Racism and Visual Culture in the American Woman Suffrage Movement

The publication of the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage in the 1880s presented the suffrage movement as a fight for the vote for white women. The portraits included in the series—roughly a dozen in each volume—featured the faces of prominent white activists, from Mary Wollstonecraft to the authors of the volumes. Former slave Sojourner Truth’s photographic portrait sold well, but authors Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage did not think Truth’s likeness was worthy enough for their tomes.

The History of Woman Suffrage is just one example of the suffragists’ efforts to construct a white public face for their cause. While scholars have recognized suffragists’ racist rhetoric and practices, I demonstrate that they used pictures to exclude non-white women. Their imagery represented supporters as respectable reformers in order to win support. While white women inherently had a degree of respectability, I examine the ways that non-white women used pictures to gain respectability.

The practice of using white women to represent the suffrage movement continued through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Even demonstrations were staged so that press photographers were unlikely to capture an image of non-white women leading the charge. Opponents created cartoons that emphasized that if women won suffrage, black women would be able to vote too. While suffragists countered negative visual propaganda that portrayed them as masculine women who threatened traditional society, they failed to rebut racist imagery and offer a more inclusive public image.