The extraordinary life of hamilton aellis cose the author of trana they both have a lot to add for people that are interested not only in our history but a lot of current events. Im going to give kimberly and alice a couple minutes to introduce themselves and then we will jump into discussion. Kimberly, do you want to go first . Hi, i am so delighted to be here. As i was saying before we get started, i used to live in austin, he went to ut for my phd so being a part of the texas book festival has been a dream of mine for a long time. Edited picture it would happen this way but i will take it. Im very grateful to participate and thank you so much for having me. Im a historian and ice study women, sex politics, and science and medicine. Now i live in cincinnati and i teach in oxford ohio. I contribute essays to publications like the washington post, i have an oped in there today actually about kamala harris. I also have my new book free thinker which tells the story of the fallen woman a woman who had sex before marriage and everyone found out about it. The fallen woman who reinvented herself, became one of the best known speakers and writers of the 19th century and moved to washington in 1910 where she became the suffragist lead gator washington and she negotiated congressional passage of the 19th amendment and converted president Woodrow Wilson to the cause. When she died in 1925 she was the highestranking woman in federal government and a National Symbol of what it meant for white women to be full citizens. She donated her brain to science, to prove the equality of women and it lives in a jar outside the Psychology Department at cornell to the state. I can share pictures of that later if you want to see it. Im excited to talk about all of these issues with you all today. Thank you kimberly. Ellis, do you want to take it from here. Its hard to follow someone volunteering to show you pictures of the brain but ill do my best. , lifelong journalist. Ive served in several journalistic capacities including chief of the editorial page at the new york daily news, columnist and contributing editor for many years for newsweek magazine. Started my career in chicago where i was also a columnist on a national correspondent. Ive done 12 books, two published this year, the one on the aclu and another one on free speech called the short life and curious death ofs free speech in america. Im also a former writer and residents of the aband live now in new york city. Thank you ellis. One of the reasons i volunteered to moderate these analysts because i love the topic, love the book and both authors go to the heart of two institutions that have shaped modern american political and on several pages. The american little somebodys the union, aclu and the league of women voters, direct descendent of the National American womens Suffrage Association that helen hamilton gardner represented so well in your book, kimberly. The books show the richness, complexity and even contradictions within institutions and movements that change the course of our history. Through helen hamilton gardner, helen shows how distinctive woman appropriated the very american right to shape her own identity and move confidently into the public space to work for social reform. It takes us away from the image of gardner just as a lobbyist and shows as a commitment to the cause of women rights and track the evolution of her thoughts and why she ends up doing that kind of work, which i thought was fascinating. Becomes almost like intellectual biography of hers. Ellis takes the Monumental Task of chronicling the cases and causes that have shaped the aclu and the social, political, and cultural environments that shaped individuals that have participated in them. He shows how in his first hundred years of life the institutions have adapted to the needs and the spirit of the time. Sometimes at the cost of individuals. I wanted to open the conversation by describing for the members of the audience who havent read your books, how closely associated other womens Reform Movements that define helen hamilton gardners life and the social progressives that led the military movement that later became the aclu. For those that have not got these two books, how these two different branches connect. Ellis are you asking one of us to start . Host yes. [laughter] moderator i want to give audience a little bit of context about the womens Reform Movement and how its basically the aclu in a way relates to it a kimberly what if i take the prehistory and ellis takes the aclu 20th century part . Ellis i guess that means you go first. [laughter] kimberly i think an important aspect of this to understand is a lot of the women who wanted to advocate for reform, political, sexual, bodily, autonomy, came up against the comstock laws, a series of laws passed in 1873 to outlaw obscene speech, what was obscene . Anything anthony comstock, who became the postal inspector, deemed obscene. Sort of technically it was about stopping pornography, reformers like comstock in the 1870s were really concerned about the thousands of young men and women moving away from their family farms, moving to the big cities, leading these stories that maybe had naughty stories and pictures that was like there express purpose they also clamped down on all sorts of speech including really basic anatomy books, what are the parts of your body . What are they called, how they work . How could you avoid disease or pregnancy, these comstock laws that early womens rights activist, early Birth Control activists came up against. In the case of helen hamilton gardner she was the one who biography i just wrote, she was born 1853, she doesnt become a Birth Control activists, shes a sex reformer in a different way which we can talk about but shes a freethinker, meaning what we today would call atheist or agnostic, the freethinkers also come up against the comstock laws, not for talking about sex but for challenging organized religion, for writing things that were considered blasphemous, for questioning the bible and the word of god. The freethinkers sometimes aligned with the free lovers who were the ones that were openly about sex and critiqued traditional marriage in their joint opposition to the comstock laws. That is the part i was going to talk about and then we get to the early aclu i will turn it over to michael panelists ellis. Ellis its interesting because there are links to the second but the one thing thats interesting is the aclu did not start its one of the project until the 1970s. People tend to associate the aclu very much with Civil Liberties in defense of the bill of rights, much more so than with anything having to do specifically with women. If you look at the history of the aclu you really have to go back because the aclu itself started in 1920, which is a few months before the 19th amendment was passed, 1990 was an interesting year for a lot of things. 