For women, for this exhibition i worked about three and a half years researching and teaching myself the history and its finding the of which they are 63 portraits tony history of the 19th amendment and how women are moving to get this passed ratified but also asked questions about it what does it do in which is it not to law, and why it is considered law apart to serve it, so i will show you objects that tell this history. We are in the first gallery of the exhibition, i mentioned that we have portraits that drive the narrative but i also wanted to include in the exhibition pieces of our like the one we are looking at that is titled the more at home its by a female artist and she was active in the 18 sixties and i wanted to include this painting because it portrays Young Children and, so you have these for kids, once a baby, but the three kids are celebrating and the mother who is reading the New York Times and then you have a serve or a hope or who is cleaning the dishes and what i liked about this painting his then its from 1866 and into picks the war, the civil war and the battle, so its looking back and spencer decided to portray this moment in time by looking at the lives of them and the women are very serious, but the children are very much engaged in the celebration because they dont understand how severe that was, so vicksburg, during the battle the man on both sides starved because the city was surrounded and embargoed, so why am i talking about the civil war and his suffrage exhibition and, what i wanted to do was to demonstrate the divide between the north and south, as well as between African American and white, this plays a big part in shaping the Suffrage Movement, especially when the 14th amendment was passed, it included the word male and this is the first time in the history of the constitution that gender was specified and it delivered a severe blow to the movement, where women were trying to advocate for the right to vote, and if they werent even considered citizens a granted citizenship to everyone for in the United States, then won the 15th amendment franchised american citizens, it only did for half the population, and this is a huge divide, they disagreed on how to handle it, that is when they split between each other, so they wanted to advocate for suffrage by excluding black women wear as lucy was trying to advocate for universal suffrage, African Americans were suffrage us so if you come with me now we will talk about one of the major African Americans suffering shifts, she famously gave a speech at a convention in which he said we are all bound up together so she was trying to explain to people that she is also an African American and a woman, combined and its intersectional and so blackmon really could interested around and let people take their rights and not advocate for them, they became active and church groups, they really worked on a learning how to speak in public, understanding their rights, understanding how to get their rights by their local communities, by getting involved in the Community Church proves that is a really interesting topic that not a lot of people have gone into or understand as much so people do understand that the movement was divided but they dont understand that African Americans remained very active and so this exhibition endeavors to include African Americans and their stories, the porch of thats on the far wall, she was an activist and an Anti Slavery Society and she took her activism abroad, that is an interesting story, how american suffering trusts were not only focused in the United States but they were also active elsewhere in europe especially, last what we are going to do is talk about what this is being referred to as the mid, this is a fortune of suzanne from 1870, its by napoleon and he captured them together, hes pointing to a book and they are very dignified, this is what would be like a pomposity shot today, they were using this portrait to represent them to a wider audience, they didnt even meet until 1815 one and so most of this probably recall from the history books in high school was gathering, the First National convention in 1838 and and Elizabeth Katie and others have the declaration in the beginning document, one of the first documents put into writing that women were advocating for the vote, and what i hope this exhibition explains by going back to 1832, women were getting together and advocating for their, rights for their Citizenship Rights well before 1848, so suffrage in a period of thin air, and actually has a long history did others would argue starts before it, so that is a great intellectual debate than i encourage you to look into. So i got up to 1869 an hour going to move into the next gallery so right in the second gallery and i wanted to make sure to include representation of the meeting, it helps us get into the different issues that american women were facing, temperance was a Large Organization that had about 100 and thousand women across the United States involved and they would gather and meet what was call chapters and so in 1873time prince you dont actually endorsed the suffrage cause, so all of a sudden they expanded their membership and a reach by 150,000 members, it is an incredible amount of people for that era, snow at the top you see the womans holy war, whats great about this active energetic print is that theres a would bit odd a horse and shes a large figure and leaping off these well marked barrels of alcohol, you can see jaded, whisky, beer, grab, behind her all her compatriots women with these access and hatch this and they are part of the lead, in the name of god and humanity thats the banter that they are caring, so the ban is against alcohol and when women were very to alcoholics they became a very vulnerable population, so they were organizing amongst each other in ways that help them, not only get support but also understand their rights and what they can do to advocate for the rates, on the bottom you see the oratorical fries and inches women christians Temperance Union and i wanted to include this little medal because i was curious to know how women were teaching themselves how to speak in public. So if you think of masters of today that is a good analogy of what they were doing in the Temperance Union because they were actually awarding prizes to women who were speaking in having little contests in order to or them for the good speeches, of course they were talking about christianity and temperance, that is an interesting object that i was able to find. The reason why it was important for women to