I am honored to moderate the panel of Accomplished Women who play significant roles in the commemoration of the womens Suffrage Centennial in 2020. My name is colleen and i serve as the vice a chair of the Suffrage Centennial commission which was a commission created by congress to help coordinate and organize the activity. Like everyone our commission had to deal do a curve ball due to cuthe pandemic. The commission and the staff had to switch course and adapt many plans, programs and activities. We made a shift in the commissions legacy projects. What, i mean, by legacy projects are historical markers, statutes, monuments or installations that would have permanency beyond 2020. I think the strategic decision is beneficial for the longterm. Some highlights of the commission included providing Additional Support for the turning point suffrage memorial in virginia now completed and located near the site of the former prison. Weveea provided thousands of books about the suffrage to the library that could benefit from frour donation. We created two podcasts of the movement that would last for a considerable period of time. We hope to support the construction of the markers across the country related to the history of williams suffrage womens suffrage and a lobby by myself that commissioned executive director to the president of the United States so that t we could build a monument to be constructed in washington, d. C. Commemorating the suffrage and that was an interesting story maybe we can talk about later. Other initiatives are worth mentioning. A favorite was the project 19 the skydivers that executed several jobs in the centennial year and who will attempt to set a world record of this fall. States held celebrations and commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the amendments passage. The institutions including the library of congress and the smithsonian exhibits to promote concerning the history of womens suffrage. The art was constructed across the United States and over 100 books were published on womens suffrage and voting. In short it was a terrific year from the. Efforts the Commission Level to the states and localities and other organizations that help commemorate the anniversary. Now i would like to turn the conversation to our panelists who are all leaders in various centennial activities. Lets start with the offer of interpreting the legacy of womens suffrage at museums and historic sites. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and why its important to think critically about how we approach the story of womens suffrage at museums and other historical locations . Hwhat did we learn from the centennial and how did that affect the teacher interpretation . Thank you so much and thanks to the National Archive as well for inviting me and the rest of the speakers tonight. I look forward to what will be a wonderful conversation with my colleagues. So the book is interesting it comes out on a september 15th so its not quite out yet. It started as an idea when i was the executive director of the Belmont House museum on capitol hill in washington, d. C. For those i of you that dont kw the museum, it was the fifth and final headquarters for the National Womens party that was a Prominent Organization that worked for suffrage. In 2016 its designated by president obama at the womens Equality National monument and i was that her doctor there from 2008 until 2017. So it was a good nine year span where i was able to learn more about the Suffrage Movement, invite people in the public certainly lots of School Groups came through to talk about suffrage and one of the things i heard most often was how come i never learned this ine the schol and that came from most adults into second as they would look around and see the photos and exhibits of all the suffragists they would say where were the women of color and i can honestly say we were not at that time doing a very good job of sharingg the full story so i think one of the most important pieces that will contribute to the legacy of the centennial is that that is now expected. For people that are interested in history and learning a little bit more about the previous celebrations so the book starts with taking a look back at the 25th anniversary, the 50th anniversary and then the 75th anniversary and i talk about how the changes culturally, politically, socially the changes from those previous decades really impacted the suffrage commemoration at that time so if there was a lot of difference between 1920 and 1945 and again between 1970 and now here we are after 2021 talking about the changes between 1995 which was the 75th and 2020 for the centennial. So its an interesting look back but i advocate for a few things. First to expand the timeline so when we are talking about suffrage in most cases where i would take traditionally organizations and people tend to start with 1848 with the convention and ended 1920 with the ratification of the 19th amendment so i and many other ntpeople advocate for extending that timeline. I started in 1787, talk about the constitution and ran all the way through to 2021 with the election of khamala harris. The full story of this means the many women of color who were involved in the Suffrage Movement. There are too many to mention but the other piece of this is also discussing the bias and the systemic racism that allowed the Suffrage Movement to be a controversial storyline so it s not about, i will clarify what it is not about is saying this person is sad or their actions are bad or this person is good because they never did anything wrong. Its about having conversations and learning more about the context in which these historical actors that we go back and research it really is talking about what was their social culture like and what did they think aboutor and how did they impact the Suffrage Movement . I know some people say its complicated we dont need to get into that and i certainly as the director have heard of that from lots of