B efore the 19th Amendment become law in 1920, women wielded little power. To gain it, they had to change the minds of men, who commanded most of it. So women took the tack of tenacity and repetition - tell their story long enough, disseminate it widely enough, and eventually they would be heard and change could occur.

Suffragists spread their message through a variety of means: talks to gatherings of all sizes, refusals to perform domestic duties unless their husbands voted for women’s rights, picketing, marches, pamphlets, newspapers, journals, and bill postings.

Public displays were certainly the most dramatic form of protest, and large posters pasted on buildings provided prominent longevity to the suffrage message. Those bills were continual reminders that there were people willing to fight for women’s rights - quiet encouragement to those in support of women’s suffrage and to those hesitant to publicly question the status quo.

Of the right to vote, the suffrage pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in 1848, “The right is ours, have it we must, use it we will.” Fifty five years later she lamented, “It is very humiliating for women . . . to have their sacred rights at the mercy of a masculine oligarchy.”