The Great Orators, Leading Ladies of Suffrage
Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, and Sojourner Truth are some of the well-known names of the suffrage movement. They are considered to be the icons, the great orators whose voices were heard and their words printed in papers across the country. These women were some of the earliest and most prolific activists of the late 19th-early 20th century. They argued for universal suffrage, and made appeals to women all across the country to unite and “make the demand now” for the vote. Susan B. Anthony argued that suffrage was a natural right, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton challenged organized religion’s beliefs about women with her work The Woman’s Bible.
Together these individuals are sometimes referred to as the founding mothers of suffrage, or the mothers of feminism. They founded the national organizations for women’s rights, created the first platforms, and established the goals for achieving the vote. Though most of these leading ladies did not live to see the passage of the amendment, their generation gave direction to the next cohort of women who picked up the torch and ushered in the next wave of suffrage leaders.
Included within this section are books and articles written by the well-known suffragists Addams, Anthony, Child, Mott, Stanton, Stowe, Truth and Willard. Items displayed also include cabinet cards, speeches, advertisements, broadsides, ephemera, and newspapers. These items represent the mainstream narrative of the women’s rights movement and voices of the movement’s most often-cited leaders.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) and Jane Addams (1860-1935)
To the women voters of the United States from the women in political bondage: vote the Progressive Ticket and make us free.
New York: Stoddard-Sutherland Press, 1912.
Documents the speech of Jane Addams seconding the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt and a letter from Roosevelt to Addams. The Progressive Party platform in 1912 included a number of labor related goals including: the prohibition of child labor, a minimum wage for working women, and minimum safety and health standards in industry. Of note was the inclusion of equal suffrage.
DeGolyer Library, Budner/Roosevelt Collection, JF851 .T62 1912
Gift, 2008
Jane Addams (1860-1935)
Peace and Bread in Time of War.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922.
Jane Addams, settlement founder, social reformer, suffragist and peace worker, was the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize, awarded in 1931. Addams participated in the founding of the NAACP as well as of the ACLU. She served as the first vice president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and in 1915 helped draft the platform for the Woman's Peace Party.
Addams was anti-war. During the period following World War I she was vilified and called unpatriotic for her anti-war stance. Despite the criticisms she worked in the postwar period to help feed children in this country as well as "enemy children.” For her efforts, she was expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution but awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
From the Helen LaKelly Hunt Collection of American Women Reformers and Writers
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda J. Gage, Editors.
The History of Woman Suffrage.
New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881 and 1882.
In the late 1870's, Susan B. Anthony, fearing that the history of the struggle for women's rights was lost, asked Mrs. Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage to join her in writing this important source. The books contain first-hand accounts as well as contemporary press reactions in unusually complete (for that time) Appendices. Volume Ill appeared in 1887 by the same authors and contained an Index for the first three volumes.
From the Helen LaKelly Hunt Collection of American Women Reformers and Writers
Susan B. Anthony [Cabinet card].
San Francisco: Taber Photographic Co., 1895.
From the Helen LaKelly Hunt Collection of American Women Reformers and Writers
Ida Husted Harper (1851-1931)
The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many from her Contemporaries During Fifty Years by Ida Husted Harper A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Woman and Including the Triumphs of Her Last Years, Account of Her Death and Funeral and Comments of the Press A Story of the Evolution of the Status of Woman in Three Volumes. Three Volumes.
Indianapolis: The Hollenbeck Press, [1898].
Ida Husted Harper collaborated with Susan B. Anthony on an account of her life and the suffrage movement. Harper moved into Anthony’s New York home to compile these volumes.
From the Helen LaKelly Hunt Collection of American Women Reformers and Writers
Rheta Louise Childe Dorr (1872-1948)
Susan B. Anthony, the woman who changed the mind of a nation.
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1928.
Rheta Dorr was a journalist and feminist from Nebraska. In 1914 she became the first editor of The Suffragist, official organ of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, forerunner of the National Woman's Party. Dorr dedicated the biography to her granddaughter, Lora Rheta Dorr, so “that she may know something of her heritage.”
DeGolyer Library, General Collection, JK1899.A6 D6