ABSTRACT
Photographs of conventions, chapter meetings, and the like of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show recurring images of white ribbons tied to the bodices of women as a visual symbol of their support of temperance and stages decorated not only with flags and flowers, but also with a panoply of banners, shields, and quilts.1 These images can be seen in Fig. 37.1, a photograph taken at the 1903 WCTU World Convention in Geneva.2 These material artifacts typically were crafted by members of the Union and displayed over and over at local chapter meetings, in booths at state and county fairs, in parades, and at WCTU conventions at the state, national, and international levels. In their material forms, these handcrafted items publicly and simultaneously displayed women’s support of the many social reforms advocated under Frances Willard’s leadership, including suffrage, as well as women’s accomplishment in the traditionally female art of fine needlework. This dual display was not simple stage dressing, for needlework was an important aspect of the rhetorical agenda of the WCTU under the leadership of Frances Willard in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