1920 was interesting because it founded the aclu, the Temperance Movement and 18th amendment and then of course the 19th amendment. But the aclu itself was preceded by another organization. In 1915 there was something founded called the American Unit against motorists. Crystal eastman was one of the lead people in that, jane addams was very much involved with that. Jane addams was a big leader, the peace movement, and all the people who were involved were heavily involved in the Suffrage Movement back then. The idea behind the au a. M. , was founded in 1915 because there was this there was this motorist movement going on in the United States to get us ready for war to get us into world war i. The whole function of the American Union against the military wanted to stop the United States from getting involved in world war i and to advocate for peace. Obviously that failed. United states got involved in world war i in 1917 and there was freethinking that took place and they said, okay, we have this movement that grew out of the womens peace movement. Just sort of keep us out of war, what was the purpose now or do we have a purpose now . And they realized right away that there was a lot of repression that was going on, the sedition act was passed in 1917 the espionage act was passed in 1918, basically became illegal to a it also became very clear that people who were opponents of the war, young men who didnt want to fight in the war, would need someone to speak for them. Someone to represent them in court to make sure they had the objectives etc. The American Unit against military response another Organization Called national Civil Liberties bureau. This organization was fundamentally focused on helping young men who wanted to not serve in the war. And ultimately that morphed into something called the american Civil Liberties union in the year 1920. Roger ballwin, who was executive director, came on to just before the national mc lb was formed and ultimately ended up running that he also went to jail when he got out it was right before or at the end of 1919 there was all this activity going on in the aftermath of the First World War the immigrants were rounded up for having bad thoughts and thoughts basically having to do with abin support of anarchists and radical aall these people speaking out against the war, a lot of stuff going on in 1919 which led into 1920. January 1920 they came together and said, thats a lot of stuff, the war is over. There is all this repression within the United States and all this antidemocratic activity within the United States. We need to really have an organization that is focused on dealing with that. And voilc you have the american Civil Liberties union. Even though it was spawned by suffragists and people very much interested in fighting for womens rights even though was very much involved in that from the beginning, the focus of the aclu early on became something somewhat different and became defense of the bill of rights and most specifically in the First Amendment, which guarantees free speech, freedom of the press, etc. Moderator thank you, i know you are summarizing a lot into a couple minutes. One of the things i wanted to ask you, ellis, remember this really old billy joel song a. Ellis i remember it well. Moderator your book in a way feels like that because its 100 years from 1920s on. Ellis billy joel and i were collaborators, i helped write that song. Moderator what im trying to say is, it was a tour. Ellis one thing i realized right away is i cannot write a book about the history of the aclu without writing a book about 100 years of american history. Because the aclu was involved in basically every major activity that affected america over the last 100 years. If you are talking about world war i and was born in world war i if youre talking about the a ait was very much involved in that if youre talking about world war ii japanese internment, it was very much involved in that. Talking about the rise of communism and the effect of that hat on the United States and the pushback against that it was very much involved in that in one way or another, talking about the civil Rights Movement, talking about the aclu, some of the antiwar movement. All the way to now and when we talk about the excesses when it comes to being unconstitutional, for lack of a better word, of the trump administration. Every major historical event that has touched on america basically somehow drawn the involvement of the aclu pretty much. Moderator what i wanted to hear a little bit more is, its pretty ambitious, its different than other books in the sense that it has the case law but also has the cultural, political context. How do you pick what goes and whats not . What is your writing process . Its pretty ambitious endeavor. How you go about that. The biggest task is deciding what to leave out. So much happens in all of these, some of them are contextual in the sense that, lets talk about 1919. You have big labor strikes all over the place. At the same time you have these raids going on all over the country where the Justice Department is arresting people willynilly. You have mass deportations taken place, race riots in chicago and arkansas and washington dc, and elsewhere. And the aclu was touching on all these things. So you have to figure out a way to sum up, thats just one year. [laughter] it all created the environment that made it clear that an organization like the aclu was necessary. Ultimately you do what you do what all journalists do, take one thing at a time and figure out where it fits and how it tells a story because we are basically storytellers. We try to figure out, what part of the story can you leave out . And still make sense. What part do you have to include and still