So I was looking into the symbolism of the Suffragette colors (purple, white, and green) and I ended up reading a bit about the symbolism associated with the Suffrage movement in general and the purpose of that symbolism.
Many women in the Suffrage movement were encouraged to dress very fashionably and to emphasize their femininity. This was an attempt to combat the anti-suffrage media image of women’s rights activists as mannish and undesirable, since that image could discourage more women from joining the movement. (Not all agreed with this course of action. Notably, Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton - organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention and the primary author of the Declaration of Sentiments - believed that fashion was designed to distract women and keep them focused on serving men’s desires.)
But generally, the idea of dressing fashionably and femininely caught on strongly, and was rather effective helping to popularize the movement. After a time, it even became sort of fashionable to be a Suffragette/Suffragist, in some circles. (Suffragette was the term typically used in Britain, but it was seen as an offensive term by many American women, who preferred to call themselves Suffragists.)
The clothes they wore had specific meanings also. If you’ve ever seen pictures of Suffrage Parades, you might remember that the women in them wore white dresses.
White was meant to represent the purity and high-mindedness of the cause. That’s why it was one of the main three colors that represented the Suffragette movement. There were also a couple more practical reasons for white dresses - one, they were cheaper; and two, they stood out in the crowds of dark-suited men.
The other two colors, purple and green, had their own specific meanings. Historically, purple is used as the color of royalty. The Suffragettes drew on this symbolism, and used it to represent loyalty, constancy of purpose, and “the instinct of freedom and dignity.” (quote from Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence.)
Green represented hope and new beginnings, new life. Pethick-Lawrence called it “the emblem of spring.”
So those are the meanings of the colors that many people are familiar with in association with the Suffrage movement. What some people might not know is that in America, the Suffragists commonly used gold to symbolize their movement. Gold was popularized after Suffragists in Kansas adopted the sunflower as an emblem - the sunflower was seen as a beacon of hope.
The Suffragists followed the Suffragettes in using white and purple as their colors, but instead of green, the common third color was gold.
This is the flag used by the National Woman’s Party in America. In a newsletter, the organization described the gold in the flag as “the color of light and life,” and as the color of “the torch that guides our purpose, pure and unswerving.”
Anyway, there’s definitely some symbolism and some history here that I think I’d like to incorporate into my life, maybe with some stickers and pins. We are following in the footsteps of the women who came before us; the women who fought for every inch of dignity and freedom we have gained today. I think it’s worth it to carry them and our history with us as best we can, even in small ways. I wanted to share this because I think there are others who feel the same.
I’m currently doing some ink drawings for my first ever art festival! It’s happening later this month. But the 4th of July is a good time to share this portrait of Capt. Edith Standen, a member of the MFAA.
I feel she must have been quite the individual as most of the Monuments Women were. I admire her sense of justice and her willingness to stand up if someone transgressed it no matter who that someone was. For example, she was one of the MFAA officers who signed the Wiesbaden manifesto on Nov 7, 1945. The manifesto was an act of protest against orders by the U.S. government to send German owned art to the United States. It was called “the only act of protest by officers against their orders in the Second World War,” and it declared,
“We wish to state that, from our own knowledge, no historical grievance will rankle so long or be the cause of so much justified bitterness as the removal for any reason of a part of the heritage of any nation even if that heritage may be interpreted as a prize of war.”
She didn’t stop at just signing the manifesto though, she also distributed it to various offices after the art had gone. After a long three years the paintings were sent back.
And I think that this is a good reminder to Americans about what makes America great. It’s not our money, nor our weapons, it’s the amount of discourse we can have with the government and the government listens, even if it takes three years. Without a government that listens we have nothing.
Happy 4th of July to all the fellow Americans out there! Be safe and be sane,
March is Women’s History Month, so I wanted to shine some light on some poppin’ Queer Women of Color who by just existing, or fighting at the grassroots level, have fought for a better more inclusive planet.
