2/27/2020 A monument to U.S.

women's right to vote turns 100 | ShareAmerica

A monument to U.S. women’s right to vote turns 100

By Noelani Kirschner - Feb 13, 2020

Visitors at the U.S. Capitol building in Washington look at a monument to suffragettes Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony. (© Steve Helber/AP Images)

Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton dedicated their lives to the
cause of women’s suffrage — the legal right for women to vote in the United States.

“[I]t is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of

liberty, ” Anthony said in a speech after her arrest for voting in 1872, “while they are
denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican
government — the ballot.”

American sculptor Adelaide Johnson captured this struggle in marble a century ago. Her
sculpture, Portrait Monument to Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony (1920), portrays the early suffragettes who started the movement that led to the
19th Amendment, which in 1920 gave women the right to vote.

The sculpture was unveiled in the U.S. Capitol building’s rotunda the year following
passage of the 19th Amendment. It was soon moved to the Capitol’s crypt, where it was
on view for 75 years, before returning to the rotunda in 1996. There, the sculpture
remains on display to educate visitors about women’s suffrage.

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2/27/2020 A monument to U.S. women's right to vote turns 100 | ShareAmerica

Adelaide Johnson’s “portrait monument” of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott (Architect of the
Capitol)

“As more women from diverse backgrounds win elected office and gain increasing
prominence on our national stage, U.S. Capitol art will continue to reflect the changing
nature of women’s role in society,” said Michele Cohen, a curator for the Architect of the
Capitol.

Anthony was born 200 years ago in Adams, Massachusetts on February 15. She grew up in
a progressive environment — her father was friends with Frederick Douglass — and after
years of abolitionist advocacy, she was inspired by women’s suffrage after her family
attended the Seneca Falls, New York, convention in 1848.

The Seneca Falls convention was the first time a group of people formally gathered to
discuss women’s suffrage. Mott, an abolitionist Quaker preacher, organized the event.
Before and after the convention, she advocated for women’s education and workplace
equality.

Three years after the convention, Anthony met Stanton and the two bonded over the
cause. They remained lifelong friends and advocates for women’s right to vote.

Although all three women died before the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, their
legacy lives in the many women participating in democracies today as both voters and
elected officials.

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2/27/2020 A monument to U.S. women's right to vote turns 100 | ShareAmerica

Adelaide Johnson’s sculpture of Stanton, Anthony and Mott is unveiled at the U.S. Capitol on February 15, 1921.
(Architect of the Capitol)

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