Transcripts For CSPAN2 Lucinda 20240704

Cspan is your unfiltered view of government funded by these Television Companies and more including spark life. At spark life, its our home and we are facing our greatest challenges. Working roundtheclock connected such a little easier to do yours. Spark life support cspan as a Public Service along with these other Television Providers giving a front row seat to democracy. Today we have two us. Aordinary people with they joined together right a book called suffragist playbook. You can take a look here. You will learn about this book. And the suffragists were the first to do a parade down pennsylvania avenue, the first to picket the white house, and that we see that as commonplace here so let me tell youac about these two women appear lucinda robb once the project director for others before us, women and democracy, 1789making 20 at the center for legislative archives at this project we discovered thousands of overlooked original documents, and really she helped to organize the National Archivesna celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 19th amendment in 1995. She lives in virginia with her husband, three children, one small dog and more than 500 pez dispensers which you will see. Article author Rebecca Boggs roberts has also a varied background picture is been many things, a journalist, producer, tour guide, a forensic entomologist, political consultant, a jazzon singer anda radio talkshow host. Currently she is the curator of programming for planet world, a new museum and historic Franklin School in downtown washington. Roberts lives here in washington, d. C. With her husband, her three thg fat dog. These two women have been friends since childhood, and took the risk to come together and write a book. And so they are going to talk us through how the Suffrage Movement drove institutional change and what can we learn from that. So take it away rebecca and lucinda. All right. So thank you so much for s havig us here today. Y this year is 100 anniversary of the 19th amendment which of course granted women the vote or ever being a technical removed gender as an obstacle to voting. And with all thats going on in 2020 i think its probably never been a p better time to look bak at the Suffrage Movement and see what other lessons that can teach us today. First of all i want to get out that it was a very long movement, over 70 years, and it went went on for three generations. The first generation of suffragists lived a long time there in fact, many other leaders lived well into the 80s but at one point i was reading Sojourner Truth Elizabeth Cady stanton and it aspect ofse them live to see the 19th amendment passed. S offer any activist who think the changes happening fast enough, and lets be honest thats probably all us on to others right there thats an important lesson for the Suffrage Movement. You would have to be inen it for the long haul and never give up. But on the Positive Side it was the largest expansion of political power in u. S. History and it happened without war or violence for or social peoph we think is a good thing. Thats why you should study it. The suffragists trusted and thee rights given to them by the constitution and they figured out how to win by working within the system. For change they managed o create was permanent and was enduring and best of all they left us the playbook on how to drive institutional change. So since we can cover everything today what we want to do is highlight some of our very favorite suffrage topics, some of them special the ones rebecca will talk about our once they invented. But right now i want to talk about one of the most basic fundamental tactics that you need if you want to create change, and that is telling a story. No big movement can get anywhere without telling a story. Just to be specific of a story is as narrative that you remember. They can be as ancient as the book of exodus or can be as modern as an eight minute video. But however you tell it, stories are ways to ignite change. Lucy stone was one of the first and the successful public speakers for womens rights and should go on to become one of the founding mothers of the Suffrage Movement but lucy still begin a career as an abolitionist. This is true of a lot of talented actors to the particular training in one cause and this gives you the confidence and skills to advocate for other causes you care about their back in the 19th century going to your speas what people did for entertainment are the way that today at least before the pandemic you would go to a movie or to a sporting event or it can be pretty dangerous especially for abolitionists because rowdy mobs would show up with clubs and every once in a while they would burn a building down. But in 1847 driven by her conscious lucy stone started giving speeches against slavery and very quickly she became a huge sensation. And this is hard for us to understand but it was incredibly controversial for women to speak in public and they were routinely denounced from the pulpit. In fact, not only back to a women not supposed toli speak to an audience, it wasnt considered proper for them to make any noise at all. They werent even supposed to collector so 50n years later after lucy stone started speaking career you still find references to fact that when women go too speech and the like what it is they will waive their handkerchiefs. So women were not supposed to speak at all. Now, at first lucy would draw crowds just because the novelty of hearing one speaker people treated like a circus act but it turned out she was really, really good at it. Act but shes really good at it, how mesmerizing and impressive she was and she had crowds of thousands of people showing up to listen. Men came to mock her came out convinced she was on to something. From the beginning lucy would