Program

National Votes for Women Trail

Subject

People

Location

Art Museum Dr & MT Adams Dr, Cincinnati, OH 45202, USA

Lat/Long

39.112695, -84.497713

Grant Recipient

National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

Cornelia Cassady Davis (1870-1920) was a painter and prominent member of the Cincinnati, Ohio arts community. Davis studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and exhibited works of art at the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1912, she won first place in a poster contest sponsored by the Cincinnati women’s suffrage association and her winning poster was to be used in their suffrage campaign. The January 1914 issue of The Poster, the official publication of the Poster Advertising Association, noted Davis’s use of the Ohio coat-of-arms in her award-winning suffrage poster and described it as follows:

In the center against the rising sun is a woman’s head. The sun seems to make a halo about the face of the woman. The figure is heroic in size, and yet the face wears a very feminine look of yearning. There is strength there expressed and wistfulness. The eyes look far to a better, fairer day for women. The message she bears, ‘Let Ohio Women Vote,’ is but the symbol of the liberty which will bring that fair day.

Davis’s poster was adopted for use by suffragists across the state of Ohio in the fight for women’s right to vote.