Rightfully hers begins with the struggle for suffrage but doesnt end with the 129th the 19th amendment ratification. Both the Immediate Impact of the suffrage amendment and struggles that persisted into modern day. Up, is theer, stand curator of that exhibit. [applause] one of the goals of the exhibit is to recognize both the broad diversity of the suffrage activists, the american many faces of women barred from voting. As susan ware does in why they marched, the exhibit looks beyond the familiar names of susan b anthony, elizabeth caddy stanton and alice paul and brings to our attention activist from a variety of backgrounds showing across race and class. Susan ware, a pioneer in the field of womens history and leading feminist biographer, is the auditor and editor of numerous books on u. S. History, including american womens history, a very short introduction. Still missing, Amelia Earhart and the search for modern feminism, and letter to the world, seven women who shipped the american century. Educated at Wellesley College and harvard university, she has taught at New York University and harvard where she served as editor of the biographical dictionary american women completing the 20th century. Since 2012 she has served as general editor of the American National biography which has long been associated with , and has participated in our charade before creating this exhibit. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome susan ware. [applause] susan thank you. It is a pleasure to be here, and all of you who have turned out for my talk, you are the price part of the price of admission you should go and see , the exhibit which is fantastic. It really both tells the story of the Suffrage Movement but also brings it up to the present and makes the case why its important for us all to be engaging with. And so i think that being here today on opening day is for me also a perfect way to launch my book, which was just published on monday, so it feels like an exciting event. Why they marched is a book of stories about womens struggle for the vote, told through the biographies of some, told through biographies and objects, so it seems appropriate to start with one of those objects. A tree plaque. And the story behind it. In the spring of 1919, just as womens suffrage leader were facing the final arduous process of winning ratification of the 19th amendment, Carrie Chapman cats and her longtime personal companion and suffragists bought a 17 acre farm in westchester county. Soon after moving in, cat commissioned a series of 12 metal tree plaques memorializing the giant of the Suffrage Movement. Women like Elizabeth Cady stanton, susan b anthony, and Hannah Howard shaw. Later that summer she carefully installed the tree plaques throughout the property. A suffragists has a great deep sense of history. They were the first womens historians and they had begun documenting this history long before the movement was successful. Withg a walk in the woods Carrie Chapman katz was like taking a course in suffrage history. But as charming as this was, it provides an imperfect model for this book which aimed to probe more deeply into some of the more complex and hidden pockets of the history of the struggles for the vote than suffragists at the time were willing to acknowledge. Racism is an obvious place to start. Consistent with the deep seeded prejudices held by most white suffragists, kat included no plaques to commemorate the thousands of African American women who participated in the struggle. Then there is eurocentrism, the international suffragists honored in the forest were all from western european countries, not from countries in south america, asia or africa which kat condescendingly believed needed to look to first world women for guidance, and add to that regional chauvinism all the domestic suffragists were from the east coast with new york state heavily overrepresented. No one from california, no one from the west, and no one from the south unless you count of these sisters who were born there but left because of their abhorrence of slavery. Finally it is hard to ignore a clear personal snub. No plaque for her arrival alice, whose upstart National Womens party caused much consternation for kat and her mainstream organization in the final stages of the suffrage fight. For too long the history of womens suffrage has put forward a version that closely parallels story, aapman cats topheavy story dominated by a few iconic leaders all whites and native born and the National Organizations they founded and led. Moving decisively away from that outdated approach uncovers a much broader, more diverse suffrage history waiting to be told. This new suffrage history shifts the framework of focus away from National Leadership to highlight the women and occasionally the men, who made womens suffrage happen to actions large and small, courageous and quirky, in states and communities across the nation. Telling these stories, the suffrage stories, captures the broadbased movement where it actually happened on the ground. Ray ofr the long gear of thelong duree campaign, women who had never participated in politics found themselves doing things they never would have thought possible filing lawsuits, Holding Public protests, collecting signatures on petitions, lobbying members of congress marching in suffrage , parades, even risking arrest and imprisonment for the cause. Women may not have fundamentally changed politics when they began to exercise the franchise, but as an aside i would ask, does anyone ever hold men to that standard . But leaving that question unanswered, many womens lives were profoundly affected by participation in the struggles to win the vote. In my book, i hope, captures those personal and political transformations. But history isnt just made