Can We Commemorate Feminism?

The collective efforts of these women earned rights for marginalized peoples including the passage of the 19th Amendment, which did not disenfranchise people based on their sex.

First-wave feminism in the United States is defined by the collective drive for suffrage and betterment of the material condition of women and children.

The category of first wave feminism applies to the women's rights movement in the United States only. Prominent figures who are always highlighted in the suffrage and women’s rights movement in the 18th and 19th century include Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. These are often the first names brought up, yet their recognition doesn't cover the wide scope of oppression women faced.  The suffrage and abolitionist movements of the 19th century worked in tandem to promote human rights and sometimes against each other in the question of women's suffrage.

Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Church Terrell, and lesser-known suffrage activists such as Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin all approached suffrage and activism with their experiences in mind. 

Some reformers such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper spoke out openly about the differential treatment Black women faced in suffrage and abolitionist circles.

With a huge push to appeal to Congress and state legislature, predominantly white, upper-class organizers in NWSA and strategized to fight for white, educated women.

The 14th and 15th Amendments caused a greater divide between suffragists who believed it was morally and politically wrong for Black men to be enfranchised before white women. Where did this concern leave Black women, native people and immigrants who were not granted citizenship?

Susan B. Anthony notoriously remarked,

" I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman."

In 2016, Hillary R. Clinton was the first woman candidate to be backed by a major political party in the United States, the Democratic Party.

Before Clinton ran for presidential office, she was Secretary of State during the Obama administration and senator for New York from 2001 to 2009.

Though her run was not successful, she was a competitive candidate and surpassed Donald J. Trump in the national popular vote by almost 2.9 million votes. 

As Evette Dionne writes in her book "Lifting As We Climb",

"It was the first time that Americans would be able to cast a ballot for a female president on the ticket of a major political party, so many women around the United States were buzzing with excitement."

Though Clinton's run is significant, she is definitely not the first woman to run for or hold political office in the United States. Scroll down for examples of women who came before and after her.

"While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities,"

Harris said for CNN.

On November 7, 2020, Joe R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Harris still serves as a U.S. Senator for California and formerly Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017.

The California senator makes history as the first woman of Black and South Asian descent to be elected vice president of the United States.

She will become vice president on January 20, 2021 with president elect Biden.

Some believe that her election as vice president represents a changing tide in the political sphere.

Harris is the highest ranking woman elected official in American history.

This map shows the amount of places and monuments named after Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Church Terrell, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The background map is a display of the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Results are displayed by precinct.

Commemoration has to do with how salient the figure is in American culture and history.

• Class/Socioeconomic Status: People need leisure time and drive to commit themselves to activism. At the time, the majority of leadership of NWSA was primarily upper class. A strategy used to persuade Southern legislatures to consider allowing women to vote was to envision the woman voter as a white educated woman.

• Race: The history of race, gender and identity- based subjugation in the United States is contentious. Not only does it pervade our institutions but it has been the justification for erasure of legacies that do not fit into white Western concept. The common saying that "History is written by winners" does affect the amount of place names for each figure.

• How Well Documented Their Contribution Is: An example of why Christopher Columbus is so salient and often commemorated in our landscape is because he is attributed with discovered the New World.

The prominence barometer used the amount of data points and average data points for each figure. Susan B. Anthony had the most amount of commemorations, 17, followed by Sojourner Truth with 14, Elizabeth Cady Stanton with 5, Mary Church Terrell 3 and Marie Louise Bottineau with 0. The numerical average was 8. 

I used overlay of 2016 election data to visualize if there would be correlation between commemoration and votes for Clinton. I hypothesized that areas with higher votes for Clinton would have more monuments named after these figures because of the connection between voting and running for office as a formerly disenfranchised group. 

With this in mind, I hoped to achieve a closer look at if commemoration could be feminist. Does a position of power for a member of a marginalized group signal progression in the United States?

A specific selection of states are shown because they contain full name matching results. The data on monuments and place names is derived from only full name matching results. Most monuments include the full name of the suffragette for example, Sojourner Truth Library instead of Truth Library. As a result, there are no last name only monuments and there may be other monuments and places named after the suffragists that are not included on this map.

Suffragists are sometimes commemorated jointly or in the same spaces.

For instance, activists such as Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth and Anna Julia Cooper are commemorated in the same area in D.C.

Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are commemorated in the same portrait monument that sits outside of the Capitol.

Both groups are commemorated miles within each other.

Sojourner Truth was an addition to the Women's Rights Pioneers Monument that initially featured Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

People raised concerns over the racist and exclusionary remarks made by Anthony and Stanton considering the role of women of color in the movement and suffrage being extended to Black men.

Mainstream interpretations of the suffrage movement overshadow the varying experiences of women as enslaved people, as people of color, immigrants, and of low socioeconomic status.

The ratification of the 19th Amendment did not guarantee full participation or exercise of rights. For example, Native people were still barred from voting and Black women were discouraged from voting until the 1960s.

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives."

-Audre Lorde

Intersectionality is a framework that has to do with recognizing that varying identities and experiences interact on multiple levels with oppression.

The term was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a feminist lawyer, and critical race theory scholar.

Modern day voter suppression bars people from casting ballots, registering to vote and participating fully in the realm of politics.

An individual who cannot afford transportation to a poll experiences voter suppression far differently that one who is not in the same situation.

Similarly, an individual who experiences gender based discrimination may face more difficulty ascending to positions of power, such as presidential or congressional office.

Commemoration highlights the history and legacy of our landscape.

Each statue and monument that protrudes our environment serves as a reminder of our country's legacy, whether the figure is a Confederate leader or civil rights icon.

Yet, it also erases the significance of individuals who rally for a more just and equal society, even if society doesn't have their back.

Continued Reading

•  Meet the Brave But Overlooked Women of Color Who Fought for the Vote , The New York Times

•  The Bold Suffragists You Likely Didn’t Learn About in School , Siobhan Neela-Stock

•  Intersectional Suffrage: The Women Who Didn’t Get The Vote In 1918 , Fahmida Rahman

•  Revising Women's Suffrage , Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest

•  The Haudenosaunee Matriarchy and Their Influence on Women’s Suffrage , Maura Riley