tell stories to slave women and then would add stories about the injustices women faced in general and was committed to both causes and began splitting her schedule talking about ending slavery on the weekends and womens rights on the weekdays. One reason i like what she says, she took an insult and made it a rallying cry. At Womens Rights Convention someone said she was a disappointed woman. Right then she went on to give an impromptu speech where she said yes, she was a disappointed woman great disappointed in education were almost no colleges would admit women in the professions where the only option was to be a seamstress and even their would make a fraction of what men made even though the baker charge for the same amount for bread. Women were told they were going to hell, she was disappointed in marriage because instead of marrying for love, women were often forced to marry for money. This would go on to be one of her most successful speeches that she would use again and again. The Nineteenth Century equivalent of going viral. There were phrases like nasty woman but far from the only way they were influenced. That is where i will pick it up. It is amazing there were so many activists. And sometimes they do it without knowing it. It is everywhere and very obvious examples, the way the womens march of 1913, the we had matching hats, very specifically in the Suffrage Movement but so many other places where they use tactics they invented or perfected and we tend to associate those with the 20thcentury part of the movement and that is absolutely true, but Susan B Anthony, in the Nineteenth Century she was pushing the envelope. It was pretty transgressive to be speaking in public, the way she embraced these tactics is continues to be part of the legacy. She was very recognizable. And the scarf was in this caricature. And and in the wake of the civil war, as lucinda mentioned so many of them were abolitionists when the fifteenth amendment and franchised black men and no women, there were suffragists like lucy stone and Frederick Douglass who said we will take the fifteenth amendment as written and fight for women next and people like Susan B Anthony who said we cant afford the fifteenth amendment if it in franchises black men and no women and a split with each other informed competing organizations and to give a sense of the radical moderate continuum here, the stone blackwell faction published a newsletter called the womens journal and proceeded statebystate for a slow and steady strategy to get suffrage past and anthony and stanton with the National Women suffer just association, their publication was called the revolution and they went straight for a federal amendment, and with strategic differences. And with federal overreach. Anthony and stanton not so much. Susan b anthony voted in 1872, gets turned away at the polls, she was able to cast her ballot, then what do you do, didnt work out the way you expected to and you see this all the time with contemporary activists, how do you turn and even to your advantage if it didnt go the way you planned . As it happened she was arrested a couple days later but the men who came to arrest her wanted her to quietly report to the courthouse and she wanted no part of that, she felt held out her wrists, she wanted the visual of a proper button double lady being led away by sheriffs, they did make her come with him and she insisted on that. So many instances of men underestimating this thought she would be silent, and so Susan B Anthony was the pioneer turning a story around for herself, milking the press for her own gain and that tactic, doing something attention grabbing and milking that attention no matter whether it is positive or negative, something you continue to see in the movement and other movements now and when black lives matter activists in Lafayette Square in front of the white house and the square was cleared so the president could go stand by st. Johns church and there were weeks of reporting about that. Who ordered this square to be cleared. Law enforcement was there, what tactics did they use, this massive Washington Post video investigation zoomed in on the emblems on different Law Enforcement officers to figure out what happened that night and curfew expired and the protesters just went home it wouldnt have been a story and it was the protesters who continued to keep this in the news even though the protests had not gone the way they anticipated. There are 19thcentury roots to this tactical make sure you make the press work for you, make sure you craft an image that works for you. This is something we think of as an artifact of the instagram age but suffragists were really good it paying attention to how things look and making sure they looked the way you wanted them to. Women in wyoming voting, wyoming was the first state where women i got that they were given the right to vote, they were never given anything, they fought like hell for it, they were american citizens, men in charge finally recognized the fact so wyoming was the first and the fact that these are nicely dressed polite ladies with a picnic basket and it feels very safe that imagery was really important because the antiplaps are trying to define the image of suffragists too, 1 million cartoons like this where there some hapless man covered in babies and dirty dishes while his carefree wife strides out of the house leaving him to fend for himself while she goes out to vote. This is an antisuffrage cartoon it is considered terrible, what is she doing leaving them with those babies, if you dont craft your image yourself someones going to do it for you and that is an important lesson for an activist. This whole notion of paying attention to how things look, we associate with alice paul. Alice paul was a reluctant suffragist in some ways, she grew up in new jersey, she