up of written documents and tests. Texts. Objects and artifacts play key roles as well especially in the creation of personal and group identities. And this insight is especially relevant for social Movement Like suffrage which came to embrace Popular Culture and public spectacle as a primary strategy to win support for its cause. Suffrage objects like buttons, banners, leaflets and posters are especially evocative in connecting every day lives with the broader movement. In many cases they literally were, to borrow a phrase from novelist tim obrien, the things they carried. This characters broadly define include both human actors and in in animate objects hints at the suffrage history waiting to be tapped. My story has covered the span of the suffrage struggle but with a tilt, lilt toward 209th toward 20th century. Profiles and object from the west, south and midwest promised a more Representative National story and the inclusion of , African American and working class suffrage stories remind us that the movement was not just white and middle class. With the exception of susan b. Anthony, none of them held a toptier leadership position. Instead they represent the broad diversity of rank and file suffragism. So what are some of these suffrage stories you have never heard of . Let me start with the cookbook. Published by the Washington Equal Suffrage Association as part of their Successful Campaign to pass a state suffrage referendum in 1910. In addition to the cheerful logo, votes for women, good things to seek on its cover, of cover, the cookbook contains what to me was a somewhat surprising chapter on mountaineering, specifically what to cook when you are on a mountaineering expedition. That to set up the story of cora smith eaten, a pioneering western physician. She was the first woman licensed to Practice Medicine in north dakota who served as treasurer of the Washington State suffrage organization. Eaten was also an avid mountaineer who climbed all 7 major peaks in the Mount Rainier range and planted a vote for women pen it on the summit of pennant on the summit of the Columbia Crest in 1909. Unfortunately that pennant has not survived or i would have chosen that object to accompany her biography. And then there is the first issue of the Salt Lake City periodical, the womens exponent, from june 1, 1872, which mentioned whoops, one slide too fast. There we go. There. Here we have it. But you are still not going to be able to read the small type, so i will tell you that this front page mentions both susan b. Anthony and polygamy, and that sets up the story of his longtime editor emmaline wells, a polygamist mormon wife who was also an avid suffragist. Utah holds a special place in suffrage history because the territory enfranchised its women in 1870. Wyoming was the first territory in 1869. However unlike wyoming, since the vast majority of utah voters were mormons, it was impossible to separate voting from the issue of polygamy, and suffragists split between gingerly acknowledging mormon women as allies versus emphatically refusing to have anything to do with them. And the story of emmaline well suffrage career shows how the seemingly straightforward question of votes for women became entangled in one of the most hotly contested legal and moral questions of the 19th century. This poster from the interNational WomensSuffrage Alliance conference in budapest in 1913 reinforces the International Dimensions of the suffrage cause and sets up a the story of a local favorite, mary church carol, and africanamerican suffragist. Carols suffrage philosophy was built around an intersectional vision that embraced race as well as gender. An implicit challenge to white suffragists who tended to focus only on the subordination created by their sex. Her vision for suffrage and race relation was also grounded in an International Framework that placed the domestic situation in the United States in dialogue with customs abroad. But when she spoke at foreign conferences, such as the International Console of women thus council of women in berlin in 1904, she was often the only woman of color in attendance. Hazel came to suffrage from the world of theater. Her claim to fame is staging a pageant called allegory, right here in washington, on the step s of the Treasury Building as part of alice pauls suffrage parade, timed to coincide with Woodrow Wilsons inauguration, in 1913. This is something you can learn more about in the exhibit. Led by the command commanding figure of columbia, and this is a commanding figure if there ever was approximately 100 one, actors, all female except for one boy, staged a series of tableaux as marchers streamed past on pennsylvania avenue. She demonstrates the bold ways that suffragists took over public space and deployed spectacles to build support for their cause. And finally, a personal favorite, a totally unknown Massachusetts Woman named clayborn catlin who in decided 1914 to ride across the state on horseback alone. And without having raised any money, which meant she was dependent on donations to cover her expenses and also to feed her horse. She did this in order to rally support for the cause. Over the course of four months, she organized 59 meetings, visited 37 cities and towns and covered 530 miles. All of her personal belongings plus a parcel of leaflets, a horse blanket and a shoulder strap, which said votes for women, had to fit in a pair of brown canvas saddle bags which she later donated to the flesh ingerre the schles library. Clayborn is an example of an ordinary doing extraordinary things in order of these suffrage cause. Other stories describe a husband sisters whom, two were on opposite sides of the suffrage divide, a lesbian couple whose neighbors dubbed them the farmers suffrageette. I dont think that was a compliment. A