Susan B. Anthony

This cartoon of Susan B. Anthony entitled “Out in the Cold” by Grant E. Hamilton hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. It originally appeared a humor magazine called The Judge on March 22, 1884.

The March 22, 1884, cover of the satirical magazine The Judge sheds light on stereotypical attitudes toward marginalized groups at the polls. The tallest figure is Susan B. Anthony, who is shown outside in the snow, knocking at the door of the poll. Broadsides stick out of her dress with headlines deliberately aimed at the viewer. They read: “Resolved that We Can Vote!” and “We Want to Vote We Will.” A shivering Asian man – left out since the immigration act of 1882, which suspended Chinese laborers from immigration – stands near Anthony. Meanwhile, stereotypical portrayals of an Irish man and an African American man lean out the window to jeer at them. A third man appears to be sleeping in the background. The African American man points to the sign underneath the window that states “Polls: Women and Chinamen Not Admitted – They Cannot Vote.” -- National Portrait Gallery

On March 8th Miss Anthony had  appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to ask for a constitutional amendment to give women the vote.

“We appear before you this morning…to ask that you will, at your earliest convenience, report to the House in favor of the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Legislatures of the several States, that shall prohibit the disfranchisement of citizens of the United States on account of sex.”

The core of the cartoon is this sign indicating that women share the low status of Chinese Americans and like them cannot vote, while Irishmen and African Americans can, revealing the hierarchy of  racial and ethnic groups in America and arguing that Women have been improperly placed in that hierarchy.

-Polls-

Women and

Chinaman

Not Admitted

--

They Cannot Vote. 

The broadsides spilling from Miss Anthony's bag protest that situation.

Resolved That We Can Vote.

We Want to Vote and Vote We Will - Smoke That

S. B. Anthony Great Sus.

While the “Chinaman” shivers in “Out in the Cold” along with  Miss Anthony.

Susan B. (Brownell) Anthony is often  caricatured as  sever and masculine in appearance as in this1872 image entitled “The Woman Who Dared” by Thomas Wurst in The Daily Graphic June 5 1873.

 

and we tend to remember her in her old age, as she appeared on the dollar coin. 

But she would perhaps wish to remembered as she appeared in the History of Woman Suffrage she wrote with Elizabeth Cady  Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, engraved by G. E. Perine.