make sense. This is a very long book but my first draft was twice as long. We have an apartment in puerto rico and so i went to the apartment in puerto rico for six weeks just to cut it. That was part of the process. This wont mean much to most people. What started like well over 200,000 words, i said, okay, ive got to cut this. I went down and isolated myself in the apartment in the condo and in puerto rico for six weeks just cut and cut and cut and put it back together again. Thats all part of the writing process. Kimberly, tell us a little bit about your writing process. I read early in the book that your First Contact with helen hamilton gardner was in texas. I felt like she was a little bit of a kimberly exactly, i first met helen hamilton gardner, hhg as i call her, at the library at ut working on my dissertation. My dissertation, which became my first book called from eve to evolution, looks at how 19thcentury women used science for feminist purposes so the transitions i was thinking about gender roles in terms of adam and eve to thinking in terms of science. Hhg was one of five women i wrote about because it was in the basement of the library sifting through Popular Science monthly which was one of the most popular magazines of the 19th century were science and regular people would write about science. She was in there because there was a man named William Hammond was a Founding Member of the American Association of neurology and he claims to have discovered that womens brains were inferior to mens and 19 distinct ways and she wrote in the research and said this makes no sense, im no scientist but are you are doing comparing the brains of these men with womens who can be found in the same asylum, who out that who was the foreman who has the nerves to take on one the most revered scientist in the country and one of the most popular magazines. Thats when i met her was in the basement of the ab library. And he wanted to know more about my process . So my first book was an intellectual history and it was not that fun, it was rewarding and my dissertation became the book and that was fine but it was not as exciting as this book. Because my first book the different kind of book i thought wouldnt it be fun to follow one person and helen hamilton gardner as i kept looking for her after my first book i discovered she could ab all the things she knows all of the people all the big debates, i thought, i think in her life history shes 1853 10 1895, you can see all of the womens Rights Movement that culminates in the book. My research for her was part traditional, historical, go to all the archives, she didnt leave a ton of paper so i had to be creative. Where i found most of her papers, which also says something about the politics of archives is in the Woodrow Wilson collection. Shes on the Woodrow Wilson collection more than any other woman except for his wife. She was a sufferer issuffragisa mention her name one or two times which is all over the Woodrow Wilson collection. The other part of my research, i was like magnum pi. I followed her around everywhere she lived and went to every apartment she lived in, i got to tour the place she lived. That i would get a feel for the cities she lived in and do Family Research not only was she a fallen woman but she reinvented herself, she reinvents by moving to new york city and calling herself helen hamilton gardner, piecing back together whats really fun detective work. One of the later chapters in the book mentions her concern about how the Womens Movement was going to be remembered. There was a lot of awareness of historical memories and the politics around. Tell me a little bit more. We have a perspective of 100 years, what can we learn today looking back into the prophesied pave the way for the 19th amendment. Was there for the modern leader to understand, to get perspective on. I think theres three main takeaways, one is that we think of womens rights history as about the vote but it was wildly autonomy. The Suffrage Movement was a tiny fringe moment for much of the 19th century, the capitalist movement was much bigger counting more than 200,000 members. Those women talk about alcohol but what they didnt care was alcohol with the cared about was not being raped by their husband, not getting syphilis and gonorrhea from their husband, they were more prevalent than more other infections combined in the 19th century. In my book i talk about how helen hamilton gardner learned politics from the age of Consent Campaign of the 1880s and 90s where she joined forces with the wctu to raise the age of Sexual Consent for girls. In 1990 it was 12 or younger and 38 states. In delaware it was seven. That means a grown man could access a 10yearold girl and they say she consented. I think in part we need to think about abthey hope that with the vote they could also a athis is kind of true and kind of not true in 2020. The other way take away message i think from looking at womens suffrage history especially something i learned in researching helen hamilton gardner and how she negotiated congressional act of the 19 amendment. The take away message is the extent to which white leaders will go, have gone, continue to go to to keep africanamericans from the polls. So by the time the 19th amendment gets to congress in 1918 1990 when the senate is seriously considering it and debating it on the floor, no one is saying women can vote because they are not smart enough. No one is saying women can vote because it destroys the family, no one is saying believe anything about alcohol because at this point but Coalition Amendment has already passed. The only objection, the only thing the senators are talking about, because it passed pretty easily in the house, it was in the senate it didnt really get debated, the senators from both parties and all regions are saying we cant enfranchise black women in the south where there is more black voters and white voters im super afraid that the 19th amendment, which is modeled word for word on the 16th was going to somehow compel the federal government to enforce the 15th amendment, which on paper had enfranchise black men but never been enforced since 1877. Its a dual fear of having to actually let black men and women vote and that the signature issue. So thats why people like helen hamilton gardner, white suffragist