bestselling southern novelist who wrote one that tanked, and artist gave up her painting career to become a suffrage cartoonist, and africanamerican activist, ida b wells, who refused to march in a segregated suffrage parade, and several more i dont have time to mention. Even though each story and its accompanying object stands on its own, when read together, they provide a surprisingly comprehensive history of the entire movement. And if i have chosen my 19 objects and subjects well, the whole truly will add up to more than the sum of the parts. And if there is a clear take away to these suffrage stories, its that we need to keep lives in focus while we also track the big picture, even though they were often only the foot soldiers. Remember, not everybody wants to be head of an organization or a president or a general, their rank and file contributions made a difference to the Larger Movement and to the participants themselves. Their hard fought suffrage victory, the culmination of three generations of sustained political motivation and spirited public advocacy represent a breakthrough for american women as well as a major step forward for american democracy. Important is the goal of suffrage was however, the struggle was always far broader than just the franchise. Speaking to fundamental questions about womens role in politics in modern life. Who gets to vote also raises profound questions about the relationship between citizenship and suffrage over time. Think of suffragists as the Voting Rights activists of their day. The Suffrage Campaign honed womens political skills, and they put those skills to good use in the decades after the area in its large perspective, it was not a hard stop but part of a continuum of womens political motivation that stretches across all of American History, not just just tween a seneca falls in 1848 and the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Inappropriate, still appropriate, indeed welcome to celebrate the upcoming centennial as an important marker in american womens history. But rather than positioning 1920 as the end of the story, it is more fruitful to see it as initiating the next phase in the National Womens political activism a story still unfolding. Another reason for the centering 1920 concerns the plight of African American voters for whom the 19th amendment was at most a hollow victory. In 1920 the vast majority of African Americans still live in the south where their Voting Rights were effectively eliminated by devices such as whites only primary, poll taxes and literacy tests. For African Americans it was the Voting Rights act of 1965, not the 14th, 15th or 19th amendment that finally removed the structural barriers to voting. And in a parallel disenfranchisement, few native american women gained the votes through the 19th amendment either. In addition to the importance of suffrage of Womens Womens demands for the vote , emerges as an integral part of the history of feminism. Because the protests womens exclusion from voting, demanded an assault on attitudes and ideologies that treated women as second class citizens and to formulate that challenge involves conceptualizing women as a group whose collective situations need to be addressed. Even though white suffragists were often clueless that they were speaking primarily from their own privileged, class and race positions, the growing consciousness of womens Common Concerns fostered a sense of sister hood unusual in early 020th century america. Special groups of women, often women of color were excluded from supposedly universal vision, demonstrates how racism intercept weekend feminism throughout the women suffrage move. And aftermath. Contemporary feminists have significantly broadened their commitment to recognize the diversitied womens experiences and work hard to include multiple perspectives within the broader feminists framework but it is still a struggle. The Suffrage Movement is part that story, warts and all. Stepping back, i see a dress line from the spectacle from the Suffrage Campaign to the sea of pink hats worn at the Womens Marchs at marchs across the country to protest the inauguration of donald trump. The play book the suffrages pioneered down to their distinctive colors and seizure of public spaces provides a clear blueprint for the mobilization of women in our contemporary political landscape. The wave of female candidates in last years midterm elections and the unprecedented numbers of women who have already declared they are running for president in 2020 are another clear legacy. The diversity of these candidates 0 muslims, asians, jewish, may seem like an an operation when set against the all right history but these breakthrough directly filled on the demands for fair and equitable access, political realm that were central to the struggles to win the rights of vote in the first place williams 1920, williams haskel published a book hail of the Suffrage Campaign which i discovered fairly early in my research and i return to it many times when i was writing my book. Comprised of a series of fictional sketches telling the story through the eyes of ordinary, and extraordinary suffrage workers going about their daily business of incredibly difficult task of winning the vote. Human faces on the collective drama of broader social change. Even though were writing almost a century apart, 0 were remarkably similar to recreate the passion and commitment that three generations of american women brought to the suffrage cause, and to tell that story from the perspective of those who have wayneed battles and won its victory. That means 0 bring the stories down to the personal level. Individual acts of courage and political defiance, stories of quiet commitment alongside the displays of public spectacle. As haskell wrote may