Exhibition Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote

“Votes for Women Nov. 2,” bluebird sign (pre-conservation treatment), Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1915. NAWSA Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (081.13.00)

Pinback buttons, between 1914 and 1915: “Housewives League.” On loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Some initially from the NAWSA Records, Library of Congress (081.04.00)

Pinback buttons, between 1914 and 1915: “Votes for Women.” On loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Some initially from the NAWSA Records, Library of Congress (081.06.00)

Pinback buttons, between 1914 and 1915: “Men’s League for Woman’s Suffrage.” On loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Some initially from the NAWSA Records, Library of Congress (081.08.00)

Pinback buttons, between 1914 and 1915: “Let Ohio Women Vote.” On loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Some initially from the NAWSA Records, Library of Congress (081.10.00)

Pinback button with ribbon, 1909. “AYP Woman Suffrage Day,” from the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Washington, July 7, 1909. On loan from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (081.11.00)

Pinback buttons, circa 1914-1915: “National Junior Suffrage Corps. Youth Today, Tomorrow Power” (Connecticut). On loan from the Ann Lewis Collection (081.12.00)

Pinback buttons, circa 1914-1915: “National Junior Suffrage Corps. “Votes for Women Victory, 1915” (New York). On loan from the Ann Lewis Collection (082.02.00)

Pin It! and Show Your Colors!

Pins and buttons proliferated as the suffrage movement matured. As California suffragist Alice Park (1861–1961), suggested, pins aroused “curiosity among strangers,” and wearing one’s “colors” provided opportunities to lobby tradesmen, salespeople, and passersby. Tens of thousands of leaflets and signs, such as the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association’s brightly colored tin bluebird, were posted on trees, poles, and in windows in support of state canvasses for suffrage.