History Visualizations

Women on School Boards, 1895

Women on School Boards, 1897

          

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of word clouds by themselves. Yet, when I imagine an exhibit with a variety of materials, a large word cloud wall decal could definitely add to the experience. For these images I used Wordle to create two word clouds (inspired by the class exercise) to compare election rhetoric in different years.

About the topic: The Civic Club of Philadelphia formed in 1894 and immediately acted on an agenda that included an array of education reforms. Though the club was keen on eliminating the ward boards that were largely in control of the city’s schools, they decided to take advantage of the ability of women to serve on school boards and suggest candidates for election. Thusly formed, the Woman on School Boards Committee organized election campaigns for women. The source texts for these images were two campaign fliers advocating for the election of women on Philadelphia’s district school boards, one from 1895 and one from 1897.

The 1895 campaign was the first campaign that the club organized. It focused almost exclusively in the Seventh Ward. The 1895 flier was titled “To Our Neighbors and Friends, the Women of the Seventh Ward” and consisted of a list of reasons why women should serve on school boards. The language of this flier is friendly and community focused. It assures the voters that women will focus on the children. Because the tone of the rhetoric was friendlier, I chose a colorful, warm palate, a brighter background, and simple lower-case text.

The 1897 flier was titled “To Fathers and Mothers. Five Reasons why you should support Women Candidates for the School Boards” similarly lists why women should serve. However, the language of the 1897 campaign embodied a new approach for the Civic Club. The language of this campaign was more aggressively gendered than the one in 1895. This campaign stated outright that women, because they were women, would not only be just as good as male candidates, they would be better. Because this campaign was more aggressive I chose darker, cool colors, a cloudier background, and bolder font.

The resulting images are meant to portray the different tones of the campaigns. Being a little critical, they might be too distinct. The source text was short, making it easy for a single repeated word to appear twice as large as anything else. But all in all, they do show a distinct difference in the way these women perceived themselves and organized their political activity.

(The background image is of the Alice Lippincott School, named after a Civic Club member who was involved with the school and died in 1894. Source: PhillyHistory.org)