Marking the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Votes for Women is the first richly illustrated book to reveal the history and complexity of the national suffrage movement. For nearly a hundred years, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, countless American women fought for the right to vote. While some of the leading figures of the suffrage movement have received deserved appreciation, the crusade for women’s enfranchisement involved many individuals, each with a unique story to be told. Weaving together a diverse collection of portraits and other visual materials—including photographs, drawings, paintings, prints, textiles, and mixed media—along with biographical narratives and trenchant essays, this comprehensive book presents fresh perspectives on the history of the movement.
Bringing attention to underrecognized individuals and groups, the leading historians featured here look at how suffragists used portraiture to promote gender equality and other feminist ideals, and how photographic portraits in particular proved to be a crucial element of women’s activism and recruitment. The contributors also explore the reasons why certain events and leaders of the suffrage movement have been remembered over others, the obstacles that black women faced when organizing with white suffragists and the subsequent founding of black women’s suffrage groups, the foundations of the violent antisuffrage movement, and the ways suffragists held up American women physicians who served in France during World War I as exemplary citizens, deserving the right to vote.
With nearly 200 color illustrations, Votes for Women offers a more complete picture of American women’s suffrage, one that sheds new light on the movement’s relevance for our own time.
Published in association with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC
Awards and Recognition
- Winner, Secretary’s Research Prize, Smithsonian Congress of Scholars
Kate Clarke Lemay is a historian at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and the author of Triumph of the Dead: American World War II Cemeteries, Monuments, and Diplomacy in France. She lives in Hyattsville, Maryland. Twitter @KCLemay
"Richly illustrated. . . . The catalog, to debut with the exhibition, is the first scholarly examination of the entire American women’s suffrage history in one book."—ARTFIX daily
"The show’s ample 289-page catalog provides rigorously-researched evidence that the history we’ve relied on for decades, delivered in grade school civics classes was in part myth, and, a literal white-washing of some of the movement’s key players."—Alicia Ault, Smithsonianmag.com
"[An] excellent and extensive catalogue."—Mark Jenkins, Washington Post
"Votes for Women! A Portrait of Persistence . . . [is an] important contribution to the history of women’s rights. . . . [The] visuals include stunning portraits of movement leaders, action shots of major suffrage milestones such as the March suffrage procession in DC, and even examples of suffragists’ rich material culture, such as sashes and dinnerware. . . . By centering a diverse array of women, including images and material culture, and presenting classic and cutting-edge scholarship, Votes for Women provides one of the most valuable contributions to the centennial outpouring of new work on the suffrage movement."—Kimberly A. Hamlin, Journal of American Studies
"Votes for Women! [is] a handsomely illustrated volume edited by Kate Clarke Lemay. The book straddles popular and scholarly history while simultaneously providing a complex, rather than merely celebratory, view of the suffrage movement and its legacies. [The book] is a hybrid creature—part scholarly essays written to be accessible to a general audience, part historical narrative, and part gorgeous and ambitious exhibition catalog with the easy visual appeal of a coffee-table book."—Victoria Olwell, Journal of American History
"Votes for Women is a compelling visual biography of the suffrage movement through artifacts and rare photographs. Tracing the movement through time, Clarke Lemay brings readers on a cinematic journey through the many chapters of the movement, marked by its various alliances with abolitionists, Native American land-rights activists, and even advocates for the temperance movement. Perhaps most importantly, Votes for Women removes suffragists like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Zitkala-Sa, Sarah Parker Remond and Fannie Lou Hamer from the cold pages of archives, underscoring to readers that women activists have always come from diverse backgrounds."—Emma Levy, Seattle Times
"Full of intriguing references to how much more there is to know. . . . [A] thoughtful, appealingly-designed book."—Eve M. Kahn, Nineteenth Century
"[A] beautiful book that tells the story of women’s fight for the right to vote in the U.S. The women in these pages are absolutely awe-inspiring."—Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Invention of Wings and The Secret Life of Bees
