Citizenship
-
“Fay Hubbard, 13-year Old Suffragette” in New York on February 9, 1910.
“Suffragette! Suffragette!” This is the cry of little Fay Hubbard as she goes through the crowd at the suffragette meetings in New York selling copies of the paper… Miss Hubbard is a niece of Mrs. E. Ida Williams, the recording secretary of the Suffragette…
-
Mary Edwards Walker (1832–1919). Dr. Walker served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. She was a Medal of Honor recipient, a suffragette, and a dress reformer.
-
See a related poster for American men on this blog, one of them Black, captioned “Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!" ↩︎
- More people have lived under despots of some kind than have not. Life still finds a way. So do freedom and justice.
- Despotism has played a large role in this country’s history, too, and the oppressed didn’t quit, even sharing their light. Recall the histories of Black Americans and of other othered groups.
- Hate the hubristic orange oaf and rocket oligarch for their abuses, if you want, but look for ways to leverage your emotions. Don’t let an understandable sense of powerlessness control you. Don’t allow the president and his helpmates to continue their assault unopposed.
- Start with the basics: Stay informed, but use your attention mindfully; protect your loved ones; rediscover the power of community.
- Remind yourself that this administration is no monolith. Neither are the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, never mind the states.
- Every action the administration undertakes will challenge the unity that the GOP enjoys among its own. Overreach will make the coalition that is intent on destroying our government more vulnerable to fracture.
- Bide your time, if need be, but look for opportunities to raise awareness of specific problems. Look for ways to push back. Trust that your representatives are doing the same, but also verify.
- Get over your disgust at all people who elected this president. Most of these people share many of your values. Some are potential allies. Saying, “Told you so!” might feel good, but there’s no more time for that.
- Even the president’s supporters can be persuaded to protest against specific policies, including by calling their representatives. Look for the issues that people care about. With time, you might help them to see connections to other issues, but take baby steps, show humility.
- The corruptibility of people will favor the current presidency in parts of the government and in civil society, but the presidency’s actions in this regard will make it vulnerable to infighting.
- Find strength in how weak the administration’s actions reveal it to be. It does not trust normal legislative processes, not even when its party controls both houses of Congress.
- These people do not trust the FBI, the military, the government they head, or the people who elected them, but they trust in their own ability to purge and to lead the first three against as many of the people as they think necessary. They are wrong. Reliance on force without justice and public support on their side makes them weak.
- They think inciting the mob through social media posts is an effective mode of governance. While dangerous, this behavior is another sign of their weakness.
- They think threats of primaries are a viable long-term alternative to cooperation with members of their own party in Congress. The rich doners who make these threats viable strengthen neither their party nor the administration over the long term. Skilled cabals might exact high prices, but they do not last.
- They know that their rhetoric about trans and other queer people is favored by only a minority, and then largely in the abstract. The same goes for the racist, anti-DEIA cover they employ to discriminate while pretending that they are all about merit.
- Having only terrible arguments in their quiver, they rely on epistemic violence and memory erasure—lies, disinformation, public attacks on those who call them out, bullying teachers, strong-arming universities and schools, crying “censorship” in spaces they haven’t managed to dominate, deleting vital data from government websites, and more.
- Their attack against us and our government has been expanded to include our allies, too. Don’t get indignant when people in theses countries call all of us out on our tariffs and worse. Look for ways to show solidarity instead.
- We’re feeling exhausted by the assault on all fronts, but this assault takes people, and they are consuming their own at an alarming rate.
- Speakers: Nancy Foner (City University of New York) and Carly Goodman (Rutgers University)
- Moderator: Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University)
- German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, and Heidelberg Center for American Studies
- Recorded on October 15, uploaded on November 11
Sometimes I hate my state: “NH’s new ID requirements send some would-be voters home to grab passports, birth certificates,” www.nhpr.org….
A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians. 1976 poster by a Seattle organization called Radical Women.
Via Library of Congress, Yanker Poster Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016649885/.
British “Votes for Women” postcard (stamped 1912) that centers on solidarity across social class and age. The purple, green, and white was the color scheme of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Via The Newberry Library, Monroej_Sports_011485.
Two Suffragettes
Images via Library of Congress, PPOC, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/92510578/ and https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005684835/.
“Stamp ‘em out! Buy U.S. stamps and bonds.” Poster by Thomas A. Byrne. WPA War Services of La., circa 1941–43.
Via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98518290/.
📽️ A well reviewed historical drama is streaming on Paramount+ in the United States: “Suffragette,” dir. Sarah Gavron (UK, 2015). The struggle it dramatizes was about getting the vote in order to shape the laws and policies that affected women in uniquely cruel ways.
'A Bit of War History' – Three Paintings by Thomas Waterman Wood (1865–66)
"The Contraband"
"The Recruit"
"The Veteran"
The word “contraband” referred to an enslaved person who had escaped. Given that the term usually indicated illegally imported or exported goods, its dehumanizing quality in the context of someone who has escaped bondage is palpable. Here, however, it stands in contrast to the painting, which shows a man, not a chattel or a caricature.1
The other two paintings see the same figure transformed into a soldier and a veteran. Both of these images underlined the figure’s manhood. With time, in fact, military service came to be associated with masculinity and citizenship in an age of people’s wars fought in North America and Europe.2
From this point of view, the paintings represent a message not only of self-emancipation through military service but of modern masculine citizenship shortly before the nineteenth amendment was ratified. In the West, this image of manhood and military service reached its high point in World Wars One and Two.
