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SYMBOLIC SUFFRAGE COLORS
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Typical gold
suffrage buttons with slogans.
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In an age before telephones, radio, and
television, the use of color served as an instant means of visual
recognition and became vividly symbolic in the suffrage movement.
Two major color themes were used throughout American suffrage
imagery:
- The indigenous American tradition using
gold or yellow coupled with a variety of subordinate colors
- The imported
use of the British suffrage colors - purple, white, and green,
and its American variant purple, white, and gold.
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Suffrage
buttons with gold as a primary color, coupled with subordinate
colors. Notice the photograph of Susan B. Anthony.
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The use of gold began with Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony's campaign to help pass a state suffrage
referendum in Kansas in 1867. The pro-suffrage forces adopted
the Kansas state symbol, the sunflower as their own. Thereafter,
the flower and the color gold or yellow were associated with the
suffrage cause. Suffrage supporters used gold pins, ribbons, sashes,
and yellow roses to denote their cause. During the nation's centennial
celebrations in 1876, suffrage supporters sang "The Yellow Ribbon"
song that associated the color with "God's own primal color; born
of purity and light" and with the "flame of freedom's fires."
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