Transcripts For CSPAN3 Women Of The Suffrage Movement 20240712

Amendment. Today our new exhibit, rightfully hers, american women and the vote, opened up stair in the lawrence f. Obrien gallery. This exhibit is a corner stone of our sentenal celebration of the 19th amendment. Which gave women the right to vote. The 19th amendment is rightfully celebrated as a major milestone made possible by decades of suffrage relentless Political Engagement and one critical piece of the larger story of womens battle for the vote. Rightfully hers begins with the suffrage that doesnt end with the 19th amendments ratification. The final section examines the Immediate Impact and the voting right struggles that persisted into modern day. And corrine porter, stand up, is the curator of that exhibit. [ applause ] one of the goals of the exhibit is to recognize both the broad diversity of suffrage activists and the many bases on which american women have been barred from voting. As susan ware does in why they march the exhibit looks beyond the familiar names such as susan b. Anthony and alice paul and brings activists from a variety of backgrounds showing that the cause of suffrage was advanced by american women across race, ethnicity and class. Susan ware, a pioneer in the womens history is the author of numerous books on the 20th century, 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 shaped the american century. Educated at wellesley and harvard, shes taught at new york and harvard where she served as editor of notable american women completing the 20th century. Since 2012 shes served as the general editor of the American National biography at the ratcliff institute for advanced study where she served as the honorary suffrage historian and a member of the Honorary Committee for rightfully hers and participated in our sherrette before creating this exhibit. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome susan ware. [ applause ] thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. And all of you who have turned out for my talk, you, as part of the price of admission, you should go and see the exhibit which is fantastic. It tells the story of the Suffrage Movement and brings it up to the present and makes the case for why this is very important history for us all to be engauging with. So i think that being here today on the opening day is also a perfect way to launch my book. Which was just published on monday. So this feels like a exciting event. Why they marched is a book of stories about womens struggle for the vote told through the biographies of and objects and 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 leaders were facing the final arduous process of the 19th amendment, Carrie Chatman cat and her fellow suffragist mary garrett hey bought a 17 acre farm in Westchester County called jupiter ledge. Soon after moving in, cat commissioned 12 metal tree plaques memorializing the giants of the Suffrage Movement, women like susan b. Anthony, lucy stone and Anna Howard Shaw and later that summer she carefully installed the tree plaques throughout the property. Now suffragists had a deep sense of history. In many ways they were our first women historians and they had begun documenting this history long before the movement was successful and taking a walk in the woods with Carrie Chapman cat was like taking a course in suffrage history. But as charmy as Carrie Chapman cats was, it provides an imperfect model for this book which aims to probe more deeply into some of the more complex and hidden pockets of the history of the struggle for the vote than suffragists at the time were willing to acknowledge. Racism is an obvious place to start. Consistent with the deepseated prejudice, cat included no plaques to commemorate the thousands of africanamerican women who participated in the struggle. Then there is euro centralism, the international suffrage honored were all from western european countries, not from countries in south america, asia or africa which cat condescendingly believed needed to look to first world women for guidance. And add to that, regional chauvinism with new york state heavily overrepresented. No one from california, no one from the west and no one from the south, unless you count the grim kay sisters who were born there but left because of their abhorrence of slavery. And finally, it is hard to ignore a clear personal snub. No plaque for her rival alice paul, whose upstart National Womens party caused much consternation for cat and her mainstream organization in the final stages of the suffrage fight. For too long, the history of women suffrage has put forward a version that closely parallels Carrie Chapman katz suffrage forest. A top heavy story dominated by a few iconic leaders, all white 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 shifts the frame of focus away from National Leadership to highlight the women and occasionally the men who made womens suffrage happen through actions large and small, courageous and quirky, in states and communities across the nation. Telling these stories, the suffrage stories captures the proudbased movement where it actually happened on ground. Now over the Long Duration of the Suffrage Campaign, women who had never before participated in politics suddenly 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 and as an asize, i would ask does anyone hold men to that standard. But leaving that question unanswered, many womens lives were profoundly affected by participation in the struggle to win the vote. And in my book, i hope, captures those personal and political transformations. But history isnt just made up of written documents and text. 