Lange talks about the suffrage moment. So youve been with thinking about images during 19th century period, and specifically today were going to think about the way that images really constructed gender roles particularly in the 19th century and the ways that activists used images to shape, alter, change gender roles during this time period too. So actually to start off with is to think about the ways that these images are part of our culture today, and one is the way that por chaits like susan portraits like susan anthonys portrait which we see in this parade, shes the closest head to us with the circle glasses. And you see this march down pennsylvania avenue and this emphasis on the very celebrated 19th century womens rights leader. And well talk today about how she became such a famous sufficient is rangist not only sufficient is rangist not only in the 19th century, but also today suffragist. In 1913 we had the same street in washington, d. C. , pennsylvania avenue, and one of the reasons why im pointing to this image and how it connects to our current, you know, political and social Movement Culture is because of this image that was very popular in june of 2020 which was related to the black lives matter. Its briann a that noble riding on a horse in oakland, california. And this image became a viral sensation. Perhaps you all saw it. But theres a really interesting similarity between these two women who are riding horses in these urban areas and symbols of these political causes that really gives us a sense of how the similarities between these suffrage images that were so famous from 1913 and images that still resonate with used today. Brianna actually became a spokesperson for xfinity. So she ended up, you know, this image ended up not only selling kind of promoting a particular idea, but also selling a particular product. Another recent protest image that you all might remember was this black lives matter being painted outside of washington d. C. And you might also know that suffragists were actually the first group to protest right outside the white house, to picket the white house in 1917. Theyre the ones that really made this space around the white house such an important place for political protest. And so a hundred years later, just over a hundred years later, it remains that wayed to. And if youve ever been to washington, d. C. , youve probably seen someone outside the white house protesting something. And because of these, you know, famous protests, these famous images of these famous protests that weve gotten to that, the place if outside of the white house is so important to our political movement. Another image that is probably has probably crossed your Media Consumption is over the past several years are are images of people wearing white, particularly leading political figures. This is a group from a state of the Union Address all wearing white, and theyre wearing white to recall the suffragists in particular. Is so, actually, the suffragists wore white as we saw with the photograph from the 199 13 parade. They 1913 parade. They did it for two reasons. One was to emphasize their morality, their virtue, to suggest that they were kind of pure and also kind of connotations that white might have for us. The other reason they did it is because they wanted to show up in black and white photographs. So in these black and white photographs of people marching in the streets, they knew that women in white would show up better in black and white photographs. And and they knew that those back and white photographs, when they were printed in newspapers, they would show up even better. So even in the 21st century when we see these women in white, you know, in congress, sitting in congress at the state of the union or even in this photograph here, they do tend to stand out, and that is, you know, one of the reasons why suffragists chose white to begin with. So in a lot of ways a lot of the imagery that the suffragists really created throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuries has, is still part of our modern political culture. And im actually going to go back a little bit further into the 18th century just to start us off and set us up for the visual conversations that are really taking place during the 19th century. So id like to start us off with phyllis dawe. This is a political cartoon from 1775, and its a london artist. He probably read about this boycott happening in edenton, North Carolina, in a local newspaper. As far as we know, hed never been to the colony, but this is the scene that he imagined after he read about this boycott. Women even in North Carolina were signing a petition that they arent going to purchase tea. And if you look closely at scene, a lot of my images as you can see are from the library of congress. If you do a quick search on our web site, you can view them much more closely than you can on this video. But you can see that theres this is not a flattering picture. So theres a Woman Holding a who has this large nose, very unflattering features. Theres another one holding a punch bowl which we know is not filled with fruit punch, its filled with alcohol. There is a group pouring out tea canisters in the background. Theres all the women in the room are, you know, ignoring the child whos under the table. These women are supposed to be caring for that child, and the idea here is that these women are ignoring their essential duties as mothers, as caregivers in order to participate in this petition signing. The other detail i really want you to Pay Attention to is the black woman whos standing behind the woman with the gavel. Shes holding a quill and an ink well, and shes not only supporting these women in their participation, shes also very eager to sign is herself. She was interested in the process, interested in participating. And so this image is doing at least two things that i want to really point out to us. One, it is challenging the patriarchy, its suggesting that if women participate in politics, it will really turn topsyturvy the gender roles