was a quaker, she had learned the values in a general way but wasnt involved in the american Suffrage Movement largely because after the split over the fifteenth amendment, the movement languished, lost followers, lost momentum, not many states had been added to the role and even though the two factions did come back together in the 1890s a lot of time was lost, when they came back together they agreed to follow that statebystate strategy and anthony and stanton and stone live to a ripe old age but by the turnofthecentury they had all died so this movement was in trouble and alice paul wasnt interested until she went to england and she went to england for grad school and was radicalized. England did also have a slow and Steady Movement but the pankhurst movement was really militant, the faction of the American Movement alice paul would found, the National Womens parties called militant. They had nothing on the pinkers. They were intentionally throwing bricks through windows and slapping policeman in the face. I point they tried to set the prime ministers house on fire. They were not playing around so this sort of shows you the difference, this is the headline from a london newspaper, trouble expected in london tonight, suffragist determined to force their way into parliament after dark, the women will certainly break into the house, it was simply to be expected. This document on the other side i just love is an ad, suffrage it may break windows which if you got to bring to the window James Caldwell suffragists and suffragettes, the word is suffragist, the British Press made fun of the british activists by calling them suffragettes. It was meant to be patronizing, cute little suffragettes and just like lucy stone was a disappointed woman the british activists took the name and wore it with pride and coopted its power so most properly the word is suffragist. The project refers to the bridge movement, specifically the militant wing of the british movement. Alice paul take these tactics and when she comes back to america in 1910 she wents the American Movement to use some of the men pitches a parade down pennsylvania avenue. There have been celebratory parades, using pictures of the army of the potomac but the idea of a march on washington that was the suffragists idea. It is so common that we think of it as a traffic headache but it had never been done before, the idea of a political march through the corridors of federal washington from the legislative branch to the executive branch. That was alice pauls idea. In the 1913 parade which i will talk about at great length if given half an opportunity so i will restrain myself because we have a lot to cover today, did not go at all as planned. An event planned to the last minute but this massive crowd blocked pennsylvania avenue soap for secretary of on this image on thirteenth street you can see the capitol in the background, the large building on the right, now the trump hotel. Pennsylvania avenue is really broad street with wide sidewalks, there is no daylight between these two men. They were there for the Woodrow Wilson inauguration and they behave very badly, blocked the street, spit on the women, called them names, tripped them, the police did nothing to get the crowd back and in some cases the police joined in the namecalling and the sitting but again how familiar is this image now, right . This is the march for our lives in the wake of the marjorie stuntman douglas shootings, now this is a friendly crowd but this is the same picture 100 years later. Once you start seeing these parallels to tactics suffragists invented you cant and see them. And , picketing the white house. No one had ever done this before in 1917. This was the National Womens party idea so not only is picketing the white house now incredibly common, this is an image from this summer when there were so many black lives better protesters that they started adding this is a 1970 equivalent of a tweet. Sure it reaches the people standing in front of the white house on Lafayette Square but reaches many more people in the picture in the newspaper. Thats why that banner isnt really easy to read dark against white background all about how its going to reproduce in the newspaper. And, in fact, later in 1917 as world war i of the u. S. Became involved in world war i, the National Womens party got much more provocative in their messages. So they went in with this Kaiser Wilson banner which is have you forgotten your sympathy with the poor germans because there were not self governed question 20 million american women are not self govern. Take the beam out of your own eye. Its potentially treasonous in the eyes of some periods of directly criticizing the president calling him kaiser while we are at war with germany. This is a a tacticc that activis use constantly here the outrageous come know youre going to lose some followers because of it but the attention youre going to get might be worth it. Once you start singing these tactics, you really do see them everywhere pickets really kind of timeless. News can only you got to actually havee some effort towards the long institutional change as well. For that i go back to lucinda. Every Movement Needs radicals because what they do is they move the goalpost but you also have your moderates because they help you move the ball. A successful tactic of the Suffrage Movement is one that almost as much attention that probably should. And that is important as engaging a wider audience. Whenever you do that specifically linking your caused popular goals, and theres probably nobody who is better at doing this than Frances Willard. So today almost no one has heard of Frances Willard but back in the late 1800s she was arguably the second most widely known and admired woman in the entire world after queen victoria. For 20 years she was a