these pages , be like the diaries never had time to write, portfolio of photograph that those faded may the tasks live again. At the very least i hope that i have uncovered some fresh candidates for Kerry Chapman cats suffrage for us. Thank you. [applause] and im happy and eager to take questions, but you have to cooperate by coming to a mic on either side of the auditorium. Hello. Thank you so much for your work and your research that you are doing in this field. It is so important. My question is, looking around this room, im noticing that i am one of the youngest women in here. And i would love to hear some of your thoughts on action that we can take to engage the Younger Generation in this critical conversation and encourage those younger women to exercise this right that so many people fought so dearly for. The Suffrage Centennial is a good way to open up the conversation about the importance of the vote. And the way i think of it, these women tried so hard to get the vote, we had better use it. That is the biggest take away point. There is a way in which the Suffrage Movement kind of speaks to the way in which young people and older people come together in coalition and one of the things the Suffrage Movement did was bringing together multiple generations. You had the older generations who had been at it forever but young women flooding in at the end. I think its those Cross Generational conversations keeping these movements vibrant and going on. And i also think that when were talking about political mobilization, women have been key to that, theyve been seen in recent Political Developments and i think it behooves us to keep moving things forward. And that would be the message i would have. Own couragement, just to have the conversation with whoever. Where is the best place to get your book . There will be a book signing up in the gift shop. Hope to see you there. I would just say about young peoples attendance today, i wouldnt become too discouraged its in the middle of the workday and leading events leading up to this foundation there were a lot of young people at the fundraising event for the upstairs kids upstairs they are going through the exhibit. Right. So im wondering what your research showed about post civil war women of the south and what their engagement was to for women. Well the Suffrage Movement came later to the south than it did to other parts of the country and there are specific regional regions for that, fairly conservative area and also one that was reeling from the after effects of the civil war. And so for especially for white women, then the whole issue of suffrage in the south was tied up with the voting for rights for African Americans as well. And yet, there are quite hardy band of southern suffragetts through the 1890s. I dont want to get too deep not weeds of suffrage history, the two roots subscribe to get women to vote, one was by amending state constitutions, and the other was by a federal amend in a region like the south, there is not going to be much support for federal amendments to bring in what was seen as an outside force. Women had an especially hard role and then you really are quite amazed to see what they were able to do within limits. I think there were only 4 Southern States that ratified the 19th amendment but we have , to give credit to tennessee u because that is what pushed it over the top. Im alternating. I have two questions that are at opposite ends of the universe. One is it true western states were inclined to encourage women votes on states and local issues, like for School Boards an things like that, because that would help their numbers for qualifying to become a state, to have a certain number of population, they have a certain number of citizens. So lets inflate the vote . Yeah, i dont have the specifics on that. I think youre right to point out something that probably most people dont know which is how many women actually were voting in different ways in different places before the 19th amendment, partial suffrage and it was suffrage and things like that. I think what historians have found when they get into telling specific stories especially of the western states, it happens so much earlier, very often there is a specific political situation in that state either they are angling for state hood, or you have competition between maybe two major parties and third party and that somehow then everything lines up correctly and having women vote seems like a desirable outcome. But its hard to generalize. And yet i think that we really do need to remember the critical roles of the west played in this. Because by the time we got to 1910 when the movement was finally becoming a mass movement, there were women voting in almost all of the western states. And that really showed what could happen, women were using their vote and i think it made politicians think, this is coming, i dont want to necessarily alienate these future voters, but the fact that there were so many already women already voting i think really did put it over. Do you have a second question you are going to ask me . There was an International Congress in europe at the beginning of the 1stworld war and it was a congress of women. And women from all from many countries got together and i cant remember if its exactly where it was. But do you think that that experience, women went over and they were, you know, hoping to not have a first world war. Which we know how that worked out. Right. So, do you see that as something that helped women then feel a need for more engagement or how do you see how that interacted with i think its a very important theme for suffrage history and also a good reminder for those of us who do American History not just to narrowly tell the story of this one country, ive been struck by how these suffragettes