STILL Amazing Women, Acrylic, canvas & thread, 24” x 36”

I was asked to complete my version of an homage to the women's suffrage movement honoring the 100th anniversary celebrated by many across the world. It was an arduous task completed in October 2020. The likenesses seem to constantly come and go. The canvas fell from the easel and down the steps multiple times and to this day I feel that the painting may still be angry or perhaps it is just the fact that these strong women continue to be a force. The process certainly changed me! A few of the many women involved in women’s suffrage and rights are featured as strong and comforting souls watching over today’s women who STILL have much to work and battle for in our quest for an equal voice in this world in which we live. To remind us of the bravery, determination, and ability to face fear and injustice, a tear/wound/scar is featured with a reminder from Carrie Chapman Catt that indeed a vote is “a prayer” and a hope that we all hold as a sacred human right. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, making women's suffrage legal in the United States. There is a Woman Suffrage Memorial in downtown Knoxville in Market Square to honor state suffragists. The square is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1. Alice Paul. Alice Paul advocated for and helped secure passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Paul next authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, which has yet to be adopted. While in England, Paul met American Lucy Burns, and joining the women’s suffrage efforts there, they learned militant protest tactics, including picketing and hunger strikes.

2. Jane Addams. In the early years of the twentieth century Jane Addams became involved in the peace movement. During the First World War, she and other women from belligerent and neutral nations met at the International Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915, attempting to stop the war. She maintained her pacifist stance after the United States entered the war in 1917, working to found the Women's Peace Party (WILPF), which became the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919. She was the WILPF's first president. As a result of her work, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

3. Ida B. Wells. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[1] Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, Wells arguably became the most famous black woman in America

4. Julia Cooper. Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (August 10, 1858 – February 27, 1964) was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African American scholars in United States history.

5. Emily Davison. She made history when she threw herself in front of the King's horse at Epsom Derby to protest against women's suffrage. Emily Davison died from her injuries four days after the horse crashed into her on 4 June 1913, in front of stunned crowds.

6. Susan B. Anthony was an American social reformer and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. Born into a Quaker family committed to social equality, she collected anti-slavery petitions at the age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

In 1869, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association as part of a split in the women's movement. In 1890, the split was formally healed when their organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Anthony as its key force.

7. Febb Ensminger Burn. The battle Over Tennessee ratifying the 19th amendment came down to one man: Harry T. Burn of Niota, Tennessee. As the famous story is often told, Burn was influenced by a letter from his mother, Febb Ensminger Burn. She urged him to do the right thing and vote in favor of the amendment. Governor A. H. Roberts signed the bill on August 24, 1920 and two days later, the Susan B. Anthony (Nineteenth) Amendment became national law.

8. Carrie Chapman Catt. A skilled political strategist, Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt was a suffragist and peace activist who helped secure for American women the right to vote. She directed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and founded the League of Women Voters (1920) to bring women into the political mainstream. Catt became involved with the suffrage movement in the late 1880s joining the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, though her interest dated back to her teen years when she realized her mother lacked the same voting rights her father had. She also became involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and, an outstanding speaker, she was soon tapped to give speeches nationwide and help organize local suffrage chapters. In 1900, she was elected NAWSA president, filling the seat vacated by the aging Susan B. Anthony.

9. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death.[1] She was nominated by President Bill Clinton and at the time was generally viewed as a moderate consensus-builder. She eventually became part of the liberal wing of the Court as the Court shifted to the right over time. Ginsburg was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O'Connor.

10. Hillary Clinton is an American politician, diplomat, lawyer, writer, and public speaker who served as the 67th United States secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for president of the United States by a major political party when she won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016. She was the first woman to win the popular vote in an American presidential election, which she lost to Donald Trump.

11. Sylvia Pankhurst worked full-time for the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her sister Christabel and their mother. She applied her artistic talents on behalf of the WSPU, devising its logo and various leaflets, banners, and posters as well as the decoration of its meeting halls. In contrast to Emmeline and Christabel, Pankhurst retained an affiliation with the labour movement and concentrated her activity on local campaigning. Like many suffragists she spent time in prison, being arrested 15 times while campaigning for the rights of women.[12] Pankhurst was aged 24 when she went to prison for the first time. During the period between February 1913 and July 1914 Pankhurst was arrested eight times, each time being repeatedly force-fed. in 1913. Pankhurst had been given a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU.

12. Lide Meriwether was a leader of the first generation of feminists and women's rights activists. She lobbied for prohibition, raising the legal age of consent, and woman's suffrage. Meriwether was president of the Tennessee Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1884 to 1897, and then as an honorary president for life. In 1889, she organized the first Equal Rights Association in Memphis, and served as president of the Tennessee Equal Rights Association from 1897 to 1900, and subsequently was made honorary president for life.

13. Mary McCloud Bethune. The Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (eventually renamed as the Southeastern Association of Colored Women's Clubs) elected Bethune as president after its first conference in 1920 at the Tuskegee Institute. The women met in Memphis, Tennessee to discuss interracial problems. In many respects, all of the women agreed about what needed to be changed, until they came to the topic of suffrage. The white women at the conference tried to strike down a resolution on black suffrage. The SACWC responded by issuing a pamphlet entitled Southern Negro Women and Race Co-Operation; it delineated their demands regarding conditions in domestic service, child welfare, conditions of travel, education, lynching, the public press, and voting rights. The group went on to help register black women to vote after they were granted suffrage a few months later after passage of the constitutional amendment. Within the state, however, and in other southern states, black men and women were largely disenfranchised by discriminatory application of literacy and comprehension tests, as well as requirements to pay poll taxes, lengthy residency requirements, and the need to keep and display records.

14. Hallie Brown Quinn. In 1893, Brown presented a paper at the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago. Brown was a founder of the Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C., which in 1894 merged into the National Association of Colored Women. She was president of the Ohio State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1905 until 1912, and of the National Association of Colored Women from 1920 until 1924. She spoke at the Republican National Convention in 1924 and later directed campaign work among African American women for President Calvin Coolidge.

15. Mary Louise Bottineau Baldwin was a Métis Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians attorney and Native American rights activist. In 1914 Baldwin was the first Native American student to graduate from the Washington College of Law. She worked in the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs [1], and was an officer in the Society of American Indians.Baldwin was both a suffragist and a lawyer. She was born in Pembina, North Dakota (located a couple miles from the Canadian border) in 1863. In the early 1890s, Baldwin moved to D.C. with her father (also a lawyer) to fight for the treaty rights of their tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Later in 1904, Baldwin was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to become a clerk in the office of Indian Affairs. She was the first Indigenous person to hold this federal government role. Baldwin at first believed Indigenous people should assimilate into white American culture, but she later changed her mind. In her 1911 personnel photo for the office of Indian Affairs, Baldwin wore traditional Indigenous clothes and braided hair, which was a radical act at the time. Baldwin participated in the 1913 suffrage parade, where she walked alongside other lawyers. She became an advocate for Indigenous women and fought for their right to vote. One year after the parade, Baldwin met with President Woodrow Wilson to urge him to support women's suffrage.

Below are images of the progress of the painting:

Of note, the election was heavy on our minds and I had multiple signs stolen from my yard--even this one!