Graphic entitled, "The Awakening." This classically clad woman walks across the map of the United States from west to east, bringing the torch of enlightenment about suffrage. Notice the outstretched arms of women in the east waiting to receive the torch.

WOMAN AS ENLIGHTENERS

The color gold became suffused with additional symbolism for suffragists, connoting purifying sunlight and enlightenment; women with torches were enlighteners. In many of these American motifs of "light," the sun or torch is often depicted as moving from west to east, signifying enfranchisement in western states first and the spread of suffrage across the country from west to east. This symbol of "enlightenment" fit precisely with the American concept of woman's traditional, esteemed role of preserver and transmitter of culture.

"Enlightenment" was a common symbol used by both the NAWSA and the National Woman's Party. NAWSA used the enlightening woman in its propaganda and tableaus; the Woman's Party adopted as its official motto "Forward Into Light," after a golden banner lettered with those words carried in a 1912 suffrage parade in New York by suffrage leader Inez Milholland Boissevain (referred to hereafter as Inez Milholland)[13]. The Woman's Party later employed a variety of banners lettered with this slogan, and verbal variations, all of which used the tricolor motif of purple, white, and gold. [14]