Browse Items (7 total)

I spent the whole week on Anna Dickinson because she was very, very famous in her day and is almost lost to history. I know a lot about suffrage for a non-academic, and I had never heard her name before the @smithsonianNPG exhibit. In “America’s Joan…

Susan B Anthony was a lesbian. There’s solid evidence of her romantic relationships with women, and contrary evidence doesn’t exist. You didn’t know? Me neither. 🙁Patriarchy is very, very powerful. But in 1946 another dyke came along and…

After the war, Dickinson toured nationally, delivering a repertoire of 22 different lectures on women’s suffrage & the rights of all African-Americans. At the height of her career, she made more money than Mark Twain: c. $400k/yr in today’s…

There were no microphones in the struggle for suffrage. Radio didn't yet exist. Public lectures were the only way to hear new ideas, and giving a public lecture in halls like NYC’s Cooper Union or the Academy of Music in Phila. meant projecting your…

We gotta talk about lesbians. Specifically, about lesbian erasure. Queer is cool, right? It’s 2020! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️etc., etc. So why is the lesbian reality of the suffrage movement barely part of the #19thAmendment centennial…

Anna Dickinson was a lesbian, as Matt Gallman demonstrates in his 2006 biography. He quotes Dickinson’s steamy correspondence with a variety of women, including Susan B Anthony(!), and acknowledges her female partner of 30 years, but hesitates to…

Initially popular as a curiosity, Anna Dickinson gradually established a reputation as a political thinker whose endorsement was in demand. She stumped for Republicans across four states during the Civil War, the first woman ever paid to campaign.…