know how to speak in public was in part because the suffrage cars, the word about it was being spread through speeches, a lot of women were going on the lecture circuit, they were speaking in auditoriums that were for two as they were being paid lots of money actually, and 20,000 dollars annually and 1873, she made more money than mark twain, so i think that is an interesting comparison because whose name do we remember today, even though she was more famous and mark twain at the time. Next were gonna talk a little bit more about some of these scandals that they got involved in. Victoria would hall was well ahead of time, she started her business as a wall street bigger with her sister, she advocated for free love, sex outside of marriage, which was definitely outside of the nor and she also read for president on the third party take it and she was the first woman to do so, right here we have a really nice portrait of her attempting to vote or asserting her right to vote as she would see it. She voted when we werent supposed to vote as a woman, here she is, you can see shes putting her finger in the air and she is asserting her right to vote and she just dropped the record of her vote into the ballot box and lots of women at this time are doing what would be referred to as illegal voting because it was illegal and explicitly illegal for women to vote so victoria was one of thousands across the country who sought to change the system by going out, food, and getting arrested, not paying the fine and then serving a sentence in jail so that then they can appeal through the court system they try to change the laws that way, but they failed and there was another severe blow that was delta to the Suffrage Movement in 1873 when the Supreme Court ruled against a woman named Virginia Minor who had tried to vote and had gone on through the court system but then the Supreme Court found that women should not vote legally in the United States, so we were discussing have it for a asserted her right to vote by placing a valid in the ballot box, here we have a different type of ballot box, this one is made out of metal where is the one with victoria was most likely made out of wood, what i like about this ballot box is that it explicitly says women ballots on him, it is very much interface that women were voting separately are most likely not on april terms for equal types of suffrage so they could maybe vote for a municipal suffrage more school suffrage, for and some states before 1920 about 15 i believe women were allowed to vote in the president ial elections, so this box is from what indiana, is one of those states it allowed women to vote in the president ial elections, it was made by bernard and company out of st. Louis and they made these boxes between 1816 1920, i think its an interesting piece of material culture that eliminates what romans writes were like in what it looked like, what it felt like. So we are looking at a caricature of victoria done by thomas in the 1872, this exemplifies some of these struggles that women were going through at the time, if you see, this is a caricature, so she hafez, she was known for wearing victory rules on top of her head but the cartoonist turned them into levels warns and then he put it here with doubles wings, so she has become a team and then she is walking away from a woman whose looking over her shoulder as if, maybe undecided that shes made her decision and shes going up this mountain and you can tell there is three children that shes carrying as well as the alcoholic has been strapped to her back this exemplifies the choices that women could, either you throw stocked with someone like her, who is advocating for free love at the time and that is a very soft term for sex outside of marriage, she was advocating women should enjoy sex and a half sacks outside of marriage and why get married it to have this burden of the hill husband in all these children without any support, so she was trying to promote choices that women had but of course at the time women definitely were not supposed to be having sex and not supposed to be enjoying it, this was very much a taboo subject, and tom is really captures that in this caricature of her, as a steam in lady. So we are looking at a portrait of velvet and, she was the first person to argue a case and whos arguing for rights, she became an Expert Witness for native americans in subsequent trials and what i like about this portrait is her dignified she looks, she has her hair bound up in this beautiful cloth, she has her lace collar and it really represents her as this respectable woman because she was a suffrage assist and they were being accused of being outside the bounds of femininity, so she was actually the first woman to campaign for presidency, i mentioned her who is the first woman to name herself as a candidate for presidency but she couldnt campaign because she was serving a jail sentence and yet she had found it what was called the equal rights party, this is like a democrat party, like the Republican Party but it is a third party take it, so they were running for president on whats called a third party take it and its really things to victoria and now shes able to run an 1834 and again in 1888 so she is a really good example of what women could do, she was a lawyer, she was advocating for rates in the Supreme Court and she is also running for president. Over here we have a lovely fortunate of abigail whos in suffrage east, she was trying to persuade male legislators to change the laws of these western states and she was based in oregon and she founded the new northwest which was a newspaper and 1870 wanted advocated for womens rights, so a lot of people think that suffrage was only based in the northeast, in fact it was very active across the United States, there are lots of more men and women advocating for suffrage and wyoming and it became the first state to endorse suffrage, so there is a nationwide approach to this reform movement, it was probably one of the longest movements in the United States and American History and also one of the most widespread, we are in the third gallery and this is entitled the new woman and it begins in 1892 in the new woman was educated, issues out on her bicycle, she was out and about, not enough all, physically active and this puzzle of people as you can see in this depiction of the farmer, his wife, and probably his daughter said the woman and her, shes well looks like bloomers or pants, she asks them for a glass of water and so they of course obliged but as she is dragging the glass of water