Irvin, Rea, Artist. Ancient history / Rea Irvin. , ca. 1913. February 20. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002716767/
This source is valuable for students studying women’s rights or voting rights. If students are studying events like the Seneca Falls Convention or texts like Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” or Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “We Are All Bound Up Together,” this image, which is drawn from a LIFE Magazine cover in 1913, provides useful information about resistance to women’s suffrage. Many students learn about Greek mythology in secondary school, and this image uses the idea of ancient Greece to critique the women’s suffrage movement.
Teaching about the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Procession also gives students the opportunity to analyze and discuss the role of white supremacy in the women’s suffrage movement. Black activists, like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were told to walk in the back of the march, and Native women were invited with the expectation that they would perform “the wildest type of American womanhood,” thus reinforcing white women’s beliefs in their own cultural superiority (National Park Service).
From the Library of Congress: “Magazine cover showing a Susan B. Anthony-like figure in classical dress thrusting an umbrella at a man in a toga. Another woman holds a sign reading ‘We want our rights.’”
This text occurs within the context of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. Students should know what the women’s suffrage movement was, that women did not receive the right to vote until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and that white supremacist laws restricted Black and Native women’s access to that right. This image is from the cover of LIFE Magazine, from an issue published less than one month before a March 1913 suffrage march in Washington, DC. Women’s suffrage groups from across the nation gathered in Washington, DC; some “suffrage pilgrims” walked from New York City to DC (Harvey 2001). At this march, men “jeered, tripped, grabbed, shoved” the women who participated in the march and subjected them to verbal harassment (Harvey 2001). Students should also be given information about Susan B. Anthony, who is caricatured in this image (despite having died several years earlier).
- What do you know about Greek mythology? What elements of Greek mythology do you recognize in this image?
- At the center of this image is Susan B. Anthony, a nineteenth century proponent of women’s suffrage. How does this image depict her? Why?
- What is happening in the margins of this image? How do they reinforce this image’s critique of women’s suffrage?
- This image is a cover for a 1913 issue of LIFE Magazine. What else is included in this issue? Why is it important?
North Carolina State State Standards
RI.9-10.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
- Students will use details of the image’s composition to support their analysis of the text.
RI.11-12.7: Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem
- Students will evaluate this image alongside other accounts of women’s suffrage.
- The Library of Congress has several excellent resources that support the teaching of this image. For other primary sources on women’s suffrage, teachers might use Women’s Suffrage: Primary Source Set for Teachers. In understanding the context for this particular image, the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913, teachers should start by providing students with historical context for this image using Sheridan Harvey’s “Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.” This article contains photographs, posters, and clippings from newspapers that could be analyzed alongside this image. Teachers can also use Barbara Orbach Natanson’s blog post, “Susan B. Anthony: Birthday Toast and Cartoon Roast?,” to analyze Susan B. Anthony’s representation in this image.
- Teachers should also focus on the work of Black and Native women in the suffrage movement and their exclusion from narratives about the suffrage movement. This image could be paired with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s speech, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” as well as with other images from the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection.
- Teachers can also use the Library of Congress Exhibit, “More to the Movement”
- Finally, any conversation around voting rights should also include discussion of contemporary discriminatory voting practices like voter ID laws.
- While the image by itself might not be challenged, any discussion of the broader context for the image—for example, the racism faced by Black and Native participants in the march—might be challenged by parents and guardians who do not want students to learn about the history of racism in America.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- Learning for Justice, “Talking about Race and Racism”; Facing History, “The Racial Divide in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.”
- “The Woman Who Dared” – This image is another caricature of Susan B. Anthony from the late 19th century.
- “Official Program Woman Suffrage Procession” – This is the cover of the program for the procession featuring women in front of the US Capitol building trumpeting their way to the vote. .
- Barbara Orbach Natanson’s blog post “Susan B. Anthony: Birthday Toast and Cartoon Roast?”
- Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection
- In 1920, Native Women Sought the Right to Vote. Here’s What’s Next.
- “Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913”
- Women’s Suffrage: Primary Source Set for Teachers
- Library of Congress Exhibit, “More to the Movement”
- “1913 Woman Suffrage Procession,” National Park Service. Accessed December 30, 2024.
- https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm#:~:text=Black%20women%20felt%20like%20they,Negroes%20in%20the%20Washington%20parade. The National Parks Services has a full collection of different historical resources connected to the suffrage movement and The Women's Rights National Historical Park in Washington, DC.
- Bailey, Megan. “Between Two Worlds: Black Women and the Fight for Voting Rights.” National Park Service. Accessed December 30, 2024.
- https://www.nps.gov/articles/black-women-and-the-fight-for-voting-rights.htm#:~:text=After%20the%20Nineteenth%20Amendment%20was,to%20fight%20for%20their%20rights. The National Parks Services has a full collection of different historical resources connected to the suffrage movement.
- Harvey, Sheridan. “Marching for the Vote: Remembering the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913.” Library of Congress, June 28, 2001. Accessed December 30, 2024. https://guides.loc.gov/american-women-essays/marching-for-the-vote. This link features an additional resource guide from The Library of Congress for more study on the suffrage movement and more primary sources.
- Schiller, Joyce K. “Ancient History: Husbanettes?” The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, July 29, 2010. Accessed December 30, 2024. https://rockwellcenter.org/essays-illustration/ancient-history-husbanettes-2/.The Norman Rockwell museum features this primary source along with additional commentary.