Putting a Name With That Suffragist’s Face

Overlooked in the wonderful photograph of Caroline Severance (standing left) accompanying your article on the centennial of the Friday Morning Club, “Women’s Causes to Celebrate,” April 21, is the identification of superstar women’s suffragist Susan B. Anthony (seated right). The picture was taken in the summer of 1905 when she visited Los Angeles and spoke to a capacity crowd of 3,000 at the old Venice pier. Shortly before her death a year later, she delivered her famous message to the future: “Failure is Impossible.”

According to a caption on a copy of the photograph in the Macpherson Collection, Scripps College, the other two women are Charlotte Le Moyne Wills (standing right) and Rebecca Buffum Spring (seated left), both suffragists and charter members of the Friday Morning Club. Both, alas, were most known for the deeds of their fathers--Arnold Buffum had been a leading abolitionist in New England and Francis Julius Le Moyne erected the first crematory in the United States.

JUDY HARVEY SAHAK Claremont