there thinking to themselves, what is this person, issue a woman, what is she doing a, why is she outside of the hole, you can really tell the confusion that a lot of americans had one woman started to advocate for their rights but also an their aides and act their freedom to move around in society and to go to school and to get educated, so magazines are picking up on this, less these with us on via miriam was the aid that was owned by miriam leslie, she changed her name to recall mrs. Frank leslie, in order to assume the authority that it took to publish of accuracy like this and you can see the use of the color, this is women writing and open air carriages and a parade and so shes obviously carrying this banner and it speaks to some of the privilege behind the movement, so white women were the ones out there advocating and periods like this, in part because the parades excluded African Americans but they were doing a well and getting the word out and so we are analysts lee she changed her magazine to make sure that it included illustrations like this and if hes ready her after she took see a clear trajectory causes of the area which is interesting and then finally we are going to look on example at anti suffrage and this is from 1894, new york had tried to change its state referendum to include womens right to vote but it failed, despite having a petition of 600,000 signatures in support of changing the states legislation in the referendum failed, so this exemplifies what was happening in this era where the Software Just had taken on a state by state approach, they were no longer going for this amendment change that had been decomposed for the judiciary changes theyre actually doing a full court state by state but it wasnt going very well it was very frustrating and supporting the womans caused cars you can see how could she votes when the factions are so wide and the voting loser so narrow, so its depicting this woman has this fanciful not sirius dates if you will, she cant even figure out how to dress herself, much less fit into a voting booth, so how could women even see themselves in this role having a political voice, there is a lot of anti suffrage that accompanies the whole movement and in the exhibition i chose to highlight some of those examples but really not focus on it too much because there is more interested in how African Americans really involved and what the strategies were in the movement, so we are looking at two examples of fmri that speak to the history of womens Voting Rights and i wanted to highlight colorado because its the first stage where suffer just spray able to lobby and convince the male legislators to change their constitution, to make sure that women could vote, so if that makes sense because wyoming was a territory and they grandfathered in the right to vote but women didnt have to lobby legislators after it became a state to get the right to vote, it was already wet into their constitution, so the colorado example is pretty interesting and if you come in close you can see the three Party Tickets and at the very bottom this would be what they voted with, you could see equal suffrage approved or not approved once colorado woman achieve the right to vote they then elected female legislators so this is a portrait of three of the four legislators from the era from 1893 94 and so you have to democrats and one republican, in the back we have three portraits of African Americans, there is cooper in the middle and merry church to roll on the right and these are studio portraits that we are made of these women while they were students at the college. technical problem she was living in a life of someone who truly believed giving liberal Arts Education to African Americans, as did marry church who in 1893 founded the Womens Association but choose also teaching the colored school which is of course the has school in washington d. C. , what i like about these two women is that they were especially taking on the responsibility to assimilate African Americans law and the post civil war reconstruction era that would give them collar access, so they became, once they came to the high school and they went to college and they were businesspeople, leaders law, teachers, nurses and so they embodied that argument law that these two men have been having about how to best assimilate African Americans, so in washington she advocated for Technical Training well she advocated for a liberal arts training and these women were walking the walk but there are less recognize and the man and they are very much equal to both of these men in the ways they are strategizing how to make life better for African Americans during a very difficult time, so these three women are in these exhibition and because they were not advocating for only suffrage but theyre advocating for other things outside the parameters of the single issue focus, they were doing lots of activism, even though they were still excluded from the National Suffrage association which the two fractions that we were talking about the very beginning in 1870 the Suffrage Movement divided, they have come back together in 1892, so the then move forward with great for us and strategies, they are doing the state by state strategy but they are also excluded African Americans the whole time, my point is the women were not just sitting around waiting on the sidelines they were being very active within their own groups and their own societies and local communities. We are standing in front of a banner that was carried in 1911 and law the writing is actually an excerpt of scripture called the glorious flight, who was written by the british teen of cant bury and what i liked about this banner is how it has that sense of spirituality that i think was so important during the first, half through the teens and it also has the sense of emerging and onward and making progress forward, i wanted to make sure to include banners we borrowed because they really speak to a lot of the thinking thats behind the movement and also point to the activism, this actually concludes the first half of the exhibition, we have coverage the movement and weve covered the first generation of suffrage assists and from this point on we are going to discover that they still, they havent achieved the right to vote, they still dont have the right to vote but will trace how they switched tactics and really achieved progress and a very comparatively small amanda time up through 1920 and then talk about the changes and the ongoing battle through 1965. 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