POWERFUL IMAGES IN THE PAST; NEW IMAGES FOR THE FUTURE

For more than a century, women political activists have led a struggle for social justice that demonstrated a distinct continuity of reform interests. Many problems faced by the women at the turn of the century have re-emerged in our own time with a new and demanding urgency: new waves of immigration, homelessness, racial divisions, threats to the environment, substance abuse and addiction, lack of affordable health care, concerns for the well-being of our homes and families, questions about women's roles in society, and world peace. Until very recently, despite having the right to vote, women were generally excluded from influential roles in the major political parties, from the formal political processes, and from holding political office. In response, women generated their own style of politics. Beginning with the drive for woman suffrage, woman organized at the grassroots level around major political and social issues. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, national networks of women's organizations served as alternative political parties for women and helped to shape much of 20th-century social policy.

The generation of women activists who led the final drive for the right to vote developed a powerful political language and imagery to help attain woman suffrage and other reforms important to women. This language and imagery incorporated the values of home and family into public life. While this women's political culture empowered them in the early part of the 20th century and served as a bridge from the private to the public sphere, it also set patterns and boundaries for women's political participation that have continued to the present.

Can the political language and imagery developed by women at the turn of the 20th century be adapted to today's politics and empower women once more with a new immediacy? Or will women create a powerful new political culture – one that incorporates the values of home and family but transcends old boundaries to reach full political partnership with men?

Edith P. Mayo
Curatorial Consultant, NMWH

Curator Emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Inst.

CURATOR'S NOTE: Many collections on Woman Suffrage in repositories across the country contain similar suffrage images. With one except, credited to the Library of Congress, all the images in this exhibit can be found in the Women's History Collection, Division of Social History (Political Collections), National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. I would like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues over many years at the Institution.