leader of the union, the largest and most influential womens group probably at the entire 19th century. It wasnt just that she was an activist. She was a fullfledged celebrity of her t time. When i try to get a people of six or to imagine a cross between oprah and dolly parton, thats a bit she was. She was the kind of person so big she could write books on virtually everything and would be successful. She did right of other books including one for h girls titled how to win and another how to ride a bicycle. She was so popular when she d unexpectedly in 1898, tens of thousands came by her coffin to pay their respect. We talk a lot about statutes today but in 1905 she became the first woman to get a statue in statuary hall at the puppercaseletter she would not be joined by another woman for 50 years. All that is to say she was a really big deal. These days and i have to admit i like that, people kind of rolled her eyes weth hear about the Temperance Movement to abolish our culture if you know what temperance is which is bulging out pulpit back in 19 century drinking was a real Public Health problem. Particularly so for women who are especially vulnerable but the thing just remember for many women if you were married you didnt underwrite to your own way just her to her husband could legally beat you there it was that hard to get a divorce and if he did it was hard to make a living. So i call was an issue a lot of women cared about. More than that becauseur it was seen as a moral issue, its acceptable for women to get involved. Women did in really big numbers. What willard did for suffrage was to bring the movement main street dirt people heard about the idea before thanks to the work of early savages like stanton and anthony and others but by no means it was in one of the top ten or 20 issues people cared about. Willard started to change that. Going back to her letters we know willard was pretty much team suffered from the beginning but she was extremely careful in how she sells her to our members. Most suffragist at the time were saying women should have the right to vote because it was there, because its just, morallyut right. Willard makes a completely different argument. Willards brand was being a nice respectable methodist that everybody liked. And she used this image to her advantage. She talked about how mothers need to devote for Public Policies that would be good for the family. She called it Home Protection ballot. This was brilliant marketing pitch is able to get a huge following of mostly white evangelical christians to approve. But was still pretty much a radical idea. This is a master class in engaging a wider audience and is what linking acosta particles is all about. In terms of modernday activists revising the light of the gayRights Movement when the champion Marriage Equality by focusing on something that people approved of, and changed a lot of the debate. Under willards leadership the womens christian temperance members got active. Willard called it her do everything policy. Along with temperance suffrage, labor reform, education reform and even got involved in social purity. This sounds like it may sound like some sort of victorian antisex initiative, and honesty there is a Little Something to that, long before the need to movement this is an effort to hold not just women but men, to come accountable for the actions. Ac in case you think it was important when the biggest successes that they had was raising the age of consent for girls. Because back at that time it was ten, 212 for most girls except for delaware where it was seven. Thats kind of t shocking to us. Willard is by no means perfect and if anybody has ever heard of or to the user is because of the controversy of crusading journalist ida b. Wells and becca will talk about her if you minister wells accuses the union correctly as it turns out using language that demonizes black men and immigrants and people of color in general. In fact, pretty much anyone who was in the mean mainstream dominant group that you get a sense of this and , popular o suffrage print title american woman, the Frances Willard winds up being featured in. This was used to get people upset at the fact women at the same political right as it is, claimant of the same ended americans which is basically no rights. Rights. Wells eventually forces willard to make a statement against lynching. This is something that is interesting when we look at this. Originally the Womens Christian Temperance Union was one of the few National Womens organizations who was integrated, when black women came to the convention black and white women were seated together over the vociferous objections of southern white women and for a time black women like Francis Watkins harper did have leadership roles in the Womens Christian Temperance Union. The racism is insidious and i compare it to a virus you may have heard of but cant always see and sometimes you have people without obvious symptoms who wind up being superspreaders, that is what happened with willard. Willard, her whole brand was nice, almost certainly never thought of herself as racist but the Womens Christian Temperance Union goes into full gear, willard spent a lot of time going down into the south to meet with white women and they are all just so lovely and so nice introduce such a gracious experience and gradually in the course of time willard and the other whites of adjusts start making works with arguments about educated suffrage which becomes code for white suffrage and how unfair it is that black men can vote and white women couldnt so willards legacy is complicated and that is something i will let rebecca talk about, that you have to be aware of, a lot of the racism in the Suffrage Movement. We take that seriously. It is tempting when you write womens history to elevate these women to saintlike