that colonists are experiencing in American Society in the 18th century, right . Itll make women more masculine, itll mean women are abandoning their families and ignoring their children. The women that we see here also really emphasizes this petition is challenging a racial hierarchy, challenging white supremacy, its challenging the dominance of slavery which is a really Central Economic driver in the british colonies during the late 18th century. So the idea here is to laugh at these women, to mock them, to not take them seriously, and its also expressing anxieties about whether this rebellion that is starting in the colonies might not just challenge the british government, the British Empire as they know it, but might also be part of this challenge of gender and racial hierarchies. And this actually doesnt change much. So i want us to see kind of the similarities of this conversation over time. So as you know, by the 1840s womens rights activists are petitioning on a muched broader scale not only for the right to vote, but also for property rights, to have better access to education, to be participants and Leaders Within the church, a range of issues. But by 1850 we have the very First NationalWomens Rights Convention in worcester, massachusetts. So by that time americans throughout the country are very aware of this rising, growing womens Rights Movement and its vie barnes its increasing power in the United States. And yet the images are changing very little. This is about 75 years after that previous image. You see a woman in the center who is mrs. If perky mrs. Perky. Shes smoke, shes wearing bloomers, shes showing off her ankles which may not seem scanned allow to us in the scandalous to us in the 21st century, but would have been remarkable. He has her hand she has her hand condescendingly placed on this hands head whos hunched over looking like a woman doing these menial tasks. Both of them are ignoring the child who is crying in the front of the room. You know, his banner says no more papa and mama. In the background we have the two women both holding banners as well also wearing bloomers. One says no more basement and kitchen, and i think shes intending to represent servants, working class women. And the other one is a black one whos smoking a pipe, and she has a sign protesting slavery. So is we have this scene thats very much kind of in the same world as the previous one. Its suggesting that if women gain rights, if women seek power and win power, theyre going to abandon their domestic duties, theyre going to force men to become more womenly, and its going to lead to other changes including challenging the class hierarchy like you see with the domestic servant as well as the racial hierarchy and the system of slavely. All these things are slavery. All these things are wrapped up in this 1851 print. And this is a moment when there are a lot of these prints, and its incredibly broad scale. We know illustrated newspapers are on the rise, these engravings are ever more popular. And so i just want to give you a sense of the bredth of these by showing you bredth of these breadth of these from harpers magazine. We have a woman smoking a cigar, women wearing Mens Clothing such as a top hat. Women wearing bloomers, and i should note that these bloomer skirts are very short n. Reality, a in reality, a lot of them were down to their ankles. We have a woman off to the right side pulling up her bloomer pants and showing off her ankles again. We also have two women with their backs toward us who are actually linking arms, giving us a suggestion that these women are so reliant on each other and so is interested in only promoting the interests perhaps of other women that theyre romantically interested in other women as well and kind of fully abandoning men in this version of their reality. And so i want to kind of connect this to some of the civil war industry this weve been talking about in conversations, because by the time we get to the mid 19th century, the association between womens dress with weakness, with frivolity, with kind of the person you dont take very seriously politically or otherwise becomes part of a meme related to the capture of Jefferson Davis after the civil war because he is caught wearing woMens Clothing, and is this becomes an incredibly popular image to reproduce in a variety of ways. So, for example, here are some versions of this image. And if you do some quick searching, you can find many, many more examples of this. And the joke really only works if you think of men in woMens Clothing as woMens Clothing as being this kind of signifier that you are less than, that you are weaker, that you are worth mocking, that its laughable, right . So its this signifier that hes no longer a powerful person when we see anymore woMens Clothing like this. So this is, this is the ways that, you know, even womens imagery when you see them wearing bloomers, suggesting that theyre wearing masculine clothing that they are more powerful these are the way these are are signifiers of their power and their gender roles during this time period. So i want to jump, this is right around the same time period as the last couple of images we looked at, 1869, so just after the civil war. And as you all know in the immediate aftermath of the civil war people are considering what to do next. By 1869 americans are debating the 15th amendment, its about to be ratified. 