people, visitors and lots of other people but what ive said as long as humans are complicated, our history is going to be complicated so it doesnt serve an actual purpose to continue saying things like she was just a product of her time and that was common during that era which both are true yet we can dig a little deeper and talk about what were the systems, policies, the communities thatte were in place that did impact the women of color more than the white women who were suffragists. I will leave it at that. I did to say it would be out september 15th and thank you for letting me tell you a little bit about it. Its American Association for state and local history available on most websites as well as amazon. I would like to bring karen into the conversation, a fellow commissioner along with me who served on the commission but is also the executive director of the Harriet Tubman house. Can you talk to us a little bit about how did you think this centennial highlighted previously Untold Stories particularly about women of color . How were different organizations including the commission able to do that and what was done well and what could have been done better . So good to see you again. The last few days i figured out this isnt an easy discussion for me to participate in to be honest. I felt the pandemic curtailed a lot of the things we wanted to do and amplified how complicated the history of the suffrage has beenas and is in this country. But when i think about the commission to commemorate the 100th anniversary i felt your self from the smithsonian did an incredible job keeping the politics out of it and steering the ship for the purpose of havingit a documented case towad what we tried to do and what the facts were. Having said that i felt the commission wasnt nearly as effective as it could have been amplifying the history and how they were in the womens movement. I am the president and ceo of the area tubman home which is the National Historic park and im also a member of delta sigma a sorority that fully participated with the Suffrage Movement and the important parade in 1913. I come at this from living in this space all the time as a leader responsible for carrying fourth. Tubmans legacy and she was about 20 miles from seneca falls in 18491 year after the establishment and she dealt with thee complexity of race and how it impacts all that we do and frankly let me say i felt the commission should have done a much better h job amplifying the historic number of women that we elected to congress and colleen helped me, was it the 2018 . That was a real moment to have 100 plus women in National Elected office, and i dont think, because we stayed away from any kind of political concerns, we didnt amplify that i felt in a way that it encouraged all women at all levels to know that they should fully participate. Then there are so many relationships that are complicated that we need to amplify and we need to really dig into what happened, for instance the relationship between Elizabeth Cady stanton and douglas was complicated and i think again i keep messaging colleen but i said all the work shee did was sort of helping us to deal with that because that really called other people of color which is a negative insult and she called Frederick Douglass was the one go to black that she knew and he told her what was wrong with that but yet he tolerated and called her behaviors and many of the people in my community flat out called her a racist even for all the good work she did and suffered for. They were very good friends in spite of that so i think there were invaluable lessons to learn aboutt that because he was lodgd in her home for a period of time and when she died, he did her eulogy. And that was her choice, so there was an engineering relationship but there was one where she was just tone deaf to the americas original sin of racism and i think that is something that really has to be reckoned with and i would say that i dont think i can participate in the womens groups without really saying that weve got to come to grips with this to be very honest when the monument wasnt sponsored by our commission today but in central park there has been no statute and then there was the determination that there would be. It was originally going to be and then he and a standin. That wasnt inclusive enough so they included sojourner truth. A lot of money had to go into that. Over 1. 5 million to keep up with the upkeep of the statues so they could show to the public she could sit there with Elizabeth Cady stanton and you might want to say thats great now we have women in the renowned central park except for me when i heard that there were no statues of women i said at least thats one thing women got right until i found out they werere going to go ahead with te statues because the land on which central park is built that it used to be the only place that it was legal for people to own property so theres still a lot of concern about that and reparations with of the land being taken away. It was taken away to make way for the design park so i put it to senator mikulski to always encourage the commission to look at the underbelly to know all the stories, the good, the bad and the ugly and yes we should lift up everything that has been done but i truly feel there is so much more work to do in franchising all people you get to the ballot box and know that every vote matters and is so important. The biography of Fannie Lou Hamer talks about the struggle and i recommend that in a foregone there has to be. Sojourner changed her name at the altar of the methodist church. Tubman visited many societies where she had her membership and participated. Frederick douglass gained his credentials. It is not coincidental the people that participated in the movement chose what is known as the Freedom Church to a large social justice agenda soso i thk that there needs to be some concentration on that but more particularly more recently i was at a meeting where most of the