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Picturing a World

Votes for Women in Cincinnati

Of course, this should have been posted on Monday with an exhortation to vote (I hope you did). If you find the results of Tuesday's elections depressing, remember our foremothers worked and worked and kept working despite.

The Library of Congress captions this photograph, "Miss Louise Hall with brush and Miss Susan Fitzgerald assisting bill posting in Cincinnati." I love that it is in Cincinnati, where some of my characters live. I love the hats. I love the smile on Louise Hall's face. (If only the suffragists had had an artist who could match the illustrator for that Crusaders, or Jerusalem Delivered poster!)

The year 1912 is significant. ANONYMITY is set in 1908, when fewer female supporters of votes for women felt comfortable actively advocating the cause in public. By 1912, a lot had changed. I chose the earlier year because periods of unrest and ferment are full of potential with room for invention. What comes to fruition has a beginning, moreover, and later images can suggest what might have been set in motion earlier. My suffagists would not gleefully post signs in public, but they might by dark of night.
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