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 provocative 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. So this diverse cast of characters broadly defined to include human actors and inant matt projects shows suffrage is waiting to be tapped. And my stories cover the span of the suffrage struggle but with a definite tilt toward the 20th century. The profiles and objects from the west, south and midwest promise a more Representative National story and the inclusion of africanamerican and workingclass 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 top tier leadership position. In stead, they represent the broad diversity of rank and file suffrageism. So what are some of the 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 eat on its cover, the cookbook contains what to me was a somewhat surprising chapter on mountaineering, and what to cook when youre on a mountaineering expedition. And so i used that to set up the story of cora smith eaton, 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. Eaton was also an avid mountaineer who climbed all seven major peaks in the mt. Rainier range and posted 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. Then there is the first issue of the Salt Lake City periodical, the womens ex uponent, from june 1st, 1872, which mentioned oops, that went by too fast. There we go. There. Here we have it. But youre still not going to be able to read the small type so will i tell you that the front page mentioned both susan b. Anthony and polygamy and that sets up the story of its long time editor emily wells, a polygamist mormon wife who was also a suffragist. Now utah holds a special place in suffrage history because the territorien franchised its women in 1870. Wyoming was the first territory in 1869. However, unlike wyoming, since the vast majority of utah voters were mormons, it proved impossible to separate voting from the issue of polygamy. And suffragists split between gingerly acknowledging mormon women as allies, versus emphatically refusing to have smig to do with them. And the story of emily wells suffrage career shows how the 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 Womens Suffrage Alliance conference in budapest in 1913 reinforces the International Dimensions of the suffrage cause and sets up the story of local favorite mary church carol, an africanamerican suffragist. Her suffrage was built around an intersectional version that embraced race as well as gender and 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 grounded in the domestic situation in the United States in dialogue with customs abroad. But when she spoke at foreign conferences, such as the International Council of women in berlin in 1904, she was often the only woman of color in attendance. Hazel mckai came to suffrage from the world of theater. Her claim to fame is staging a pageant calledaligory right here in washington on the steps of the Treasury Building as part of alice pauls suffrage parade to coincide with Woodrow Wilsons inauguration in 1913. And this is something that you could learn more about in the exhibit. Led by the commanding figure of columbia, and this is a commanding figure if there ever was one, approximately 100 actors, all female except for one boy, staged a series of tabloids as marchers streamed past. Mckai demonstrates the bold ways that suffragists took over public space and deployed spectacle to build support for their cause. And finally a personal favorite. A totally unknown Massachusetts Woman named Claiborne Catlin who is 1914 decided to ride across the state on horseback, alone. And without havinged any money, which meant she was dependent on donations to cover her expenses and also to feed her horse. And 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 that said votes for women had to fit in a pair of brown canvas saddlebags which she later donated at ratcliff. Now clay burn catlin is a sample of an extraordinary woman to do things in support of the suffrage cause. Other stories describe a husband and wife team. Two sisters who were on opposite sides of the suffrage divide, a lesbian couple whose neighbors dubbed them the farmer suffragists, i dont think that was a compliment, and an artist who gave up her painting career to become a suffrage cartoonist, and an 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 takeaway to the suffrage stories, it is that we need to keep individual lives in focus while we also track the big picture. Even though they were often the foot soldiers. 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. Theyre hard fought suffrage victory, the culmination of three generations of sustained political mobilization and spirited public advocacy represented a break thru for american women as well as a major step forward for american democracy. Important as the goal of suffrage was, however, the struggle was always far broader than just the franchise. Speaking to fundamental questions about womens roles in poe politics and modern life. Who gets to vote raises profound questions about the relationship between citizenship and suffrage over time. Think of suffragists as the Voting Rights activists of their day. Now the Suffrage Campaign honed womens political skills and they put those skills to good use in the decades after the vote was won. In this enlarged perspective, the suffrage victory is not a hard stop, but part of a continuum of womens powerbalit demonstration not just between seneca falls and the ratdification in 1920. It is 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 stage in the history of womens political activism, a story which is still unfolding. Another reason concerns the plight of africanamerican voters. For whom the 19th amendment was at most a hollow victory. In 1920 the vast majority of africanamericans still lived in the south where their Voting Rights were effectively eliminated by devices suppose as whites only primaries and poll taxes and literacy tests. For africanamericans it was the volting rights act of 1965, not the 14th, 15th or 19th amendments that finally removed the structural barriers to voting. And in a parallel disfranchisement, few native american women gained the vote through the 19th amendment either. Now in addition to the importance of womens suffrage for american and political history, womens demand for the vote emerges as an integral part of the history of feminism. Because to protest womens exclusion from voting, demanded an assault on attitudes and ideology that treated women as second class women and conceptualizing women as a group whose collective situation needed to be address. Even though white suffrages 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 20th century america. The fact that