Gladys Bentley:
August 12th 1907- January 18th 1960
From way of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Gladys Bentley was a Blues singer who was very prominent during the Harlem Renaissance. An entertainer of many trades, Bentley was most commonly known for her singing. She broke barriers as a openly queer singer who embraced her masculinity. She often wore clothes that society deemed were only for men, and embraced her community as her performances usually included various drag queens. Along with her musical talents, Gladys Bentley radiated black women masculinity that many had not seen before. Opening the doors for different types of entertainment as well as changing the way we view gender and black women as a whole.
Lorraine Hansberry:
May 19th 1930- January 12th 1965
Born in The Chi, Lorraine Hansberry is a world renowned playwright. She studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she continued in her family’s line of work for political change. Hansberry later moved to New York City and worked for the Freedom Newspaper in which she helped highlight black stories in the US and abroad. Hansberry is most known for her American Classic play, A raisin in the Sun. Hansberry is the first Black woman author to have a play performed on Broadway.
Sylvia Rivera
July 2nd 1951-February 19th 2001
Sylvia Rivera is an LGBT Elder who continues to be written out of history. A New Yorker through and through, Sylvia Rivera was a Trans Activist who was crucial force at the Stonewall Riots. Rivera was a cofounder of the Gay Liberation Front, the Gay Activist Alliance, and alongside Marsha P. Johnson helped found, (STAR) Street Travsvetisties Action Revolutionaries. Sylvia Rivera fought throughout her life to see justice not only for folks with different genders and gender expressions, but for all folks who were living in the world with a marginalized identity.
Bamby Salcedo
Bamby Salcedo is a Trans Activist who is on the streets today organizing for her community. Her work includes her position at Children’s Hospital LA as a Health Educator/HIV Service coordinator. She is the founder of the LA based organization, TransLatin@ Coalition, who advocate for the needs of Trans latinx immigrants in the United States. In 2015 she made headlines when she disrupted the National LGBT Task Force conference to demand that attention be made to the violence that trans folk face everyday. Since then she has been listed in OUT magazine’s 2015 OUT 100 list, as well as speaking at the white house at the US women Summit. You can learn more about the TransLatin@ Coalition here.
Jennicet Gutierrez
A proud immigrant by way of Mexico, Jennicet Gutierrez is a Trans rights and Immigration rights activist who has demanded that her voice be heard. Jennicet is a founding member of the organization, La Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. Gutierrez was also apart of OUT magazine’s 2015 OUT 100, but made national news when she demanded attention from President Obama at a White House Dinner. Gutierrez was criticized by many but highlighted the divide in mainstream gay activism, and grassroots queer and trans activism. You can learn more about La Familia here.
Cecilia Chung
Cecilia Chung is a LGBT Activist who has fought for LGBT rights as well as spreading education and HIV awareness. Chung’s family immigrated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles and now Resides in the Bay Area (AYYYYYY). Cecilia Chung has done extensive work as an HIV educator throughout San Francisco, as well as programming throughout the Transgender Law Center, and the API American Health Forum. Chung has paved the way for many others to follow as the first Trans women and Asian women elected to the SF LGBT Pride Celebration committee, working for the SF health Commission appointed by Mayor Ed. Lee, and the list goes on!
The Eight-Hour Day. A Living Wage. To Guard the Home.
The rights of workers came about through the hard work of labor organizing and campaigns for legislative reforms. The WTUL advocated especially to eliminate sweatshop conditions for women workers.
[Image Description: Logo of the National Women’s Trade Union League, founded in 1903]
Mary Brave Bird was a Sicangu Lakota writer and activist who was a member of the American Indian Movement during the 1970s and participated in some of their most publicized events, including the Wounded Knee Incident when she was 18 years old.
Brave Bird was the author of two memoirs, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the 1991 American Book Award. It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman continues her life story.Her books describe the conditions of the Lakota Indian and her experience growing up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, as well as conditions in the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation under the leadership of tribal chairman Richard Wilson. She also covers aspects of the role of the FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the treatment of the Native Americans and their children in the mid-1900s. Her work focuses on themes of gender, identity, and race.
“It is really true, the old Cheyenne saying: ‘A nation is not dead until the hearts of it’s women are on the ground.” Well, the hearts of our full-blood women were not on the ground. They were way up high and they could still encourage us with their trilling, spine-tingling brave-heart cry.”