status to justify their inclusion in the canon because theyve been excluded for so long but that is bad history and it is boring history but we felt strongly that not only did we want an accurate view of this movement and the women involved but that if the premise of our book is that you should take lessons from this movement to change the world now then sometimes you need to know what not to do and if you want to avoid making the same mistakes you need to know what those mistakes werent too often the mistakes of the Suffrage Movement were racist. There were overtly racist themes, statebystate strategies for the movement pursued in the 1890s, sometimes that meant activists going into Southern States and say women suffrage will ensure White Supremacy, making an overt argument that the white female vote would overwhelm votes from black voters and it was a way of ensuring White Supremacy and they made that argument. It never worked. Every place white suffragists made that argument the legislatures were systematically disenfranchising black men with jim crow laws and that was working for them and they were not interesting to the black voter. White suffer just made that argument then there were less over, less openly racist limits of the movement in these come up again and again and i think as incentives is the insidious ones are the harder ones to combat. Its easy to say im not like kate gordon, im not saying womens suffrage equals White Supremacy but lets learn from other examples too. This is a picture of the founding members, sorority founded at howard and they were founded in january of 1913 because these women felt the dominant authorities on campus were too social and they wanted to be more political and they wanted their first act to be to march in the 1930 suffrage parade and alice paul punted. He didnt even answer their letter at first, she just hemmed and hot and that wasnt like her at all, she was super organized, answered everything really quickly. And also wanted to participate, the telegrams back and forth between a. K. A. And Alice Pollard are in the library of congress and she was really nervous that integrated parade was going to alienate too many white women and she was much more interested in keeping the confidence of white suffragists than including black suffragists and she didnt know what to do and ultimately the National Said to her you cannot exclude marchers, youve got to include anybody who wants to be part of this and so she suggested the deltas march at the back in segregated fashion. It hurts you to hear that. You want her to do better. I am impressed with alice paul. I want her to recognize that when shes standing up against sexism she should stand against racism too, but it doesnt do anybody any good to pretend she was better on these issues and she was. I must say contemporary members of delta who are many and fierce say they marched wherever they want to. Photos dont survive because the white photographers werent pictures of the black sorority so these things get reinforced, you look for proof and there isnt proof because nobody was capturing the image of black marchers at the time because thats not the image they wanted to put forward. We know ida b wells who was a crusading journalist in chicago particularly antilynching wanted to march with the illinois delegation and when it was suggested that black marchers segregate themselves at the back of the parade ida b wells wanted no part of that. She stood in the crowd and jumped in to the parade as the illinois delegation went by. A terrible reproduction of a newspaper image but that is ida b right in the middle of the delegation. It was an interesting case study because she saw so many commonalities between the Suffrage Movement and the africanamerican Rights Movement that was nascent in the early part of the Twentieth Century and like generations of activists before her, it can be really useful to find allies in other causes and to learn chops from other causes, they learned about organizing and fundraising and speaking from the temperance and Abolition Movement but she was so uninvited by the white suffragists, ida b wells decided specifically africanamerican Suffrage Club in chicago working with black activists to pursue separatists on the other goals. The advisors who helped to create it, Richard Carol was, she spoke 4 or 5 languages, she passed a lot of the status symbols, often the only black woman invited to different suffrage meeting that is a trojan horse to wear beautiful clothes and speak the languages and get in the door and get in and say you have to pay attention, they are different and specific so she chose to work within the White Organization to get her message across to the women. Either of those tactics is acceptable and we see contemporary activists using each of them in turn. The big lesson here is you dont always have to do as you are told, it is time to leave and form your own group, sometimes it is time to march where you want regardless of what the people in charge say and that is an enduring lesson we want contemporary activists to take which i will say in 2013 on the centennial of the suffrage parade, this is a picture of that celebration, the deltas leading the parade, this is enough, this is lovely, a beautiful image, im delighted the deltas are out in force but its not enough to right the wrongs of history, you have to not make them again and thats why we feel strongly about including those lessons in the book. Another tactic, rebecca referenced it, the importance of recruiting allies, but not just any allies, you need the ally, you need to recruit the allies you need to achieve your goal. Once the separatists start coalescing behind a constitutional amendment the thing to remember about constitutional amendments is there like the legislative equivalent of they are unbelievably