Chicago murals: Women's suffrage art that started in Chicago is growing across U.S.
A series of women's suffrage murals that took root in Chicago is expanding across the United States. Three murals that pay tribute to the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, have gone up in the Loop, and the murals have been so well-received that the organizers behind them are planning additional murals commemorating women’s suffrage in New York City and Portland, Oregon, as part of the National Suffrage Mural Series.
“People just don’t know that there was a time when women didn’t have the right to vote. They didn’t know that it took 70-plus years and multiple generations of women. They also don’t know that the effort was multiracial,” says mural series co-director Michelle Duster, a Chicago-based author, historian and the great-granddaughter of journalist and early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells.
Initially branded the Chicago Suffrage Mural Series, two of the three original murals, which were intended for a site near Columbia College Chicago, were blocked when a parking lot owner refused to rent the artists space to stage their paint and scaffolding. He called the murals “too political,” according to a 2021 Sun-Times story. Two years later, the murals found their permanent home about a block away.
Given the current political climate, the message is especially important, say Duster and co-director Neysa Page-Lieberman, who previously served as executive director of Exhibitions and Performance at Columbia College and chief curator of the Wabash Arts Corridor.
“Our rights continue to be stripped away, and it’s accelerated in the past few years," Page-Lieberman says. "We can’t just rest on our laurels and think because we had this hard-fought, hard-won victory 100 years ago that we will always have that.”
The Chicago murals sit along the Wabash Arts Corridor in the Loop. They are made up of:
- "On the Wings of Change" at 33 E. Ida B. Wells Drive by artist Jasmina Cazacu, who goes by the artist name Diosa. This portrait mural shows a teenage girl who seems to be dreaming of 10 Chicago suffragists, including Ida B. Wells. The building houses Columbia College offices, classrooms and the school’s radio station.
- "Speak Up!" at 623 S. Wabash Ave. by artist Dorian Sylvain. It features the popular quote that former Vice President Kamala Harris said in a debate with then-vice presidential candidate Mike Pence: “… I’m speaking.” The building is owned by Columbia College and contains classrooms, offices, science labs, art studios and more.
- "Votes for Women," also at 623 S. Wabash Ave. by artist AB Productions, includes a yellow rose, a symbol of suffragists, and commemorates 70 years of activism before women received the right to vote.
Cazacu, who splits her time between Pilsen and Mexico City, said she modeled the girl in the portrait on a 14-year-old family friend. “She was four years away from having the right to vote in the next presidential election. That was a way for me to make it more personal.”
Sylvain, of Hyde Park, said the "Speak Up" mural holds meaning for her after growing up in a politically involved home and witnessing the social changes of the '60s, '70s and '80s.
“As much as I can take for granted growing up in the time that I did, I also can really see how we are sliding backwards and it’s really frightening,” she says. For example, Sylvain witnessed Roe v. Wade pass, granting women the right to an abortion in all states, and then be overturned.
Now, the murals are regularly included on walking tours of the Wabash Arts Corridor, Duster says. She's met students from Roosevelt and Loyola universities and Columbia College who view them for different class assignments. Occasionally, the murals show up as backdrops on social media.
"You never know when it’s going to pop up," Duster says. If someone seeks a Chicago cityscape photo with a feminist angle, "they'll want that in the background."
In New York City, Little Village artist Sam Kirk is planning the next installment of women's suffrage murals.
The suffrage movement is “something that we’re living through in many ways right now,” she says. “I’m hoping that I’m able to remind people of that — how much work has been done and why we need to keep a lot of this work in place.”