tracing around the world, going to budapest or london, one in places like japan. And i think to their credit they had a sense of a sort of more universal womanhood which we know doesnt really bode all that well, we can say that wasnt necessarily the best model. We have to recognize for many women they really did see reaching across National Borders as an important way of mobilizing on a global way. Political rights of women. And it also reminds us that this story, these stories of women battling for the rights to vote i think the phrase came given the right to vote. Given the right, they had to fight for it. This happened in specific countries all over the world. It behooves us to put United States story and conversation with that. Nobody over there. You. Could you say a little bit more about the role of men in the movement. You flashed those banner early on about that, im curious about that, really the importance of understanding allies and what kind of approach they might have had for bringing in the allies, talk about importance in her career of choosing cases, discrimination hurt men as well as women i wonder what kind of move. The way to start that question is to remember that suffrage are part of family units. They are not just on their own. Many of them are married. And so if a woman signs on full time to be a suffrage, it is going to have an impact on the way things used to be on the home front. She might not always be there at dinner time, running off to ohio to campaign. You really did need off tone have a supportive husband who was willing to go along with it. But much more broadly than that, i think that certainly by the last decade of the suffrage realized that having separate organizations of men that was just deliberately saying they are supporting women suffrage would be a good political tool. When you had these various suffrage parades and marchs and especially in new york city, the men would march separately with their banners like the harbor banner in support of the women. And i must admit i have a couple of places in my book where i talk about that. And it does give me a certain satisfaction because for so long in history have always their associations have always helped the men. Here we have a case that the Mens Association is not trying to lead, not trying to take over, its time to be supportive. And so theyre out there lobbying, marching, whatever. So i think thats an important part of the story. And luckily i found a married couple that i could tell their story and the guy, ray brown, wrote a charming pamphlet called how it feels to be the husband of a suffragette. Which i highly recommend. I live in vote in the last colony of north america, washington, d. C. And i think a lot about the parallel dynamics and campaigns for womens right to vote. The womens campaign, every senator had a mother and yet they thought women werent quite real people. Wanted statehood. We have no Voting Rights and leslie change the hearts and minds and wake up with hundreds of millions of americans who have senators and such, like you know, how do you do that . So many issues involved, who matters who is real and what can we do it, and i maintain the reason the country the way we have the national debt, war in afghanistan it starts at home that we are not real people and people are blind and deaf to us and how do you change it . Im not going to buy full answer to that, but keep on thinking, it shouldnt be fly by answer, keep on thinking. And i think that one of the things that i really noticed about trying to figure out what was it that finally got the 19th amendment through. And you really you know, can you point to certain factors like entering world war i and the years of mobilization, political mobilization and National Womens party and it all comes together. But, sometimes its just there has to be that constellation of preconditions that make Something Like that happen. And with getting votes for the district of columbia, you had several moments where you got it, you know, at least got it to go to the state, got it passed. And it just didnt have that forward. You know the suffragettes would say onward. So, yes. One of my arguments we are like colonials, colonialism healthy for everyone. The rest of all of you are like coke colonials. Its like eating coalcoholics, its healthy for you, too. We need to find that argument and apply the matters to everyone. I think you have a lot of support in this room. Yes. What suggestions would you have for how we can use the celebration of the passage of the 19th amendment to advance the womens cause today . It sounded to me from what you were saying that you thought about that, you thought about the Suffrage Movement is a precursor to other things that have happened in womens rights, what issues do you think are really important right now that might be a part of our conversation about the celebrations . Well let me step back and answer that a little more broadly. One of the reasons i decided that i wanted to write this book several years ago, more than several years ago, was that i was looking ahead to the centennial. And i thought that this might be a moment where we really could have be having public conversations about womens histories and women and politics. And this was something that i really wanted to be able to encourage and to participate in. Because one of the things that i always tried to do as a historian, mainly written on 20th century history and the history of feminism is try to keep my historical work in conversation with where we are today. And i dont think i need to tell any of you that there are all kinds of reasons why the history of womens activism and femmism is an important discussion to be having today. I think right now its so steeped in this suffrage story i keep thinking about