hard to pass. There is a reason why this only 27 of them. In the case of suffrage, the allies women need a men, they need mostly white men. The only way the nineteenth amendment was able to pass was with the vote of men. Remember you have to get 2 thirds of each chamber of congress to vote for an amendment to pass. In 1918 when it passed the house of representatives the first time, Jeannette Rankin of montana, the first woman to serve in congress to introduce the amendment was able to vote for it and it was an incredibly dramatic vote. This is where having those allies really came in. You have allies from the beginning, Frederick Douglass is the one who stood up in seneca calls when it look like Elizabeth Cady stantons revolution for women for vote wasnt going to pass and his words were the ones that convinced the rest of the people that they should go ahead and vote for it and it passed the day and thats why we talk about that being the beginning of the savage Movement Thanks to that first hour, Frederick Douglass and you find men throughout the entire course but especially at the end. Once you have the vote in congress it comes down to the wire. There were four pronged suffrage congressman he stayed there in great pain because he wanted to encourage essential making other people feel guilty about getting them to vote yes your the one that always gets to me is Frederick Hicks of new york. He came down from the deathbed of his wife there was an artist suffragist. He cast his vote and turn right around and go back home to plan her funeral. The thing is that time in 1980 it only passed by one vote so they needed every single one of those male allies peer when it did finally pass the women are watching from the coudersport into the hallways singing all 100 hymns, praise be, praise god, blessings. With all of that excitement that it failed in the senate. So i told you it was hard. Wilson who wasnt really very much in favor but he was determined to get the whole thing over with, whenh hit and call a special session of the next congress and by june 1919 both chambers had finally passed it. Unfortunately jeanette didnt get to vote on this time having left office. It goes on to the states that the suffragist had to get threefourths of the states ratify which of 1919 met 36 states. This is where the amazing ground game the National American womens Suffrage Association and this is the moderate wing, moderate, become so important. And white teachers hold on both radicals and moderates working if they dont work together. Moderate suffragist have these long relationship with legislators in the states and are able to lobby the for suffrage some of the legislators who were not happy with some of the things of that women werg were picketing out in front of the white house and getting a lot of attention they could see this woman seems to be, i can work with her. At first everything is going on swimmingly. States were literally racing each other to see who could get their application first. For the record the wisconsin. And every time a new state claimant alice paul and so another star on a special fight she created. So the state ratification to coming along and yet to pass in both chambers in each state legislature. After afi while they start to trickle down and many of the Southern States immediately reject this. For the record my home state of virginia dustin passed in 19th amendment until 1952. The momentum starts to dry up and if youre thinking for historical examples you dont have to go very far to think about the era. As a starter if you and your options it a becomes clear to hm as he is going to break state on this. She had stand in stande basically sets up shop working the phones. Here she is in a Photo Holding something my children would never ever recognize it by the way i have to thank rebecca because shes one doing all the photos and making this happen. Things down there are absolutely crazy. If you want to read more about it, elaine wrote a great book called womens hour and its a lot of fun. Down in nashville they call it the war of the roses. If youre a pro suffrage you wear a yellow roaster if you and i suffrage you are a red rose. And i suffrage is making a full court press to stop the 19th amendment. There are a two notable forces n tennessee working. Wine is not surprising considering all of the work of the womens Christians Union to get women to vote and that is the liquor lobby. The stories they tell of the state legislatures who are stumbling drunkenly through the hallways and both sides accuse each other of starting rumors, which, in fact, they are both doing. Ac but the other big group that is supposed to suffrage International Association opposed to women suffrage peer which to my great surprise was largely run by women despite the fact this is sort of a famous photo most of the people in the third army in. The National Association opposed to woman suffrage is mostly run by women and these are well organized politically savvy determined women. And again they may remind you a littlepo bit of Phyllis Schlafly and her work in the antiera group. Back in that day there were some women who didnt think women should have anything to do at all with politics because it was so dirty and they felt their husbands and brothers in signs when all vote in the best interest. Right. But there were others who were reformers themselves and they had a different tactic that they argued it women could vote they could, in fact, be nonpartisan, as if the man would be more likely to listen to advice to his peers an excerpt from a petition withoutse an archives. Its filled with nearly 30 women all listed so when so. It says this amendment and kind of work we merely opened a munition to light Suffrage Campaign a in 48 states to secue its ratification it would give suffragists and socialistsfr the