Photographs by Lady Clementina Hawarden(1822-1865).
Hawarden gained prominence in the photography world at a time when the art form was dominated by men, and her work allowed other female photographers to gain recognition of their skills. Her work was exhibited in the Photographic Society of London, and was twice awarded the Society’s silver medal. Most of her photographs include portraits of other women, especially her daughters. She took advantage of natural light through the frequent use of mirrors and windows, and some works included elaborate costumes.
Girls delivering ice, 1918. During World War I, many women took over the jobs of men who had joined the army. The original caption notes, “The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the patriotic ambition to help” [x].
Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) was a Russian revolutionary who became instrumental in achieving recognition for women’s contributions to the Russian revolution. She argued that the feminist ideas of the “bourgeoise” did not apply to working-class women, who continued to be subjected to exploitation. She believed women’s rights could only truly be achieved through political and economic equality for all genders. In 1913, Kollontai wrote,
“For the majority of women of the proletariat, equal rights with men would mean only an equal share in inequality, but for the ‘chosen few,’ for the bourgeois women, it would indeed open doors to new and unprecedented rights and privileges…but each new concession won by bourgeois woman would give her yet another weapon for the exploitation of her younger sister…”
After the 1917 revolution, Kollontai continued her attempts to better the welfare of women and recognition of their struggles. That year, she oversaw the establishment of International Women’s Day as a national holiday in Russia, and helped found the Zhenotdel, a department of the Communist Party that dealt specifically with women’s issues. In 1923, in an attempt to sideline her political influence, she was appointed the Soviet diplomat to Norway, and later Sweden, becoming the first modern-day female diplomat.
Sarah Parker Remond: African-American Orator and Physician Remond was born 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, into an abolitionist family who supported her efforts to become an anti-slavery orator. She and her brother Charles Lenox Remond were two of several abolitionists chosen by the American Anti-Slavery society to tour the country in 1856, giving speeches in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, often travelling without a male escort. Prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison praised her "calm, dignified manner, her winning personal appearance and her earnest appeals to the conscience and the heart.“
Remond was also responsible for one of the earliest recorded acts of the very same civil disobedience that became central to the Civil Rights Movement a century later. In 1853, Remond bought a ticket for the opera, Don Pasquale, at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. She refused to accept segregated seating, however, and in response she was forced to leave the theatre and pushed down several stairs. Remond took action, sued for damages, and was found to be wronged by the theatre, winning an award of $500 for damages.
When the Civil War broke out, the American Anti-Slavery society, recognizing Remond’s skills, asked her to continue her oratorial career in Britain. In the early stages of the war, the Confederacy was hopeful for British support - because most goods were manufactured in the North, trade with Britain was crucial. Remond lectured on the cruel treatment of slaves in the Confederacy and helped raise support for a trade blockade with the Confederacy.
An excerpt from an 1859 speech shows how strong and poetic her speeches were, and her attempts to appeal to the morality of her British audience:
"I ask you, raise the moral public opinion until its voice reaches the American shores. Aid us thus until the shackles of the American slave melt like dew before the morning sun. I ask for especial help from the women of England. Women are the worst victims of the slave power. I am met on every hand by the cry, "cotton! cotton!” I cannot stop to speak of cotton while men and women are being brutalised [x].“
After the war, she continued to give speeches, soliciting mass funds to help feed and clothe the millions of freed slaves that had come out of the war.
Remond’s accomplishments did not stop there. In 1866, at 42, she moved to Italy, where she studied medicine at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. Upon graduation, she became a doctor and practiced medicine in Rome for twenty years, where Frederick Douglass visited her in 1887. She married an Italian man in 1877, continuing her career after marriage. Remond seems to have found a home in Italy, as she never returned to the United States [x].
Photo: Photograph of Mae Reeves and a group of women standing on stairs, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Mae Reeves and her children, Donna Limerick and William Mincey, Jr.