15th amendment, of course, prohibits voter discrimination based on race and effectively disenfranchises black men. And people are also wondering should women get the vote too. So this image by courier and ives, this lithograph, actually suggests what will happen if women win the vote. And it looks to all of us very similar to what weve been seeing, right . We see women with slightly more traditional clothing, but they are wearing kind of frivolous, outland arish versions outland arish versions of that clothing. Their hair is larger than their heads, extravagant bows. Its really to emphasize that they are kind of too interested in fashion and not practical enough to be proper, you know, voters. One of the kind of favorite details of the theme is the vote for the celebrated man [inaudible] using sharp tongue. I think the phrase really explicitly says about what they think about women many politics at the time and, in fact, a lot about what people say in politics, even about women in politics even in the 21st century. The other detail i want to make sure we point out is this man carrying a baby which is a very popular trope thats repeated over and over again in these womens, antiwomens rights images. And we see this woman telling him that he needs to take care of the baby and this man just absolutely appalled that hes going to have to take care of this. So these antiwomens rights images, as you can see, this is a century after the very first historical image that i showed you. They remain fairly consistent over time, and they really do through the end of the with the package of the amendment. And a lot of these themes still are part of our antifeminist imagery of the 20th century too. And so you can see why suffragists like Elizabeth Cady stanton worked very hard to challenge these ideas. One of the things you can probably already tell about these images is that theyre not coordinated, right . They are not concern these publishers, these editors, these artists, they arent in a group together all deciding to coordinate an attack against the womens Rights Movement. This is simply a more disorganized, loose affiliation where every, you know, publisher knows that the majority of their readers are against womens Voting Rights. So they publish these images in their illustrated newspapers. Most of their readers will support them. And so what we have, one change we have in the 1860s as you know is that becomes so very popular. And suffragists have is very little control over mainstream news consumption, news publications. But something they can control, they canhe photographs, they can sell them to at least their supporters and perhaps even a broader public through a studio. And so its really the first activist to do this very is effectively and in a very coordinated way. This is one of her many photographs. She a lot of her photographs she looks very similar. So this is very thoughtfully posed portrait. And this also says at the bottom, i fill the shadow to support substance. And is you all know photographs are made using [inaudible] during this period. Shes selling this shadow to support the substance which is not only herself because she is a professional performer and she lives off of the money she makes as a reformer. So she puts money into supporting herself and also the causes that she works towards. Shes an antislavery and womens rights activist who by the 1860s is a very popular lecturer, very famous in circles, and she decides to sit for this portrait to prove a couple of things. One, she wants to portray herself as a very respectful, respectable, fairly refined motherly, feminine figure. So we can see all of details in this scene are part of that image. We have this kind of suggestion of domesticity with the arrangement of flowers on the table, with with the book and the table cloth as well as the suggestion of kind of womanly activities with the knitting. Shes also a emphasizing that he is a very she is a very matronly, respectable woman with her clothes. Theyre not overly frivolous or fashionable, theyre a fairly simple, and they really emphasize that she is a working woman, especially because of her head wrap. In contrast, we have Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony who are far less interested or concerned with appearing domestic or motherly. In fact, the the expressions on their faces are very different. They look more aggressive, defiant. They have a little built less to prove than Sojourner Truth. Sojourner truth is not only challenging the antiwomens rights cartoons, shes also challenging the racist stereotypes that are so popular at the time as well. Is so Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony see the success of distributing a portrait like Sojourner Truth, they see the interest in them, the ways they can challenge these dominant ideas about womens rights leaders, and they decide to do their own portrait in 1870. You can see that they are more interested in showing a little bit more about their fashion. Theyve got these lacy kind of shawl and this lacy color, and you can see more jewelry with hem. So theyre clearly wealthier than Sojourner Truth is. But theyre really emphasizing that they are leaders of a movement, that you better not cross them and that they are going to be pushing forward together. And this doesnt change antiwomens rights cartoons too much, but it does in one really significant way. And that is the previous illustrations youre looking at often really emphasize nameless, generic women. But once womens individual portraits like susan b. Anthony become more familiar, the cartoonists actually identify which suffragists theyre making fun of. And you can see basically a copy of this 1870 portrait in this illustration, and its very similar to the other cartoons that were looking at earlier. We have susan b. Anthony if wearing very is masculine looking clothing. Her skirt is too short. She has boots on, and the boots even have spurs on them. In the background we have a womens political rally, and this was 1873. Women were not having these types of rallies yet. We also have a woman whos a Police Officer and two men who are doing domestic tasks including holding baby and grocery shopping. So very similar to the other images we were looking at but slightly updated. We can tell immediately its susan b. Anthony. And the artist was so intent on emphasizing kind of particularly taking anthony down that the artist actually replicated the eye issue that she had. If you look closely here, you can see that one of her eyes is slightly out of focus, and this is one of the reasons why she often posed in profile, why weeing often think of her image in profile. The artist perhaps knew this and decided