opportunity to anoint and pastor every legislator in the United States until a majority of the men and 36 legislatures surrendered their judgment and principles to the political threats and cajolery that would mean no s legislature in the United States could meet without being surrounded by suffrage tickets but finally, the light, it would be an official endorsement of naji as a national policy. Now you can laugh when you read it or i try sometimes kind of want to cry but the really were a very well organized. The Tennessee State senate votes to ratify after some exceptionally intense lobby and it all comes down to the house. The antisuffragist think their votes to end it all when a young 24 year old state legislator cast his vote. Hes wearing a red rose on his lapel so we make a lastminute change where he follows for suffrage tennessee becomes the final state to ratify and pushes it over the line. Afterwards he gives of the reason for changing his mind but the only one anyone paid attention to is this. He saysl he wrote doctor vote r because his mother wrote a letter telling him just before the vote to cast his vote for suffrage and that every good boy knows its best to follow the advice of his mother. I tried to tell my children this all the timel so his mom was ae to recruit the allies suffragist needed and thats how we became part of the constitution. Its such a dramatic story, the story of suffrage, that we know that there are so many great books and resources about it and the scholarship that is, about the centennial has been terrific to watch and learn from here we h purposely chose to mae our book a playbook that there were specific lessons you could take from this movement in order to change the world yourself. Because not only is a Movement Worth learning about just as an educated american, its because a one. There were successful. And so weon hope weve given yoa couple of those lessons, secrets, tactics throughoutos ts talk. And we thank you so much for having us and we would be happy to take your questions. You guys are phenomenal peer thank you so much for telling the story with such liveliness and energy. A couple people have asked yes, this is being recorded and just will be available on the capital historical website in a couple of days. Everybody who is registered will get a note telling them when it is ready and on the website. You also get information about getting the book, the suffragist playbook, which lucinda and rebecca have an arrangement with the National Archives because they work so hard with them that their gift shop promotes the book and so we will have that link because the Society Works with the National Archives under regular basis. Trying to pull the questions francesns willard, the first won to have a statue 50s before any other woman, let the Womens Christian Temperance Union, something of course i grew up with because my greatgrandmother was active member of the womens christian Temperance Movement, grew up in a house on the underground railroad and sewed we deal as with stories when she was of course very old when i got to know about she tells us stories. You talken into lessons of crafting an image and being outrageous and working inside and outside, recognizing the flaws and building allies. Would you talk about the relationship with Frances Willard as both an experience of building an ally but also as an experience of really as rebecca talked about, how did that deal with some of the racism issues that were very much present, and what has that become lessons for us today . What to meso is fascinating about Frances Willard is both how effective she was in changing the dynamic of what was happening at the time. And look at that and i think thats something we really can learn from now, but how she was so blind mistake, again, i think a lot of times we look back at the things people do in the past and are sorted one of two responses. One of them is to say well, you know, you need to understand it in thehe context of the time. And sometimes it is helpful to understand context but that wasnt an excuse to buy thin fares now today were much more likely to say we want to contribute mh ebling knows how wrong it is your thats important as well. What that does is sort of lets us off the hook. As i think what becca was saying we cant justbu feel like they didnt know any better but we should assume we will do so much better ourselves peer its useful to look at what happened so we can see where might we potentially be going astray if it happened step one of the things that happensns with the Womens Christian Temperance Union is againng originally it s integrated and they did do things that were very progressive torts time, but as they circuiting more and more focus on the constitutional amendment and they want to spend more efforts realized they have to have changed but the effort to go and keep themselves, make themselves attracted to the women in Southern States and i should say the white women in Southern States, and their whie male legislators, that theyre trying to influence, they do wind up throwing black women under the bus. Thatat is something, the only reason why ida b. Wells, she was basically do what today we would call datadriven journalism over 100 years ago for this reason like sheep recently was possible to abort the Pulitzer Prize because shes putting up all this information showing really dumb impact thatly the language that the group like that were using, howey dangerous that was for it was the Willie Horton ad of that day and how they changed the views of things. And i think when she condemns and calls at willard, this is something that happens in europe. That often gets lost in the debate if a lot of this is happening over in europe and Frances Willard who herself is traveling and the speaking tours enters about what europeans are