African American women have been wearing fancy hats for generations to church. In 1940, Mae Reeves started Mae’s Millinery Shop in 1940 in Philadelphia, PA with a $500 bank loan. The shop stayed open until 1997 and helped dress some of the most famous African American women in the country, including iconic singers Marian Anderson,Ella FitzgeraldandLena Horne.
Reeves was known for making all of her customers feel welcomed and special, whether they were domestic workers, professional women, or socialites from Philadelphia’s affluent suburban Main Line. Customer’s at Mae’s would sit at her dressing table or on her settee, telling stories and sharing their troubles.
Photo: Pink mushroom hat with flowers from Mae’s Millinery Shop, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In our Power of Place exhibition, we recreated a portion of Reeves’ shop to showcase this African American tradition. Our shop includes its original red-neon sign, sewing machine, antique store furniture and hats.
View artifacts from Mae’s Millinery Shop in our collection: s.si.edu/2oVlbFj
We love this history (and the word millinery) from our @nmaahc.
“Consider the Vikings. Popular feminist retellings like the History Channel’s fictional saga “Vikings” emphasize the role of women as warriors and chieftains. But they barely hint at how crucial women’s work was to the ships that carried these warriors to distant shores.
One of the central characters in “Vikings” is an ingenious shipbuilder. But his ships apparently get their sails off the rack. The fabric is just there, like the textiles we take for granted in our 21st-century lives. The women who prepared the wool, spun it into thread, wove the fabric and sewed the sails have vanished.
In reality, from start to finish, it took longer to make a Viking sail than to build a Viking ship. So precious was a sail that one of the Icelandic sagas records how a hero wept when his was stolen. Simply spinning wool into enough thread to weave a single sail required more than a year’s work, the equivalent of about 385 eight-hour days.
King Canute, who ruled a North Sea empire in the 11th century, had a fleet comprising about a million square meters of sailcloth. For the spinning alone, those sails represented the equivalent of 10,000 work years.”
“…Picturing historical women as producers requires a change of attitude. Even today, after decades of feminist influence, we too often assume that making important things is a male domain. Women stereotypically decorate and consume. They engage with people. They don’t manufacture essential goods.
Yet from the Renaissance until the 19th century, European art represented the idea of “industry” not with smokestacks but with spinning women. Everyone understood that their never-ending labor was essential. It took at least 20 spinners to keep a single loom supplied.
“The spinners never stand still for want of work; they always have it if they please; but weavers are sometimes idle for want of yarn,” the agronomist and travel writer Arthur Young, who toured northern England in 1768, wrote.
Shortly thereafter, the spinning machines of the Industrial Revolution liberated women from their spindles and distaffs, beginning the centuries-long process that raised even the world’s poorest people to living standards our ancestors could not have imagined.
But that “great enrichment” had an unfortunate side effect. Textile abundance erased our memories of women’s historic contributions to one of humanity’s most important endeavors. It turned industry into entertainment.
“In the West,” Dr. Harlow wrote, “the production of textiles has moved from being a fundamental, indeed essential, part of the industrial economy to a predominantly female craft activity.””
- Virginia Postrel, “Women and Men Are Like the Threads of a Woven Fabric.” in The New York Times
Original caption: “arriving in Australia, the first Negro nurses to reach these shores try bicycle riding near their quarters in Camp Columbia, Wacol, Brisbane.” 2nd Lts: L-R: Beulah Baldwin, Alberta Smith, and Joan Hamilton. 11/29/1943. NARA ID 178140880.
“First Negro WAVES to enter the Hospital Corps School at Nat'l Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD.” L-R Ruth C. Isaacs, Katherine Horton and Inez Patterson. 3/2/1945. NARA ID 520634.
BLACK (military) NURSES ROCK!
By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs
ForNational Nurses Day we highlight Black nurses who served with courage and distinction in WWII.
“In the European Theater… are the first units of Negro nurses and WACS to go overseas… They are described by their Commanding Officer as being the equals of any nurses in the area…”—Truman Gibson, Jr, chief adviser on racial affairs to Secretary of War Henry Stimson
Statement by Truman Gibson, Jr., Aide on Negro Affairs to Secretary of War Stimson, 4/9/1945. NARA ID 40019813 (full doc below). Gibson was the 1st Black awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit, for advocating for black soldiers during WWII.
