Virginia Arnold and the Kaiser Wilson banner (1917), a suffrage picket

A 1917 Harris & Ewing photograph shows Virginia Arnold of the National Woman's Party holding a White House picket banner addressed to "Kaiser Wilson," which said 20,000,000 American women were not self-governed.

What the banner says

This is a photograph of a protest, not a government poster. A woman stands holding a large lettered banner. Its argument is entirely in the words, and the words use the President's own war language against him.

KAISER WILSON

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR SYMPATHY WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF-GOVERNED?

20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED.

TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.

Who made it

The banner belonged to the National Woman's Party; the woman holding it is identified as Virginia Arnold. The photograph is by the studio Harris & Ewing, 1917, and sits in the Records of the National Woman's Party in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Library lists no known restrictions on use.

How to read it

"Kaiser" was the most loaded word available in 1917, the title of the enemy's ruler. Applying it to an American president in wartime was meant to sting; it is name-calling, and the FRAME record files it under transfer. It is fair to say so.

It is also fair to say the argument underneath was sound. The administration's case for war was framed around self-government. The banner asked why a government that spoke that way abroad had not extended it to the women among its own citizens, and gave a number. That is a pointed, legitimate question put to power by people the banner says had no vote to answer it with.

And it was put in the open, at the President's door, during a war, by citizens the government disliked. That is the First Amendment doing its work. Set it against the government's own wartime publicity, such as the Committee on Public Information's Official Bulletin notice, and against the opposite campaign in the Georgia anti-suffrage card. A recruiting poster from the same year, Gee!! I Wish I Were a Man, makes a joke of a woman's wish. This banner did not. The suffrage case study quotes this banner, and the Wilson administration essay sets the White House picket beside the jail terms and the amendment that followed.