This green crepe tea gown was worn by feminist H. Augusta Howard at the 1895 meeting of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in Atlanta. Although this style of dress was not generally worn in public, Howard may have favored its light fabric and unstructured lines for her convention activities. Watteau pleats in the back descend to a train with a quilted hem.

Born in Columbus, GA, Howard founded the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association in 1890 at the age of 25 after watching her widowed mother struggle to pay taxes levied by a state government in which she had no representation. Howard spoke at national suffrage conventions with her sisters and even hosted Susan B. Anthony in her home. However, her brothers became increasingly alarmed by their unmarried, atheist, vegetarian, trousers-wearing sister. They cut off Howard’s finances, and she disappeared from public life. Still, her early efforts inspired advocacy at the state and local level, including the organization of the Equal Franchise League of Muscogee County in 1913. Howard was living alone in 1920 when she fired at trespassers in her magnolia tree, wounding a young boy. After a trial in which she insisted she had been forced to live as a “hermit” in the family’s once-grand home because of her radical activities, Howard was sentenced to a year in prison. Her brothers appealed to Governor Thomas Hardwick, producing letters that claimed their sister was mentally unsound. Howard fought this approach, soliciting letters from others who praised her intelligence and spirit, but Hardwick issued a pardon, allowing her brothers to whisk her away to New York, where she lived quietly until her death in 1934. Howard’s tombstone, erected by friends who admired her independence and believed her family killed her crusading spirit, reads “MARTYRED!”