ARCHIVE: New York Suffrage Campaign Archive, 1914-1917.
[Suffrage]. The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in New York State, 1914-1917.
Archive tentatively identified as that of Alma Biele Leber (Mrs. Robert E. Leber), Assembly District Leader of Rockland County for the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, Blauvelt, New York (Rockland County). The archive includes 47 separate pieces, including broadsides, flyers, pamphlets, a "Votes for Women" paper drinking cup, a "VOTES FOR WOMEN 1915" poster, issues of The Woman’s Journal and an issue of the scarce The Woman Voter, the official organ of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party. While the campaign materials focus on the pivotal 1915 and 1917 woman suffrage referendums in New York, they also document suffrage activities between and around these two critical votes. Among the pamphlets are pieces by Jane Addams, Alice Stone Blackwell, Frances Björkman, W.E. DuBois, Florence Kelley, Congressman Edward Taylor and M. Carey Thomas. The archive has a nice run of Rainbow Broadsides. There is a rare suffrage songbook and an even rarer compilation of suffrage cartoons. An exceptional archive in all respects documenting the wide range of text and materials available to grassroots organizers.
Though Alma Biele Leber cannot be identified with complete certainty as the source of the archive, the appearance of her name within the context of the archive makes her its likely owner. She penciled her name at the head of the 1912 House of Representatives March 12, 1912 hearing (#20). The sole issue of The Woman Voter in the archive reports an automobile pilgrimage made by Alma Leber (#47). An invitation to a Rockland County woman suffrage convention in 1916 prints Mrs. Leber’s name as Assembly District Chairman (#25). A ticket to a barn dance (#17) held by the Blauvelt Equal Suffrage League further points to a Blauvelt, NY origin. Though we can only guess at Mrs. Leber’s character the October, 1914 issue of The Woman Voter indicates an energetic woman:
Mrs. Robert Leber, of Blauvelt, Assembly District Leader of Rockland County, made one of the most successful of the automobile pilgrimages to the Saratoga political conventions. The automobile proclaimed Votes for Women on the highways from Blauvelt to Tuxedo, through the Catskills to Albany and thence to Saratoga. Literature was left and signatures picked up everywhere—at garages, farmhouses and hotels. Mrs. Leber, who drove the car herself, found an almost universal sentiment in favor of equal suffrage. (pp. 15-16)
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