delegates to the meeting were women. There were three women vying for office and maybe half a dozen men ando there were two positios available but no women were e elected. There is also the issue of women still not being comfortable voting for other women, and i think that that needs to be more fully explored by those that come next. As for the Harriet Tubman home and at the National Park, we use our naturalization ceremony to amplify womens suffrage and let them know people fought very hard to have the vote and why it was important for them to participate fully. In previous times, the league of women voters used to be there to give out information to help begin the educational process. I know im taking a lot of time but i feel as an africanamerican woman, i am just so not satisfied in what we did to commemorate the first years and i truly hope that we determining what we want the next 100 years to look like to tell the whole story. Last, there was media done on that a year ago today with the former president and all the commissions for their, the proclamation recognizing the hundredth anniversary. But it was hard for me as a woman of color to be there and as a longtime champion of for housing and anything in the Affordable Housing et cetera. There is the dog whistle if people of color move to your suburbs its White America and the things that were said by the highest elected officials it seems to undo a lot of the work that we were trying to do to really forge r understandings between people and then the media was on every network. I heard from people who knew me from prek to solve the image of me standing there. I think that we need to have better control as it relates to how we amplify women in the next hundred years and i will stop there. Thank you for thoseha reflections. I dont know if weve actually had aw chance to talk that day when we were together in the white house and that was an extraordinary media event by the white house to promote a particular message and we were certainly iss a commission Going Forward appropriately to commemorate the centennial, but we found ourselves in the midst of a media event that was not of our own. I dont want to corroborate your account of that day and i certainly recall the discomfort by a number of people including myself in a nonpartisan position to be put in that type of situation. I want to get to rebecca and then of course shannon. It sounds like one of the things that you are very concerned about was there was a discussion of the role of race in the Suffrage Movement but perhaps it wasnt as indepth as it should be in other words we didnt engage with it ator the level in which would have caused an accurate reflection, is that fair to say . It was an uncomfortable time to discuss but for the purposes of education i think we also had to do something. And we thank you for your work in particular for the video of the National Park service that was shared with allid of us. But i felt that as a commission we didnt use a platform to say that we understood that that was a barrier. I represent the legacy and she was a Property Owner and how difficult it was for her to make the decisions to advance the rights for women to get the vote in spite of her being a Property Owner so she thought doing something beyond her own international benefit propelled her to go into those holes and to speak to audiences that included africanamerican men who had their vote taken away as women were being franchised and i think we just did not to the extent thatul we should have and where we are now. More work needs to be done. That is a good transition and then rebecca has written a book and you said to something we could learn from Harriet Tubman and that is what rebecca tried to do. Given what karen said, can you share with us what can people learn fromnd the suffrage movemt and do they have to understand to really take lessons from it . When we set out to write another we wanted it to be useful almost a practical handbook to become an activist and that includes many so not only does whitewashing the history affect the history of it if you are going to turn that corner from history beingea relevant Susan B Anthony was always welcoming to Frederick Douglass or that mary church carol wasnt ignored when she was the only black woman at the conferences, its not understanding what we can learn from w history and i think that there also its interesting to hear karen say maybe we skimmed the surface and there was racism. But they didnt reallyhe engage with of these issues and to me to some degree this is a sort of broad problem within history because for so long history has been told in this hall of fame model that we hear about the great men doing great things and its exclusionary for so many reasons mainly because they have the abilitynl to hold positions that allow them to do great things but also to not have change happen its sold on one human being changes the world and its not the way womens history happens or the way the Suffrage Movement happens. Even if you dont expand it and even if you do 1848, 72 years so even saying ida b wells was there to. Thats all important but its still adding to that instead of understanding that these movements were long and slow and hard and collaborative and had wins and losses along the way and required the creativity of a huge variety of humans including men. And that it is a convenient way to tell stories and highlight the biography and i totally get it but if one of the reasons you need to learn history is to learn from it and to do better and bebe inspired by it you can change the world and i hope every young people knows they can change the world because they absolutely can then you need to learn that flawed humans today before you say you dont have to be a genius. You can be as slow to learn and confused as all the rest of us and still make an enormous difference. So not only is it bad to hold them up and say they are saints but they also kind of leave out anybody that might think