Images of the Progressive Era Political Participation

This year Archives Month in Wisconsin celebrates “100 Years of the Wisconsin Idea.”  The Wisconsin Idea, which advocates community involvement by universities to help create good public policy, has its roots in the Progressive Era of American politics at the beginning of the 20^th century.  In light of the political side of the Wisconsin Idea and the upcoming election, I wanted to share some images depicting the people of Wisconsin engaging in political activities during the Progressive Era.  The images, which can be found online in Wisconsin Historical Society's Historical Images Collection, show citizens engaged in activities as simple as voting or as courageous as standing up for women's suffrage.

A poster from 1914 in favor of using schools as polling places.

A political cartoon from Milwaukee showing Hercules chopping off the heads of a snake representing the Democratic and Republican parties with a sword representing the ballot.

A photograph showing the members of the Oshkosh Equal Suffrage League in their 4^th of July float in 1912.  In addition to the 100^th anniversary of the Wisconsin Idea, 2012 marks the 100^th anniversary of a failed attempt to gain voting rights for women through a statewide referendum. Despite this failure, Wisconsin went on to become the first state to ratify the 19^thAmendment granting women suffrage nationwide.

These images are close to 100 years old, but the people of Wisconsin have remain politically active, as shown by events like the 2011 protests in the Capitol Building and campaigns for and against the recall of Governor Scott Walker. As Wisconsin prepares to go to the polls in a couple weeks, and as someone who is not a native of Wisconsin, I found it interesting to learn more about the Wisconsin Idea as well as the state's long history of politically active citizens.

Thank you to the Wisconsin Historical Society for helping me find these images and allowing me to us them.

[Post Created by Gwen Sieja]

Happy Archives Month 2012!

It’s that time of year again, American Archives Month. Never heard of Archives month? You’re not alone, but this plucky little project has been steadily gaining steam over the last six years.  So, what exactly is Archives Month and what are the programs goals? In 2006 the Society of American Archivists (SAA) began their campaign to promote public awareness of what archives do and how they serve their community by creating American Archives Month. The goal of this program is to make archives more visible to surrounding communities and the United States at large, and the SAA achieves this goal by encouraging events and displays at archives across the country. The SAA also provides a variety of public relation resources and ideas on their website to help archives make the most out of their celebrations. Many states have taken up the cause as well throwing their own Archives Month events. In the last few years there has been a push to standardize the celebration date, and now most archives that participate celebrate an entire month of events every October.

In the spirit of American Archives Month, the archival studies graduate students in the School of Library and Information Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison contribute blog posts relating the theme of Wisconsin's Archives Month. This year marks the fifth year UW students have written posts, which is pretty darn spectacular! Wisconsin's Archives Month is headed by the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) main branch in Madison. Like SAA, WHS provides ideas and promotional materials to Wisconsin archives to celebrate Archives Month at their repository. WHS also chooses the theme for each year’s celebrations. This year’s theme is “100 Years of the Wisconsin Idea: Forward Through the Past”. So, this year our Archives Month blog posts will feature archival collections from Wisconsin that exemplify the Wisconsin Idea.

The Wisconsin Idea, simply stated, is fostering programs in which public universities engage and contribute to their communities, and constructing legislation that benefits the greatest number of people.  

Check in through the month to learn about collections in Wisconsin that demonstrate the Wisconsin Idea in practice!