Portraits from the suffrage years

The program of March 3, 1913

Votes for Women is dated March 3, 1913. The credit is Library of Congress, public domain. The story says it is the official program of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, the first big suffrage parade in Washington, held the day before the presidential inauguration.

A program is an object people carried. The print is that cover, not a photograph of the march itself. The date is the day before inauguration day, which is what the piece says. The institution is the Library of Congress.

Susan B. Anthony

The Anthony portrait is dated about 1900. The credit is Library of Congress, public domain. The source path carries LCCN 2001704086. The story says she was the suffrage leader arrested for voting in 1872, and that the print pairs with her 1873 speech on women's right to vote.

The speech is a separate text. This essay does not reprint it. The photograph is the face the Library file holds, about 1900, of a woman the piece identifies by that arrest. She died in 1906, which is the span in the file name on the source link, 1820 to 1906.

Sojourner Truth's card

The Truth portrait is dated 1864. The credit is the National Gallery of Art, public domain. The story says the line on the portrait card she sold to fund her work was "I sell the shadow to support the substance," and that the print pairs with her 1851 speech. The speech is not reprinted here. The sentence on the card is the one the product record quotes.

The National Gallery of Art number in the source path is NGA 164108. The year on the piece is 1864. A portrait sold to support the sitter's work is a different object from a program or a glass plate. That is the fact to keep.

Harriet Tubman

The Tubman portrait is a carte-de-visite dated about 1868. The credit is Library of Congress, public domain. The source path names Powelson, photographer, 77 Genesee Street, Auburn, New York, and LCCN 2018645050. The story says it is the carte-de-visite of the Underground Railroad conductor, rediscovered in 2017, and the earliest known photograph of her.

Auburn and the photographer's street address are on the file. The 2017 rediscovery and the claim that it is the earliest known photograph are the shop's record of the print. Four objects, four institutions or file numbers, one subject in the broad sense: women whose pictures were made to be circulated. The Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art do not endorse the shop.

The file numbers are the practical caption. The procession program is a Library of Congress public-domain image dated March 3, 1913. Anthony is LCCN 2001704086, the file spanning 1820 to 1906, the print dated about 1900, the arrest for voting given as 1872. Truth is National Gallery of Art 164108, dated 1864, with the card's own sentence about selling the shadow to support the substance. Tubman is LCCN 2018645050, Powelson, 77 Genesee Street, Auburn, about 1868.

None of these is a speech blown up into type. The shop sells other pieces that are the words themselves. These four are faces and a program cover. The 1851 speech and the 1873 speech are named on two of the records as texts the prints pair with. They stay named, and unquoted, because this story did not go back to the speech texts. The pictures are enough on their own, left unquoted.