i can do that. I want to ask you run the place in savannah, the founder of the girl scouts. What rebecca justro brought , this is a very long history spanning over generations. Vewe know the women both white d black who started the movement did not live to see the passage. It was in the 1960s, women of color. So how do you teach this type of history . How did you engage that type of history with girl scouts and how did you present that complexity to them and how did they respond . Tell us a littlele bit about th. Thank you, call me ananda to the archive for inviting me here and including me to have the conversations. S. It is the home of the founder of the girl scouts. One of the things we teach is about history especially on this site in particular but we do programs on a variety of topics over the country, thousands of programs not just the ones focused on history but for some we produced a suffrage toolkit that so for has reached 50,000 girls but we are pretty excited about and i want to thank the commission on that note because they did donated packages to girls who earned a badge that is exciting. But i think the programming toolkit is so critical because we teach girls to develop confidence in character for the purpose of making the world a betteret place. To develop leaders and we want them to think about how they can be citizens. Founded in 1912 theres been a focus on civic badges teaching them how to contact elected officials and how to be of service to g their neighbors. I think it plays into the legacy the toolkit is getting is particularly. The other thing we talked about a good bit about girls need to see themselves in history. It does that with white women, black women but the chineseamerican women are highlighted to helpe girls in e country think about no matter where you are, you can certainly be the change of the future. We think its important it teaches the tools, run for Office One Day and take advantage of all the opportunities thatat you are given. Something that touches upon all of the discussions and comments and i know its a desire of the commission is to get as much as possible the history of the Suffrage Movement and hopefully and authoritative history to get it into the mainstream so to get it out of not that theres anything wrong with womens history but to make that its shared popularly and that is among adults and kids, students, girl scouts, boy scouts. So how would we rate ourselves how well did we get this into the mainstream and that centennial and what could be done differently to do that . It at this is open to the entire group. s 50 Million Girls killed alum and im not aware of any adult programming weve put off so not only the current girl scouts butut to reach those as well. I feel that we ought to be speaking all the groups may be what is the extent for the next 1000 years and put it together n a way that engages everyone so there is an Important Role they play getting full participation of girls and boys. Theres something for everyone if you want to amplify why these women came together for the vote. T everyone should be able to pull something out of that and say what can i participate in now that will help make a difference. I dont think that weve really done that. Its going to have a Common Thread throughout and the next 100 years and in particular africanamerican women. Where are we now, where do we want to be, how do we learn into the whole notion of suffrage is important because we had the lgbtq and nonbinary communities its how we engage with everybody and we have to grapple with the fact america is changing and how do we make sure its part of the change that and franchises everyone. One of the keys is thinking about it as a social justice streams change history its not about women fighting for women. But they wanted, they affected this massive permanent change to american democracy without resorting to bloodshed. Theyer were really good at what they did starting from a position of absolutely no power. So, whatever it is that is on your agenda you can do a lot worse than learn from the tactics, from their tenacity. Its not just about lets remember women are important in American History. It is this massive social justice history that anyone now with whatever agenda they have will be better at their activism. I would agree and let me say i appreciate your comment and reflections on the centennial year. One of the things i looked back on is the culture and politics and social impact of how communities and cultures change over time and that does set the stage for the next anniversary so i look at it and say i think weve come quite a bit further than we were in 1995 absolutely, but i think 2025 or 2045 will look different than 2020. Hopefully we will be able to make even more progress and i think talking about the 50,000 the toolkit has reached thats unbelievablele because just like rebecca said, your training and educating a whole generation of kids to learn from the history and be excited to see themselves and then take it to the next step which is a girl i would want to say what can i do to impact the history myself so its taking that next step. I think there were a couple of things cosponsored by the commission and of the foundation was involved in that as well but there are i meant to look it up before but theres hundreds and hundreds of markers that have gone across the country with the understanding that these are noting local women for local history so its not just the top players for Susan B Anthony thean names you hear a t about, its the women of color in different socioeconomic communities doing their part and now they are recognized across the country. Its got a wonderful interactive website for anyone who wants to take a look at it but i look at it in to say we are already further than we were in 1995 for that celebration. Now given to the point we have a long way to go and h i think having looked at all the celebrations i think that this one will have a Lasting Legacy and Lasting