Borrowing from Our Foremothers: Reexamining the Women's Movement through Material Culture, 1848–2017

In this astute and extensive study of the material culture of the American women's movement, Amy Helene Forss provides an essential overview of the history of US feminism wherein a series of fascinating artifacts takes center stage to connect that history. While Forss focuses on each artifact and its role within the movement, she often delves much deeper by addressing how the leadership of certain groups in the movement has long been underrepresented, such as that of African American women.Forss frames material-culture items of the women's movement such as cartes de visite, clothing, service pins, jewelry, gavels, torches, urns, and sculptures, along with published texts, programs, and banners within each era's campaigns, while presenting specific women's experiences in and of the movement. Historical research throughout Borrowing from Our Foremothers: Reexamining the Women's Movement through Material Culture, 1848–2017 is thorough and impressive, but the book is also strengthened by 99 oral histories that Forss conducted with such accomplished individuals as Ellen Broidy (gay rights activist and co-organizer of the first gay pride parade), Rosalynn Carter (former First Lady of the United States and an Equal Rights Amendment supporter and author), E. Faye Williams (lawyer, civic leader, and named one of the hundred most influential Black Americans by Ebony magazine), and Frances “Poppy” Northcutt (a NASA Apollo 8 engineer). As Forss outlines, these individuals, along with dozens of others, add their voices to the multi-layered narrative that is so inherent to the American women's movement.One of the artifacts revealed by Forss as a primal touchstone for this project is a charm bracelet that chronologically documents the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) ratification process that began in 1972. As part of the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, this charm bracelet (and several similar bracelets) once belonged to Alice Paul, foremother extraordinaire. Paul's leadership through the Washington, DC, chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), helped secure the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote. In her time, Paul organized parades and pickets addressing and supporting women's suffrage, including a parade of over 8,000 women participants who marched with banners down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House on March 3, 1913, just one day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration.Though Paul eventually broke away from the NAWSA, she continued her efforts for women's rights by forming the National Woman's Party and authoring the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Paul marked the milestone of each state that approved the ERA with an enamel-state-shaped charm. Attaching each charm to a bracelet, Paul filled many bracelets that reveal a remarkable story and “an intriguing angle of historical contemplation” (p. 2), even though the ERA fell three states short of constitutional passage in 1982.Forss documents the captivating story of 30 unifying artifacts “pertaining to foremothers of diverse race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, and gender identity” (p. 2). Of interest to many is the author's solid research on Black suffragists, who formed their own organization, the National Federation of Afro-American Women, out of extreme frustration with white suffrage organizational marginalization and disgust at newspaper editorials describing Black women as “thieves and lying prostitutes” (pp. 65–6). Sojourner Truth's carte de visite conveys to readers the essential role of African American women within the movement, and Marian Anderson's evening gown worn for a special concert helps readers understand how history defines an artifact, and in this case, the wearer of that artifact.Much controversy arose around contralto Anderson and her soon-to-be landmark, open-air performance at the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939, when she entertained 75,000 people and many listeners via radio. Incredibly, a day or two ahead of the concert, Anderson had failed to reserve a hotel room in segregated Washington, DC. This spurred Gifford Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt's former US Forest Service Chief—whom Forss misidentifies as a “former National Park Service Chief”—to offer his home to Anderson, her mother, and her sisters (p. 70). Deliberately performing specific music “during an event tinged with racism” (p. 71), Anderson became a symbol of the Black community, and her dress, in and of itself, also became part of the singer's iconic status within that community and the women's movement for all women.Forss engages readers with the immersive history and provenance of many contemporary artifacts—such as the Radical Lesbian “Lavender Menace” T-shirt, Reverend Pauli Murray's sculpted hand, Billie Jean King's tennis dress, and, most recently, the Pussyhat Project Manifesto—whose tangible and intangible histories represent the inclusivity of the women's movement well into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Forss also provides insightful commentary on iconic items indicative of LGBTQ+ feminists, which demonstrates the author's skill as both scholar and storyteller.Scholars, researchers, and students of women's history, folklore, and material culture will not be disappointed by Forss’ inclusion of photographs for artifacts discussed, a helpful “cast of foremothers,” an appendix featuring speeches (particularly by Sojourner Truth), as well as extensive notes, a bibliography, and an index.There are few scholarly works that so profusely and precisely discuss the interconnection of artifacts surrounding the American women's movement as Forss does in Borrowing from Our Foremothers.

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