A Cedar Rapids artist is changing how Americans are seeing the Women’s Suffrage Movement, a decades-long fight to win the right to vote for women in the United States.
Kathy Schumacher was used to seeing the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt as the faces of the movement – all symbolic figures during that time period – but none of them are women of color, so she decided to retell the narrative to incorporate Black women.
“When I was investigating it, I learned that the African American women had been pushed out of that movement, and I didn’t know that,” Schumacher told The Gazette. “And so that’s really what sparked my interest and I thought, I’m going to do African American women because they never get the publicity or they’re just unknown. And so that’s where it all came from.”
Through research, she learned about the likes of Annell Ponder, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Pauli Murray and Unita Blackwell – all Black women who were freedom fighters and contributed to getting women the right to vote.
The artist’s idea was conceived when she invited museum curator Kate Kunau to her gallery to view a series of charcoal drawings dedicated to her grandmother who spent 15 years at the Independence Asylum in 1941. Kunau was so impressed with her art that they began to discuss how they could work together for future series. It was then that they developed the concept of “Freedom’s Daughters,” a collection of paintings depicting the unknown heroines of Black suffrage in the U.S.
They both recognized that while some Black women were celebrated for their fight for racial and gender equality (i.e. Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks) few were familiar with the likes of Nannie Helen Burroughs, the founder of the first Black-owned school for girls; Daisy Bates, the visionary behind Little Rock, Arkansas’ first high school integration and Pauli Murray, the lawyer, professor and writer who would become the first Black female Episcopal priest.
In “Freedom’s Daughters,” Schumacher’s richly-colored portraits are designed and inspired by historical photographs and are accompanied by quotes from each woman read by Cameroonian-American artist Akwi Nji.
“I was really blown away by them,” Kunau said about Schumacher’s art. “I first saw them in 2019, so it’s been a while now because this was one of our shows that was postponed due to COVID,” she said. “So I saw them when they were in their early phases. She just had a couple of them done and she had sketches for others, so it’s been really wonderful to be able to see the project evolve.”
She continued: “Kathy is an amazing artist. I saw the amazing series she did about her grandmother being put in an asylum, and I just love the way that she dealt with human emotion and the human form. I feel like she just does really beautiful things with both of those. And so when she explained what this exhibition was going to be to me, I knew she was going to do a really wonderful job, because it really played to her strengths — documenting the human experience.”
To learn more about “Freedom’s Daughters” and Kathy Schumacher, visit here.
