Postcards of the Suffragist Movement

Insight into the movement that led to women gaining the right to vote in 1920 was provided visually and vocally during a presentation by Carol Crossed, author of the book “Vintage Tweets: Suffrage Era Postcards.”

The book features more than 400 late 19th and early 20th century postcards of support and opposition to the suffrage (legal rights) crusade for women’s rights from her personal collection. The movement began in 1848, was passed by Congress in 1919, and culminated with the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which bars denying a citizen’s right to vote based on their sex.

Crossed used a PowerPoint display of some of the postcards to delve into the suffragette movement, its goals, its leaders, its challenges and successes, and its perspective on the times in which it existed during a roughly one-hour-long program. The program was held as an observance of Women’s History Month at the Collier County Public Library’s South Regional Branch on Lely Cultural Parkway.

Women’s suffrage was just one part of the range of concerns for what was then considered to be a radical movement, explained Crossed, a Rochester, New York resident. She used postcards to illustrate the fact that hot topics of the day, such as temperance, the Civil War, abolition, and later the fight for civil rights for Black citizens, abortion and reproductive rights, and even cigarette smoking, were among the issues it addressed.

Famous figures from that era, such as John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” author Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln, were cited by her in capturing the zeitgeist of those times. Naturally, so were movement stalwarts, such as temperance crusader Carrie Nation and the suffrage movement’s driving force, Susan B. Anthony.

Anthony dedicated more than 50 years to securing women’s voting rights, on the local, state, and national levels, by delivering speeches, lobbying Congress, publishing The Revolution newspaper with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and founding the National Woman Suffrage Association.

Where the Civil War is concerned, Crossed said Anthony never publicly voiced opposition to the conflict, “but she certainly did not come out and support it, even though she was very much into the abolition movement.”

“She circulated and presented petitions and advocated and educated about slaves,” Crossed added. “Also, she was not crazy about Lincoln. She felt that Lincoln was not a great enough advocate against slavery. However, Lincoln was on their side for almost all those struggles that women believed in: abolition, temperance, and certainly a little bit of suffrage.”

As she spoke, a postcard bearing a statement from the 16th president was displayed on-screen: “I go for all sharing with all, for all, sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens and by no means excluding women.”

“Women were just delighted by that because it was an opening for their suffrage movement,” said Crossed. “So they all kind of appropriated Lincoln for their cause. And so we have abolition, temperance, and suffrage all coming together in at once. And it created this triangulation, this radical movement of women that was unstoppable.”

Crossed’s affinity for Susan B. Anthony led her to purchase and restore the suffragist’s Adams, Massachusetts, birthplace and open it to the public. The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, where the postcards are a central element, opened in 2010.

She noted that strong opposition to the movement’s goals was common among men during that period, which was also expressed on postcards, which she likened to today’s tweeting and retweeting.

“Of course, for every postcard that promoted something that women should do, like fight against war, the anti-suffragettes would come out with another postcard,” she said. “Anti-suffragists argued that children would suffer. The home would be abandoned if women got the vote.”

However, the suffragists argued that women could do both, enhancing rather than destroying the domestic sphere, she added.

For more information about “Vintage Tweets: Suffrage Era Postcards,” please visit vintagetweetsbook.com/. For more information about the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum, please visit susanbanthonybirthplace.com/.