the importance of the vote. I really do think that issues of voter suppression, and redistricting and whatever, these are ways of trying to keep people from voting. And we need to really be pushing back on that and also encouraging women to register women and men to register to vote and then to actually vote. I know its times are hard, you think why does my vote matter . There will have been points in my life where i thought does it really make a difference . I think we have to keep trying and so for me it comes back to Voting Rights. And i think we have plenty of areas where its clear that we that Voting Rights are under attack and that should be the highest priority. Do you think the passage of the e. R. A. s important . Well, i still wish it passed in the 1970s and we had on the books. Wgether with all the pressing problems were facing today, whether that i would put at the top of the list, im not sure anymore. Luckily someone earlier mentioned ruth bader ginsburg. Laws have changed in ways that women have through the 14th amendment many of the protection that would have come from an equal rights amendment. And also many faiths that are enforce. The main reason for hearing is it would be such a symbolic a statement of support. So i am of two minds. But i actually would have thought it was dead in the water but it seems to be having another life. So well see. Yeah. One question about the woman in the middle. Our own local heroin, mary church carol. Im a native washingtonan i thought of her as a civil rights activist, integration those of us living here, there is a place i walked by it the other day. If you want to talk about that. She had the additional issue besides the race and sex issue, previous questioner asked. She was a native of washington, d. C. We have no particularly in her time, no Voting Rights or anything until 1954. Ship more than a full plate, so how did she balance. How did she work the intersectionality of black rights of womens rights and dc homegirl rights. Well i think in some ways the answer is its the provision where you cant separate out any of those things. And that one of the reasons ive enjoyed so much learning or about African American suffrage they often had a much broader approach to voting. It wasnt just a vote, it was thinking about the role of African Americans in the larger society, and how to up lift communities and families and challenge racism so there is a vision to their and this is one element of it. But keep coming back to that question of voteless and how she might have done that. I think for her, she probably saw it as just all part of a larger struggle and, you know, she kept at it her whole life. I love the picture of her from the 1940s where shes protecting protesting segregation in accommodations here. She is a woman in her 80s with her purse, looking respectable but out there on the picket line like she had been her whole life. I just find the commitment of women like that, i find it very inspiring and i think that the way in which by framing these issues broadly it always helps. So she is someone i was glad to be able to include her. Anything else . Ok. One more. All right. Dont trip. I just wonder what you think about the idea of mandatory voting. Do you think it hinders or helps . Can i cannot see any scenario in this country where we would have mandatory voting. But, so i would say no. I do think its an interesting question that really hadnt gotten as much attention as it should. There are two that i see in the Suffrage Centennial. We really do need to engage the antisuffragists, there were quite a lot of them including women who said we dont need to vote and we dont want the vote that was a powerful statement that was used against the suffragists, but also a larger trend that sociologists and Political Sciences write about which is the nonvoters, people who are not registered, who do not vote in who comprise a huge part of the population. And i do hope that as were thinking about womens struggles to vote and what it meant, that we can be thinking about ways of enlarging that conversation to think well, not voting and why and there is a way of bringing them bringing them in. So that would be one of the questions i would really want to put on the agenda. Yes. Hi, thanks for your work. Its wonderful and im looking forward to reading this book. I was wondering if you cover in the book were in your research, the intersectionallities and how they go hand by hand and historical all the way to the present time and the place we find ourselves right now with the same in way it is going in terms of the pro choice movement. Someone asked me earlier about the importance challenges for women and feminism today and certainly the question that is one of the key questions it was not really a question that was on the table in at the height of the Suffrage Movement. You have a a parallel development, the Birth Control movement with margaret anger. Well use for now. But the Suffrage Movement didnt have to deal with as divisive and an issue as that is. It had plenty of other opposition. Another thing it shows is it is very important when we use a phrase like women that we remember women is far too broad a category to be able to include everyone. To that earlier question about the International Feminist and they are hoping women as women could come together to end war and improve the world. It isnt easy. It doesnt really work that way. I think the challenge when you are mobilizing women is to identify the commonalities and seem things that can be agreed on recognizing the differences. That is as we must. Onward. So thank you for coming. [applause] youre watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Tv,ext on American History former navy fighter per that discusses hisrson book, top gun an american story