Five Press Photographs of Women, Including Woman Suffrage Activist Carrie Chapman Catt, Voting in Chicago and New York City for the First Time

Chicago, Illinois, and New York City, 1920. Five photographs, three measuring approximately 7 ½ x 8 ½ inches, one measuring 6 ½ x 10 inches, and one measuring 4 ¼ x 5 ½ inches. Brown Brothers stamps verso, with extensive manuscript captions verso. Marginal wear with some cracking and corners missing; very good to excellent.. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment, which allowed women the right to vote, went into effect. Offered here are five photographs of women exercising this new right by voting in the 1920 election. Among the women identified is Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947). An Iowan, Catt attended the 1889 Iowa Woman Suffrage Association convention, and soon had a leadership role with the organization; she quickly had one with the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) as well, and worked on and off with the NAWSA through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Also pictured is “Mary Carrie Hay”; possibly Mary Garrick Hay, a leader in a Chicago-based Republican women’s group.[1] Men in the photographs are seen “playing nurse [...] and mind[ing] children for the mother while they vote” in Chicago, and providing a “Language lesson” on voting, which lays out the steps from receiving the ballot to casting it.

[1] “Woman’s Voice in G.O.P. Meet,” The Evening Herald, December 29, 1919, 5. (Inventory #: List29101)