Amy Helene Forss explores three artifacts in each portion of the book’s introduction, in its nine chapters, and in an epilogue, using the criteria of era, availability, and relevance. The number three corresponds to an ancient symbol of femininity, the triangle. The book’s three parts are titled Demanding Suffrage, Challenging Boundaries, and Refining Equality. These sets of three, originally a happenstance rather than authorial intention, display the unfinished women’s movement as a trilogy of past, present, and future. Writing from this perspective allows the author a broad scope to address suffragists, feminists, and modern-day activists, in addition to the objects they left to the generations of the future.
The first chapter, “Setting the Stage,” explores how foremother material culture established Seneca Falls, New York, as the 1848 birthplace of women’s rights. The first artifact is the formative six-volume set, History of Woman Suffrage, published between 1881 and 1922. Artifact 2 is Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments. Artifact 3 features Sojourner Truth’s carte de visite self-portraits, which created her legacy just as surely as the white suffragist editors created theirs in the History of Woman Suffrage.
Chapter 2, “Parading Their Colors,” examines pageantry processionals advertising suffrage in the 1910s, starting with artifact 4, “Youngest Parader in New York City Suffragist Parade,” a photographed, white-clothed suffragist ensemble. This chapter explores the emotional connection to color and the power of visual uniformity in America’s suffrage parades. Artifact 5 enlarges the visual spectrum with a tricolored “Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, DC March 3, 1913,” a program cover from country’s first national suffrage parade.
In chapter 3 “Silently Disobedient,” Forss examines militant suffrage strategies and offers a visual analysis of the dramatic strategies of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) from 1917 to 1920. Starting with artifact 7, “Mr. President How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty,” a 1917 banner, this chapter delves into the NWP picketing of the White House. Artifact 8, the “Jailed for Freedom” pin, focuses on suffragist arrests, incarcerations, and the subsequent Night of Terror at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Unrepentant suffragists caused further scandal when they temporarily appropriated artifact 9, a government-owned Lafayette Square Navy Yard Urn, and attempted to use it in a Watch Fire demonstration.
The years between 1930 and the mid-1960s outline the perimeter of chapter 4, “Addressing the Doldrums,” which deals with Black women’s formidable achievements during these years. Artifact 10 is the evening gown worn by African American Marian Anderson in 1939 when she performed at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution had her barred from singing in Washington D.C.'s Constitution Hall because she was Black. This concert receives a significant amount of analysis pertaining to the racism surrounding the event. This chapter also discusses artifact 11, the signature black-velvet dress worn by pioneering educator and college founder Mary McLeod Bethune, as well as artifact 12, the matching alphabet-patterned blouse and skirt Carlotta Walls wore when she and eight other students desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
Chapter 5, “LGTBQ Feminists,” looks at sexual-orientation boundaries by examining transgender and lesbian foremother objects produced in the 1960s and 1970s. Artifact 13 is an artwork-carving titled Pauli Murray’s Hand. Although few visitors to the National Archives for Black Women’s History in Landover, Maryland, know of the wooden piece’s existence, it effectively draws attention to Pauli Murray, the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. Artifact 14 is the “Lavender Menace” T-shirt; designed for shock value, the colorful shirt opened in 1970 a fruitful dialogue between lesbian feminists and heterosexual feminists. Artifact 15 is the corporate-advertising tennis dress Billie Jean King wore during the 1973 Battle of the Sexes, when she vanquished Bobby Riggs in their celebrated tennis match.
Chapter 6, “Lighting the Way,” shows women performing physical feats for suffrage and for the ERA, in 1915 and 1977, respectively. Artifact 16 is the Women’s Peace Union’s (WPU’s) Torch of Freedom in 1915. Artifact 17 highlights the International Women’s Year (IWY) torch demonstrating women’s strength in a 1977 relay. Artifact 18 is the United Nations IWY dove symbol. The 1977 torch-relay runner’s T-shirts displayed the baby-blue-and white graphic still globally recognized as an iconic emblem.
National and international women’s organizations are featured in chapter 7, “Dueling Gavels.” This chapter explores how three women’s conferences, held in 1869, 1888, and 1997, expanded women’s legal spheres. Artifact 19 is an 1896 gavel that opened the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) conference during the pivotal year the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling legalized segregation in American schools. Artifact 20 is the 1988 gavel presented at the NWSA convention at the founding of the National Council of Women in the United States and the International Council of Women. Artifact 21 showcases the Stieff Company’s replication of the 1888 gavel for commemorative and marketing purposes. Congresswoman Bella Abzug used the replica gavel to close the 1977 National Women’s Conference.
The next chapter, chapter 8, is about a countercultural movement against the ERA that supplied the slogan, “Stopping the ERA.” Artifact 22 is the STOP ERA stop-sign logo. With artifact 23, the author analyzes the inherent meaning of the golden-insignia eagle pin that Phyllis Schlafly wore during her almost fifty-year political career, and artifact 24 is the Phyllis Schlafly Report for the ten-year STOP ERA campaign, which began in 1972. The combination of Schlafly, the STOP ERA committee, the Eagle Forum, and the three artifacts put to use against the proposed amendment and against feminists and feminism, led to the ERA’s demise in 1982.
Chapter 9, “Standing Her Ground,” explores foremother-created public artwork commemorating women. Artifact 25 explores the NWP’s Portrait Monument statuary and how the National Women’s History Museum rescued it from storage and relocated it upstairs in the Capitol Rotunda. Artifact 26 opens a vista on the National Congress of Black Women’s Sojourner Truth bust. The sculpture, created in response to the Portrait Monument, is exhibited downstairs in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. Artifact 27 is the State Street Global Advisors’ Fearless Girl statue, taking a purposeful stance in New York City’s Bowling Green on International Women’s Day 2017. The sculpture, promoting female leadership in the male-dominated corporate boardroom, received a complex response, resulting in its relocation.
The epilogue summarizes the sixteen decades of the women’s movement by revisiting its material culture, reexamining the culmination of foremother generational strategies, and returning us to its birthplace. These pages figuratively walk readers through Washington DC’s Sewall-Belmont House (previous headquarters of the NWP) and into the capital city’s streets during the 2017 Women’s March. Artifact 28 highlights the historical contents of the Sewall-Belmont House; artifact 29 is the pink knitted Pussyhat, and the author discusses its origin and unifying effect worldwide; and her discussion of artifact 30, When Anthony Met Stanton statuary, concludes the book’s examination of material objects tied to the women’s movement with a cyclical return to the site of the first women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York.
Borrowing from Our Foremothers is a welcome and illuminating analysis necessary for understanding the development of feminism as well as our current moment. By placing material culture items within each era’s political campaigns, this book yields a deeper understanding of the women’s-movement metanarrative.
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[Review length: 1204 words • Review posted on October 21, 2023]