VOTES FOR WOMEN!
This radical tea towel is based on a 1911 vintage design by Margaret Morris, intended to illustrate the song sheet of "The March of the Women," a song dedicated to suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst. It became the music for the women’s suffrage movement throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Activists sang it at rallies and in prison too: the composer, Ethel Smyth, reputably conducted the anthem with her toothbrush from a window of Holloway Prison. In some ways, you could call it the feminist pop anthem of its time. What's yours? Sing it loud: perhaps like Ethel, accompanied by your toothbrush; or like most of us, in the shower; or like the most radical among us, on the streets.
Let your first-wave sisters inspire you to demand women's political rights with this feminist gift.
Please note that the 'Women's March' is a British contemporary design, and reflects the fact that very few ethnic minorities lived in Britain at the time. In the US, women of color were often systematically excluded from the campaign for women's suffrage, but many contemporary abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth and Ida B Wells played a crucial role in the movement.