“Daisy Bates takes a walk – Activist Daisy Bates picketing with placard: ‘Jailing our youth will not solve the problem in Little Rock. We are only asking for full citizenship rights.'” Ca. 1957.
Via NYPL, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Demonstrations Collection, image id 1953728.
World War Two Poster Marking the Dignity and Humanity of Black Women on the Home Front
The American Front for Victory – This poster from World War Two operates on two levels. First, it emphasizes the contribution of “The American Front” to the victory for which the nation was fighting. American front because this was about the home front, the people, many of them women, contributing to victory in industry, in agriculture, through service, and with their savings. Second, the name makes an important statement about the women it pictures working. They are Black. In large parts of the country, racist Americans cast the fitness of Black people as American citizens in doubt, to say nothing of questioning their very humanity.1 Here, by contrast, four Black women are depicted doing dignified work for the national cause.
Moving clockwise from the top, one woman, wearing some kind of civilian uniform, is holding a bucket marked “save” and is participating in either the sale or purchase of “Defense Bonds”; another is working a potato field with the words “strong bodies” underneath; there is a woman in a nurse’s uniform above the label “volunteer service”; and a woman can be seen working on an airplane, perhaps installing its propeller. This is a poster proclaiming the importance of the home front and the dignity and honor of the Black women fighting on it.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_061.
Books Are Weapons – World War Two poster by NYC WPA War Services promoting knowledge about Black history and culture, the war's colonial entanglements in Africa, and the role of Black Americans in national defense. The books referenced were housed in the New York Public Library's renowned Schomburg Collection.
Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id 5211531.
Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis, not bondage!
World War Two poster – The word "bonds" can work three ways here: the bonds or chains pictured here as broken, the bonds that unite us, and U.S. war bonds. The second of these offers the most powerful contrast to "bondage."
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_065.
Eighteen Points toward Strength and Solidarity in a Time of Fear and Despair
I wrote these to steady myself, but maybe they will be of interest and possible use to others.
The AHA’s members and their colleagues teach students how to think, not what to think. Preparing future generations to read, think, and analyze provides a much stronger foundation for informed patriotism and civic participation. This executive order does just the opposite, providing a blueprint for widespread historical illiteracy.…
– James Grossman, “On the K–12 Education Executive Order,” American Historical Association.
Now that I’m more than 20 years older than Martin Luther King, Jr., ever had a chance to become, his youth at the time of his murder is much clearer to me, much starker. It makes his achievements seem that much greater and his death all the more painful.
Pictured above: photos of two buttons and a poster from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, The New York Public Library, image IDs 57281864, 57281854, and 58250348.
📺 Historical Background to U.S. Migration:
“The Bigger Picture: U.S. Migration Debates and Policies since 1965” – Online Panel Discussion (1 hour on Vimeo)
Poster from 1919 Advocating American Citizenship
The notice in the bottom-right corner reads “Copyright 1919, The Stanley Service Co.” According to the Library of Congress Copyright Office’s Catalogue of Copyright Entries for that year, the company in question was the Stanley Industrial Educational Poster Service in Cleveland, Ohio. This provenance suggests to me that employers were being offered this messaging for their workers, even if the artist portrayed the immigrants as fresh arrivals.
Source: Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95507947/
“How some Texas parents and historians say a new state curriculum glosses over slavery and racism” by Jaden Edison, The Texas Tribune, November 18, 2024.
Election Night Illumination, Flatiron Building, New York City, color postcard, N.Y. Sunday American & Journal (W. R. Hearst, 1904), Library of Congress.
“Watching the election returns—great crowds before the Times B’ld’g. and Astor Hotel, New York,” stereograph card by H.C. White Co., 1907, Library of Congress.
First time voting in person since 2016. First time casting a vote in NH since the 90s. There’s a long line, but it’s moving. Heard it’s the shortest it’s been all day. Most people in good spirits. Trying to guess who the Trumpies are, but only a handful seem obvious because it’s just neighbors voting and enjoying a beautiful day. Three kids in line who look like this is their first time. Happy for them.
This all feels like democracy. Fuck the electoral college.
Broadcasting Election Results and Taking Opinion Polls in 1872
The illustrated British weekly The Graphic published these two fascinating images of U.S. election technologies in 1872. Explanations from the publication follow.
“The Electoral Magic Lantern” aka Broadcasting Results (top)
“Mammoth stereopticon”, at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-Second Street. “By means of a stereoscopic apparatus and magic lantern, the telegrams [of election results] are rapidly copied on a glass plate, and then put in the apparatus. Large crowds assemble till early in the morning, to watch the returns, which are shown on the wall of some building, covered with a large white sheet."–from source periodical.
“Taking Votes in a Railway Car” aka Polling Voter Intentions (bottom)
“It is a common thing to take votes in the railway carriages during election campaigns, though strictly speaking, it is not so much taking a vote as ascertaining approximately which candidate will have the best chance. Each passenger enters the name of his choice on a piece of paper, and a gentleman, generally a politician, takes his hat and collects the votes. Bets are offered and taken, and after the scrutiny animated discussions arise, each man endeavouring to persuade his opponents."–from source periodical.
Source: Wood engravings by Paul Frenzeny (artist) and Francis Sylvester Walker (delineator), The Graphic, November 30, 1872, via The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (Higher resolutions available.)