Two Image Sequence (Accessibility)

Image sequence CT for accessibility

Photograph of unidentified woman putting up billboard with bucket and broom. Billboard reads: "'Women of Colorado, you have the vote. Get it for women of the nation by voting against Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Candidate for Congress. Their party opposes national woman suffrage. The National Woman's Party." Billboard features image of young woman and a hat with "The Woman's Party" feather and a "50-50" price tag, above which is the motto "Our Hat's in the Ring."

Image 8.2 (Document 6) Photograph of National Woman’s Party Billboard, Colorado. Source: Courtesy Library of Congress In Western states where women had the right to vote, billboards such as this became part of the National Woman’s Party strategy to shape the outcome of the 1916 election. There is nothing subtle about billboards, with their messages designed to be seen from moving cars. In case any cars drove by at night, lights were in place to make sure everyone got the message. More, the photo shows a woman paper-hanger, smoothing down the freshly hung ad. This was generally work done by men, but her presence makes the point that women were able to do this work, and that they would do it in pursuit of a female political party.

The billboard was a product of this historical moment. Male voters in Colorado had passed a referendum enfranchising women in 1893, and other Western states followed over the next two decades. But in 1915 initiatives to grant women voting rights in Pennsylvania and New York (two densely populated Eastern states) failed. Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party sought to pivot away from these state efforts toward a federal amendment. The NWP would canvass the West, encouraging women who had the vote to use it on behalf of those in states where suffrage had failed. In this respect, the NWP was leveraging women’s political power in one region for women nationally. The billboard asks women to vote against Democratic President Woodrow Wilson and the local Democratic candidates for Congress. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party publicly supported the suffrage amendment yet, but the NWP’s strategy was to punish the party in power to pressure all elected representatives. Paul’s strategy of directly compelling politicians created conflict within the larger suffrage movement, though ultimately the dual approach yielded success: by 1917, state-level campaigns had won in New York and other Eastern states, and that same year President Wilson decided to support the federal amendment.