Suffragettes, Folkways Records FH 5281, 1958.
    • Pollak, Ruth. One Woman, One Vote. The American Experience. A Production of the Educational Film Center. Boston: PBS, 1995. Videocassette.
    • Von Garnier, Katja. Iron-Jawed Angels. HBO Films, 2003. Videocassette. and (http://iron-jawed-angels.com/ external link)
    • Knight, Elizabeth. Songs of the Suffragettes. Folkways Records FH 5281, 1958.

Rights and Access

The Library of Congress provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions. There may be content that is protected as "works made for hire" (copyright held by the party that commissioned the original work) and/or under the copyright or neighboring-rights laws of other nations. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. See Legal Notices and Privacy and Publicity Rights for additional information and restrictions.

The Library of Congress would like to learn more about these materials and to hear from individuals or institutions having any additional information. Please contact us through our Ask A Librarian service.

Preferred Citation

Researchers wishing to quote from or refer to special presentation features and pdfs included in this digital site should cite the title of the feature and the following digital collection information: Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Please include the URL of the web page being cited and the date of access. Citations to the individual photographs from the collection should include the photograph title and date, Records of the National Woman’s Party, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Please see the bibliographic records for the individual photographs for further detail.

Permissions

The Library of Congress has researched the contents of this collection to ascertain any possible legal rights embodied in the materials. Items included in this collection with the permission of right holders are listed below. For further use of reproduction of those items, please contact the rights holders listed.

Two photographs, “Muriel Lynch (and daughter?),” and “Dorothy Thompson, Journalist,” made available here with permission from Bachrach Studio. 321 S. Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314

Availability of Reproductions

To inquire about reproductions of Manuscript Division items found in American Memory, contact the Library of Congress Duplication Services.

For Further Information

If you have comments or additional questions, please contact us.