abthat we dont care about black women in the south, we wont say a piece about the 15th amendment, we wont say a peep about enforcement, just let us have 1 19 moment. You can keep discriminating against black women in the south, the exact same way you been discriminating against black men thats how the 19th amendment gets to congress. The third take away message about your point about memory is that the suffragists are our first womens historians, the suffragists called the archives, who, libraries to see what women came before us . What are they due . The suffragists were the one to rehash and refine and tell the stories of the one who came before and also to set up the archives like this lesandro library which cleared out the collection of marwood park who is the founding president of the league of women voters. First historians of women because they knew that the stories we tell about our past shape what is possible in the present and the future. And if we dont know the names of women if we dont know their stories, its hard for us to imagine women as leaders which i think in some ways is still really find ourselves in 2020 theres this 2017 report of the National Museum of womens history put out that is really depressing despite all the generations of historians and many countless wonderful books that have been written about women, state standards, School Textbooks tell the story about women in only a few womens name are required knowledge and most of our states. I hope the Suffrage Centennial gives us the opportunities to think about the ways we tell women story about the narratives we told ourselves of the country you stop and that was gardners dying wish the speech in the moment teresa was mentioning gardner planned the signing ceremony for the 19th amendment, which was the first of its kind i think thered been treaty signings before the public but this was the first bill signing ceremony and she did so because she wanted there to be a historical record of it and she even brought the fancy gold pen at the speaker speaker of the house and the abso the very next week sugar caught the smithsonian and say hey smithsonian, i have this fancy gold pen that was used to sign historic document and i have a ayou need to put in exhibit so the people of the world, the children of america can see womens contributions to america. Ellis i can add a footnote to what you are saying, its very interesting you talk about the conflict between the movement for racial equality and the movement for womens suffrage. 1919 was a very interesting year for lots of reasons but obviously the year after the end of world war i. Which was the war fought to make the world safe for democracy. After that war, which you have many blacks involved in, there was this sense that swept across much of black america, maybe this is the time for us to advocate for our own rights. Maybe its time for us to start getting equality. Those riots that appeared in 1919, many were led by soldiers. Those riots were a direct result of that, it was an attempt to tell america, this is not the time for equality, this is not the time for you guys to get a vote. You had all kinds of reasons for these riots. Basically if you look into the facts came about because there had been a freeze on payments to various things during the war. And black sharecroppers wanted to get a fair amount of money for their cotton crops. They decided to unionize. That constitute the black uprising. So one after another. There were these trumped up things. I find it interesting that kimberly is talking about the friction between them. It also happened during the abolitionist era but there was this long friction between these equality movements. Thats one of the things i enjoy about both books is that they are sophisticated enough to even though you are highlighting certain aspects, to show whats going on show that not only one has people drive history but several voices and several of these forces going on. I want to open the floor for some questions from the audience, which im im starting to be them and they are really good. The first one is for you, ellis. I have noticed a number of times over the past four years that the aclu has stepped up a ato generally hear the results of these aclu actions, do you have examples of cases the aclu won. Ellis they have won several, probably the one thats most of the news has to do with the children in cages litigation. They stop the United States government from abthey force the United States government in several cases to start trying to reunite some of these children. That fight is still going on. We have over 500 children the administration forced them to first attempt to try to reunite these children then finally as recently as a few weeks ago they came in court and said, we dont really know where the kids are. The aclu and some other organizations have taken it upon themselves to deal with that. The harassment in seattle of the federal troops went in to harass various people who were protesting, the aclu intervenes there successfully. Early on in the administration the muslim band and the aclu ultimately lost that case but the aclu won many of the earlier cases before it got to the Supreme Court. That prevented the administration from the earliest versions of the muslim ban and ultimately came up with a version that passed the court. That could go on but there have been many cases where the aclu prevails and there have been many cases where it delayed things that ultimately went through anyway and there are many cases that are still pending in one way or another. One of the things i think you did very well in the book is to show how the power of ab extends beyond the courtroom. That theres a lot of instances where the aclu lost just the fact the case was brought into light created change. Ellis the aclu lost a lot of cases, some of its most famous cases. Probably the most famous case that it lost was going back to 1925 which was the evolution case, the case of where there had been a law passed, which made it illegal to teach about evolution and there was a big trial, it was a first trial but got National Publicity in the way that it did and Clarence Darrow was the most distinguished criminal defense attorney of the era, it was a huge celebrity case, much more of a celebrity case than the o. J. Simpson case. It was