A Yellow Rose Project was organized by Meg Griffiths and Frances Jakubeck and includes an on-line component, a traveling exhibition and forthcoming book by Texas press.

For the collection, over one hundred women were invited to make work inspired by “what the women’s suffrage movement meant to them.” The resulting collection is a “photographic collaboration of responses, reflections, and reactions to the 19th Amendment” from artists across the United States.

The work Grant created for A Yellow Rose project includes five Suffragists Portraits that commemorate the 100th anniversary of Women’s suffrage in the United States.

The portraits are inspired by searching national archives for profile photographs and stories about suffragists. The collection is intended to honor women from every class, race, ethnicity, - and background who fought tirelessly to ratify the 19th Amendment. The final works give voice to women and a history not examined in most schools.

The shadow is used as a metaphor to create a portrait of the individual while anonymously signifying all suffragists and the paths they blazed for the future. The shadow’s lack of specificity enables us to see ourselves in them while imagining their activism, a perceived experience that takes on a sense of shared reality.

To create each work, Grant combines a digitally painted portrait with a fabricated shadowed background. For reference she enjoys taking artistic liberty to create what she imagines as appropriate hairstyles and clothing for the time period.

For each portrait she creates a custom-built backdrop of cast shadows assembled in the studio from an assortment of objects and fabrics specifically chosen to evoke the essence and story of the suffragist being portrayed.

The final images are printed by the artist as 20” x 25” archival pigment prints on Hahnemüle 308 Rag paper. Each print is finished with a de-bossed signature stamp on front and labeled and hand-signed in pencil en verso.

Suffragist Portraits
20” x 25” Archival Pigment Prints

Mary Eliza Church Terrell was an African American social activist, educator, writer and early advocate for women's suffrage and civil rights.

Terrell received her Bachelor’s & Master’s degrees from Oberlin College, taught languages at Wilberforce University, and moved to Washington, DC in 1887 to teach at the M Street Colored High School.

Terrell was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, addressing in particular the concerns of black women. She campaigned tirelessly speaking and writing for woman suffrage and civil rights.  

In 1895 she became the first black woman appointed to the Washington D.C. Board of Education.

In 1896, she was named the first president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Suffrage was a primary focus of NACW and Terrell believed that real change would only be achieved once women had the vote. Her words - “Lifting as we climb”- became their motto. 

In 1909, she was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (NAACP).

Helen Keller was a social activist, prolific writer, advocate for oppressed people and a suffragist. She participated in marches and protests for women’s suffrage and supported efforts to legalize birth control and abortion.

Keller graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 and was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor’s degree. She became a renowned speaker, author and strong advocate for the blind and for women’s suffrage. Keller saw being female as “more of a disability than being deaf-blind, because women didn't have the vote”.

As a member of the Socialist party, she actively campaigned and wrote in support of the working class. Many of her speeches and writings were about women's right to vote and the impacts of war.

Keller was a firm supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and voiced her support for African American rights and condemned unjust treatment and discrimination. In 1920, the same year as the ratification of the 19th Amendment, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. 

A Yellow Project is a “collaboration of responses, reflections, and reactions to the 19th Amendment from over one hundred women across the United States.”

Historian and author Adele Logan Alexander (granddaughter of suffragist, Adella Hunt Logan) beautifully articulates who the suffragists were in the article, “Suffrage Isn’t ‘Boring History.’ It’s a Story of Political Geniuses” (Authors: Bennett & Chambers, New York Times, July 2020)

“I would say it is not one person nor event, but the scarcely recorded efforts of anonymous women of all races, education, and economic levels who, for decades, talked with neighbors, held meetings, challenged their fathers, sons, husbands and employers – often putting themselves in physical and economic jeopardy to do so. They are the unknown heroes of the movement.”