The subject of suffrage is complicated and, like all American stories, is colored by the country’s legacy of slavery and colonialism. Early suffrage efforts aimed at universal suffrage, but many women’s suffrage advocates abandoned their black and brown allies in an attempt to shore up their cause. While we celebrate the ratification of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote in 1920, many women (and men) in the United States were not able to vote until much later. The Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965 to help create real equality in voting rights across the country, but even today, voter suppression efforts take place across the United States. The vote may have been won on paper, but many communities are still fighting for the basic right to make their voices heard in elections.
Archival Material
National Woman’s Party collection, 1853, 1914-1923, undated
Documents relating to both the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the National Woman’s Party. Includes personal diaries, organizational reports, legislative guides, posters, pamphlets, leaflets, and broadsides which chronicle the development of both the national and Massachusetts chapters of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the National Woman’s Party.
Suffrage collection, 1884-1987
This collection was created to connect disparate materials related to the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States. Some highlights include a “Votes for Women” pennant, ephemera for and against suffrage for women in Maine, images of suffragist leaders, and newspaper articles.
Rebecca Hourwich Reyher collection, 1960-1987
Reyher began her lifelong work for women’s rights in 1913 by participating in the first national suffrage parade in the United States. Her new-found passion lead her to organize street meetings and opening offices for the National Woman’s Party. This collection contains correspondence, articles, photographs, speeches and Reyher’s obituary, as well as biographical and suffrage information.