Impact and im excited to see where the girls take it fromer here. Thats my final question for the panel how you finish that answer which is if we had to assess we would look backwards a little bit for the past year and thats fair and given i think may be a rigorous assessment for the centennial separation but lets look forward lets look into the future and think about that. What activities, what should we continue, what will be the legacy and Lasting Impact and if you have to Say Something to the women that are going to be planning the 125th theres a 150th anniversary or declaration of the 19th amendment. What advice would you give them . I will jump into that one. In addition to all the things we talked about i think making sure that the good, bad and ugly are all included. I think treating the ratification of the amendment is a finished line is a mistake. Its a step in a wrong letter and i think its a mistake both in terms of assuming we are all set women have full citizenship, theres nothing else we need to consider now. But its also a mistake in terms of learning the lessons of the activism because if you tell a contemporary activist that its going to take this long to get things done and you have to have an amendment to do it, that ignores all the steps along the way so all the things that happened between and of the ratification, all the rights for married Women Holding property, child labor reforms, women having access to Higher Education and different professions. Then all the steps that have happened since then. So i think that we just need to see this as a continuum and understand that theres always more to do but also look back and stopped to make sure you recognize what has already been done. For me, i think i agree. I never would have thought i was a young girl and i never thought while we are trying to deal with this issue of the womens suffrage physically that the whole of our homes and access to the ballot box. This is very painful for me. I cant participate in a discussion that just talks about. I theres a whole slew of people out there that feel at risk now because they are like. With john lewis the last time at the Edmund Pettis bridge, i cant do that. I cant participate unless we are going to have, really have a Mass Mobilization of full lights for people. I think of how fragile our democracy is and people who had to pay a pull tax and count delegates. People who went through the suffrage and i didnt and we could be thrown back to those days again which makes the whole notion of womens suffrage the subset of a larger conversation of incredible need for the mobilization of all people of goodwill to understand the democracy needs our whole participation. I wholeheartedly agree with all these comments. Expanding it and making sure that everyone understands the depth of this history is incredibly important and to your point the reason i put the expanded chronology in the book das i wanted people to have in blackandwhite in front of them have the dates so they could see when various people and communities received the right to vote and when it was taken away and possibly. Its only a small piece of the story as we talk about becoming activists and american citizens through our fighting for our democracy, we need to as you say take sure we understand our history so we understand what is left to be done and get the next generation involved and keep it moving forward. Though to be tremendous to really be able to sit down and think about what happens what havent we done yet and then start working on it. I think that would be wonderful. I would love to see us treat this as more of a workshop than a celebration. This issue is for us to continue to tackle. I would say the most important way we can communicate is to ensure that every adult citizen in the country is freely able to vote without unreasonable barriers tot doing so but i can also end my comment i deal with girls every day and the girls coming out today care deeply. They are enthusiastic. They get it. They want to make their communities a better place and they are looking for the tools to do that. I encourage anybody else to think of the girls in your life and how we can empower this. What can we do to give the next generation what they need . If someone wants access to the suffrage toolkit its available and we will put a link in the chat. Of course. All the work that karen has been doing with the Harriet Tubman site and this is a conglomeration of women who were really thriving to make that happen so i appreciate your time this evening and i also rwant to thank nancy tate for organizing this conversation pulling everybody together and getting us organized on the stage to have this conversation and of course the National Archives for hosting it and my friend of the deputy for hosting us. Upcoming problems like lectures in history, the presidency and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today and watch American History tv every saturday or anytime online at cspan. Org history. It looks like theres an american can see democracy at work. Get informed straight from the source on cspan, unfiltered, unbiased, word for word from the Nations Capital to wherever you are. It is the opinion that matters the most. This is what democracy looks like. Powered by cable. Nonfiction book lovers, cspan has a number of podcast for you. Bestselling nonfiction authors and it appears only afterwards podcast q a, wideranging conversations with nonfiction authors and footnotes plus the conversation that features fascinating authors and nonfiction books in a wide variety of topics. About books podcast pixie behind the scenes of the nonfiction books within tedder interviews and bestsellers list. Find all of our podcast by downloading the free and now up or wherever you get your podcast and cspan. Org podcast. Listening to programs on cspan cspan radio just got easier. Tell your smart speaker, play cspan radio and listen to washington journal 70 and eastern. Weekdays 5 00 p. M. And 9 00