Susan B. Anthony with Woman's Rights Leaders, 1896

What it is

This sepia group photograph from 1896 shows eleven women posed on and around the front porch of the family homestead in Adams, Massachusetts. Susan B. Anthony sits at the center in a dark dress with a lace collar. The record names several women around her, including Harriet Taylor Upton, Anna Howard Shaw, Rachel Foster Avery, Alice Stone Blackwell, Mary Garrett Hay, May Wright Sewall and Carrie Chapman Catt. The photographer is not named. The record does not name Stanton, so her presence is not confirmed by the facts.

Why it matters

The photograph shows the network of suffrage leaders who worked together in the decades before women won the vote. Anthony and Stanton were long-time partners in the movement, and this picture shows the generation that carried the cause forward. Each woman in the record held an organizing, editing or leadership role in the movement.

Look closer

• How do the women's clothing and poses show how they wanted to be seen?
• Why might a photograph like this have been taken, and who would have wanted it?
• Which women in the picture are named in the record, and who is not named, and why does that matter?