Capt. Della H. Raney, Army Nurse Corps, head of nursing at hospital at Camp Beale, CA, “has the distinction of being the first Negro nurse to report to duty in the present war…” NARA ID 535942.
“American Negro nurses, commissioned second lieutenants in the U.S. Army Nurses Corps, limber up their muscles in an early-morning workout during an advanced training course at a camp in Australia. The nurses will be assigned to Allied hospitals in the southwest Pacific theater.” 2/1944. NARA ID 535782.
Commissioning ceremony: Phyllis Dailey, 2nd from right, became the 1st Black nurse in the Navy Nursing Corps 3/8/1945. NAID 520618.
Ella Fitzgerald et al v. Pan American Racism or “honest mistake”?
By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs
Born 105 years ago today, April 25, 1917, jazz singer extraordinaire Ella Fitzgerald faced discrimination on tour in 1954. En route to a concert in Australia she was denied the right to board a Pan American flight. She had to spend three days in Hawaii before other transportation to Australia could be secured, and she missed her concert dates.
She sued Pan Am claiming racism and seeking financial compensation. Pan Am claimed it was “an honest mistake” due to a reservation mix-up. The district judge dismissed the complaint, but the plaintiffs appealed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed that decision, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs.
New York Times, 12/31/1954.
Complaint, Ella Fitzgerald, John Lewis, Georgiana Henry, and Norman Granz v. Pan American, Inc., 12/23/1954 Records of U.S. District Courts (NARA ID 2641486)
President Gerald R. Ford and First Lady Betty Ford with Ella Fitzgerald at White House Bicentennial concert 6/20/1976, Ford Library, NARA ID 7840021.
Ella Fitzgerald Performs at the White House State Dinner for King Juan Carlos I of Spain, 10/13/1981, Reagan Library, NARA ID 75855955.
Marian Anderson was the Beyoncé of the opera world when she was invited to perform in DC at a concert planned for the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) Constitution Hall. The DAR’s decision to bar her from doing so due to its “all-white performer policy” led to a turning point in civil rights history - her historic Easter concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a crowd of 75,000 admirers. Listen to this incredible concert online and discover through our records:
Did the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) reallyhave an “all-white performer policy”?
How was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt involved, and did she really resign from DAR?
What was the role of Howard University and its Omega Psi Phi Fraternity?
Eleanor Roosevelt to John Lovell, Jr. of Howard University, 2/26/1939.
Eleanor Roosevelt and Marian Anderson in Japan, 5/22/1953, NARA ID 195989.
Petition from Omega Psi Phi, April 1939. (Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives).
Marian Anderson Poster, 8/26/1957, NARA ID 6948897.
President John F. Kennedy with Singer Marian Anderson and her accompanist Franz Rupp in the Oval Office 3/22/1962. JFK Library ID AR7113-A.
MS Jernigan, MS Ochoa and MS Payette with National Women’s Party banner, STS-96 Space Shuttle Discovery, 1999. NARA ID 23209923.
#OTD 1993: Ellen Ochoa is 1st Hispanic Woman in Space!
The three astronauts hold in space an original gold, white and purple suffrage banner from the National Woman’s Party, borrowed from the Sewall-Belmont House in DC. Ochoa used it in a PSA from space!
Last chance to see THAT BANNER in our related exhibit in DC - Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Votecloses this Sunday, April 10. Can’t make it? Check it out online! See related press release.
Archives Curator Corinne Porter, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero view original 19th Amendment. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for the National Archives).
Here’s three queer women to learn about to help you celebrate the day:
English author Mary Shelley pioneered the sci-fi genre when she wrote Frankenstein at just 19.
American writer and activist Audre Lorde fought for women who, like her, were excluded from mainstream feminism, whether because of class, race, sexuality, or disability.
Maryam Khatoon Molkara campaigned for decades for the recognition of trans people in Iranian law, eventually securing a fatwa (Islamic ruling) from the leader of Iran himself.