thinking, and thats part of what influences her. But it doesnt wind up being as an important issue as it needs to white suffragists in the u. S. Looking to see, i do you have te groups influencing integrating, sort of ennui today paying attention to what to potentially cover all parts are we paying attention . Dont be so concerned with getting your goal that you lose sight ofbe whats right and whas moral. Thats i think a difficult needle to thread because you do have to legitimately figure out how do you make compromises, its knowing when those compromises are wrong and that sometimes is a tough thing to do. I hope they give a little bit of an answer. So let me just tell you we have a couple of quick sort of lets do lightning rod questions. One isk of course with such a great audience that jan wrote me and said you said you did not say [inaudible] in 2001 part so let us understand that rebecca not just your mother but your grandmother won the award. So i stand corrected and updated, thank you very much, jan. We have a couple people have asked to completely different questions. One is, they know that rebecca your family had a strong engagement with the page program in the house of representatives. And so do you have any thoughts about whether page program will ever comen back . So somebody does say, i think one of you was a page, that is my brother my brother was a page, that a page from california to a dated when there were 16 and got back together in the 20s that they have been married for 23 years and have three spectacular children. So we areed sort of romantic abt the page program in my family. I have no idea whether its going to come back. Theres a real value to it just in the sense that as we keep getting demonized as the slop, those of us who really care about these institutions like to have opportunities to show that they are worthwhile. And thats something the Capitol Historical Society does so well and institutions here is that it gives ordinary americans a chance to realize that we are not scary, morally bankrupt group of people, that theres a real city here with real institutions that make real change. I have no power over the page program but am delighted it delivered by austin system to the counselor there you go. Second question, and we probably need to make this about our last. What are the lessons from suffrage that you would apply to the conversation and the campaign for the equal rights amendment . And do you think that we will see the equal rights amendment become part of the constitution . I dont necessarily want to make a prediction about the success of the era. I would say the biggest lesson is figure out what your opposition is scared of. I think that the first generation of feminists were completely thrown by the opposition of other women. They didnt realize that there were women who felt really threatened by something liket e era and they found a spokesperson in Phyllis Schlafly. As lucinda said, that saying votes for women were morally right was not enough. You cant just say its the right thing to do. That doesnt sway a lot of minds. Youve got to figure out who opposes and why, and craft your message to change their minds but there were people who dont change their minds but there were people in the Suffrage Movement thought women were two for fragile or stupid to handle voter if there are people are just scared or pushed out of their comfort zone or illinformed, figure out what they are scared of and make it better. I noticeably mentioned something about western states, women voted or the real advantages that happens there and relates tont era is that wht was so successful in campaign against era was talking all these things that people thought were going to happen. To some extent a lot of them have come to. When we do serve in the military. Women, if you do have gender neutral bathrooms, things like that. What made the difference in the Suffrage Movement is when women started voting in the west and things did not entirely collapsed, it kind of gave an example that people couldld look at and say gosh, that seems to work. That is incremental change, really does have some value and that is another message the Suffrage Movement that i d was a week and yesterday. Sometimes you are not always going to get big Sweeping Change but if you get those small steps in they really do build up. Its great. I telll you, lucinda, theres oe request or can you turn your camera so we can see your pez dispensers . I will do my best to you will see my very dirty office for this is just a fraction of the pezes that i have. To think about them e cheap and my kids can give it to me and they are fun. I should say and i will end on this note i did this you write people in orange, connecticut, the pez factory so you really ought to have a suffragist pez collection, collector sector i suggested that they do susan b. Anthony, lucy stone, Sojourner Truth and ida b. Wells. I have yet to hear back. I love it. Well, ill tell the audience is think they would listen to several hours but we promise to do this in an hour. We are so grateful that you have given a short time, your talent. It will be, it has been recorded. It will be on the website you will get information so people can tell the fence you come and listen we hope youll join us next week for the freedom of work and the tour of the library of congress. Thank you. Thank you, thank you for being with us. Thank you for joining us. If you are enjoying American History tv and signed up for a newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures in history, the presidency and more. Signed up for the American History tv newsletter today and be sure to watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online at cspan. Org history. A healthy democracy doesnt just look like this. 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