Campaign Ribbon and Sentiment.
Campaign ribbon with brass topper: 2-1/8 x 8" (including tassel fringe), silk ribbon printed in black with elaborate gold-washed brass topper and tassel fringe. Fine.
Rare Belva Lockwood Presidential Campaign Item.
Accompanying the campaign ribbon is a signed autograph sentiment, "Yours / For equal rights" signed in full, "Belva A. Lockwood" with her Washington, D.C. address. Stiff card stock: 4-1/8 x 2-1/2"; the card has toning along the left edge, but generally is very good. Lockwood's 19th-century hand is clear and firm. The ribbon is imprinted with a rebus – illustrations of a hand bell, "V", a padlock and a log for 'Bell-V-Lock Wood'. Just four campaign pieces, varying widely in style from one another, are known to survive from Belva Lockwood's presidential runs in 1884 and 1888: a Belva Lockwood club ribbon; a "National Equal Rights Party" campaign card with pictures of Lockwood and her running mate Marietta Stow, and an anti-Lockwood mechanical card depicting Lockwood with the legend, "But do-n-t give it away".
Belva Lockwood (1830-1917) found herself a pioneer for women's rights when she first sought admission to law school, and again, when she sought admission to the Supreme Court. She long had advocated woman suffrage. In 1867, she helped to found the capital's first woman suffrage association. Throughout the 1870s she pursued a career in law at the same time she continued to work for woman suffrage. With a number of Washington, DC women she joined in the 1872 test of the 14th Amendment. She lobbied Congress and "drew up innumerable resolutions and bills" [NAW]. Her suffrage work stiffened her resolve to overcome the difficulties, which prevented her from practicing law in Washington. If it took an act of Congress for her to appear before the Supreme Court, she would persist until that act was passed. And it did in 1879.
Her experiences convinced her that "We shall never have equal rights until we take them, nor respect until we command it". Victoria Woodhull had announced her candidacy for president in 1872. Though not given much credence by the public, Lockwood thought Woodhull's candidacy made a significant point. Only when women offered themselves as candidates could the public seriously begin to contemplate the value of women to the political system. In 1884 a largely western group, The National Equal Rights Party, convened in California and nominated Belva Lockwood for president. With Marietta Stow as her running mate, Lockwood and her associates hoped that, though they could not win the election, they could elect at least one of their party to the electoral college and "become the entering wedge".
Though the NAWSA largely held itself apart from Lockwood's campaign, Matilida Joslyn Gage supported her and appeared on the party slate as an elector at large. Lockwood garnered some 4,000 votes in five states. Four years later the National Equal Rights Party met in Ames, Iowa and again nominated Belva Lockwood as their candidate. The total votes cast for candidate Lockwood has never been known. She did not try a third run. A rare and exemplary women's rights piece together with an autograph sentiment stating the single most important principle of Belva Lockwood's life and career.
Weatherford, AMERICAN WOMEN'S HISTORY, pp. 212-213. NAW II, pp. 413-415. Hearn, "BELVA LOCKWOOD FOR PRESIDENT, The Clarion, December, 1997. Weatherford, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN SUFFRAGIST MOVEMENT, pp. 117131, 143-144. TIMELINES, pp. 25, 32, 40 and 113. FIRSTS, p. 257-25.
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