a huge case that people were packed into see this. It all revolved around this young 25yearold teacher who had decided to teach evolution even though it was barred. They lost the case and that law took roughly 40 years to be officially overturned. Even in losing it they raised the issue in such a way and raise their profile in such a way that they became known for this, a series of cases having to do with speech beginning going back all the way to a case, the most famous one is probably the case of 1925 case abtwo guys who essentially had published this manifesto, which was sort of a socialist manifesto and they got arrested, they got convicted of violating a state law against speech. A couple of things worth noting about that case, they lost the case before the Supreme Court. Before that case it had not been established as a First Amendment applied to the states this was state law, the state could bar speech however they wanted, in fact, before these abolition of slavery, it was illegal to circulate abolitionist literature in the south. These were state laws. Even in deciding that if the defendants were guilty the Supreme Court said, wait a minute, the First Amendment ought to apply to the states. And they made the decision it was a complex legal reason having to do with the incorporation but they made the decision that all the sudden the First Amendment applied to the states. You had what was a losing case that resulted in huge impact on society and was really a victory for free speech in that circumstance but there were lots of cases like that. All the early freespeech cases, pretty much all of them they lost. But they raise the issue and ultimately gave the punitives we have now, which people think has been in place forever because of the bill of rights was ratified in 1791 and people think weve had free speech since 1791, not true. Weve only had it since the early part of the 20th century. One of the points you make of the book that the next question is also for ellis, member of the audience just asked him can we keep democracy . And it goes to a quote i have on page 428. You have your last chapter is unforgettable. You close this very strong statements. One of the quotes that hit me was toward the end of the page, neither the nations founders a aever envisioned anything resulting like the situation we have today in which made a fact being more credible than the truth. In which its all but impossible to avert the evil by the process of limitation faucets and fallacies and breaks on society. Ellis i think thats a question. [multiple speakers] thats a question of the era. Thats the question of this moment. Kimberly mentioned she has an oped today in washington post, i have one today in usa today. He looks at the question of of our democracy and where we are. Part of what i say we seem to be on our way to decide who the president is. The four years have actually rebuilt how fragile our democracy is and in many ways, not just because we have an outvoted system Electoral College, and i will just pause to say that before this century, it only happened twice before in history, 1888 and 1876 that you have a person who had lost the popular vote get installs in the white house because of the Electoral College. Thats already happened twice and it looked like it might happen again. Thats a problem and i wont go into the complexities of how to solve it but its a problem not only just because of the Electoral College but also because of whats called winner take all, its a structural problem in our democracy that needs to be fixed. We have all these conservative judges. Because of decisions made back in 1787, you have states that are tiny that have the same power and states that are large, the effect of that is that you have politicians who represent less than a sixth of the population, controlling who sits on our courts, that system may have made sense back in the 1800s, or the late 1700s when virginia was a larger state, if you exclude enslaved people was only seven times larger than delaware, it makes no sense at all now when you have texas which is almost 70 times larger than wyoming. When you add on top of that a politics of misinformation and a line and a government and a politics where big money decides what happens more than anything else, its really a question as to the health of this democracy and how we are going to whether this, and i think its an open question. Thank you ellis. Kimberly, modern american leaders, what can they learn from seeing the efforts of helen hamilton gardner mackey. Kimberly in some ways my answer is similar to elliss because i took a big take away from the Suffrage Movement and especially the activism of helen hamilton gardner, what made her and her colleagues both of the national abso effective is that members of congress would meet with them, members of congress felt like they were accountable to their constituents, you can go to dc an essay, and one of your constituents in texas, can i meet with you senator cornyn. I could go say, hey senator portman im here and im your constituents but now senator portman doesnt care what i say, why would he have to . In session of abmy representative doesnt have to care what i think because hes not accountable to me. Hes gerrymandering, the erosion of campaign laws, so in some ways the lesson of the suffragist what ellis was saying the fundamental institutions of our democracy are broken and we need to think about universal voting rights, think about access to the poles. So that the types of activism suffer us to engage and could be effective once again. We are at our limit, i want to invite everybody, i want to thank everybody in the audience, i want to thank kimberly and ellis were there time and i want to strongly recommend please if you have not, go read free thinker , go read democracy, if we can keep it. You will be story, you will get a lot of context and a lot of insights of what it took to build the system we have now and maybe might even give you clues into how can we tackle the big obstacles and challenges we have next. Thank you very much everybody. I hope for the audience i hope you jump to other sessions, theres a lot of introductions, kimberly and ellis, thank you for your time. Kimberly thanks for this great opportunity. Ellis thank you. Our coverage of the virtual texas book festival continue