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Throughout America, women organized tea parties for meetings and fundraisers to support the suffrage movement. The Woman’s Suffrage Party sold ceylon, young hyson, gunpowder, and oolong tea under their charitable brand “Equality Tea.” Yet the history of tea is steeped in inequality, driven by colonialism, war, and appropriation. In her short film, Equality Tea, Jaime Sunwoo brews tea while drawing parallels between the fraught histories of the tea trade and the suffrage movement.
Created by Jaime Sunwoo. Original score by Matt Chilton, based on a 1895 suffragist anthem by Augusta Gray Gunn. Commissioned by Park Avenue Armory and The Laundromat Project for 100 Years | 100 Women.
The Colonial Tea Trade and Women's Suffrage", Whetstone Magazine