certain groups of women, especially women of color, were often excluded from representations of the supposedly universal vision. Demon stra demonstrates feminism in the womens Suffrage Movement and aftermath. Feminisms have broadened their commitment to recognize the diversity of womens experiences and work hard to include multiple perspectives within the broader feminist framework. But it is still a struggle. The Suffrage Movement is part of that story, warts and all. Stepping back, i see a direct line from the spectacles of the Suffrage Campaign to the sea of pink pussy hats, worn at the womens marches held across the country, indeed around the world in january 2017 to protest the inauguration of donald trump. The playbook that suffragists pioneered right down to their distinctive colors and seizure of symbolic public spaces provided 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. Diversity of these candidates, black, latino, muslim, asian, jewish, may seem like an aberration when set against the all white history of suffrage that historians used to tell but these breakthroughs demand fair access to the political realm central to the struggle to win the right to vote in the first place. In 1920, a brooklyn suffragist named oreo williams haskell published a book which i discovered fairly early in my research. And i returned to it many times when i was writing my book. Comprised of a series of fictional sketches, the book tells the story through the eyes of ordinary and often extraordinary suffrage workers going about their daily business of the incredibly difficult task of winning the vote. Hasket pulls human faces on the collective drama of broader social change. Even though were riding become a century apart, her goal and mine were similar. That three generations of american women brought to the suffrage cause and to tell that story from the perspective, this is a quote, of those who have waged its battles and won its victories, end of quote. That means bringing the story down to the personal level, to individual acts of courage and political defiance, to stories of quiet commitment alongside the displays of public spectacle. As haskell wrote, may the pages seem like the diary they never had time to write or like the portfolio of old photographs that, though faded, made the once vivid past live again. At the very least, i hope i have uncovered some fresh candidates for Carrie Chapman katz suffrage forest. 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 youre doing in this field. It is so important. My question is looking around this room, im noticing that im one of the youngest women in here. And i would love to hear some of your thoughts on actions that we can take engage the Younger Generation in this critical conversation and to encourage those younger women to exercise this right that so many people have fought so dearly for. Well, i think in many ways the Suffrage Centennial is a good way to open the conversation about the importance of the vote. And the way i think of it is these women fought so hard to get the vote. We better use it. And i think that that is in some ways the biggest takeaway point. But there is also a way in which i think the Suffrage Movement kind of speaks to the way in which young people and older people come together in coalitions. And one of the things that the Suffrage Movement did was bringing together multiple generations. You had the older generations who had been at it forever and then you had young women flooding in at the end and i this is it is the crossgenerational conversations that keep movements vibrant and going on. And i also think that when were talking about political mobilization, women have been key to that. They were key in the Suffrage Movement, and theyve been key in recent Political Developments and i think it behooves us to keep moving things forward and that would be the message i would have, just encouragement to keep at it even though sometimes it does seem discouraging. And just to have those conversations with whoever you can. And where is the best place to get your book . Oh, there is going to be a book signing up in the gift shop. Thank you so much. So hope to see you up there. Yes, on that side. I would just say about young peoples attendance today, i wont become too discouraged because it is in the middle of the work day and in the evening events leading up to this, the foundation had a lot of young people at the fundraiser event for this last year. And the kids upstairs that are going through the exhibit. It is sort of making your heart feel good. I wonder what your search showed about post civil war women of the south and what their engagement was to push suffrage for women. Well, the Suffrage Movement came later to the south than it did to other parts of the country. And i think there are specifically regional regions for that and a conservative area and one that was reeling from the after effects of the civil war. And so for white women, then the whole issue of suffrage in the south was tied up with voting for rights for africanamericans as well. And, yet, there are quite a hearty band of southern suffragists that you start to see popping up in the 1890s. And then they stay through the duration. But one of the things that was hard, i dont want to get too deep into the weeds of suffrage history. But the two roots to try to get women the vote, one was by amending state constitutions, and the other was by a federal amendment. Well in a region like the south, there is not going to be much support for federal amendments that bring in what was seen as an outside force to threaten states rights. So i thought the southern women had a especially hard role and youre quite amazed to see what they were able to do within limits. I think there were only four Southern States that passed, that ratified the 19th amendment. But we have to give credit to tennessee, because that is what put it over the top. Im alternating. Well i have two questions that are like an opposite ends of the universe. One is, is it true that the Western States were inclined to encourages vote on state and local issues, like for school board and things like that, because that would help their numbers for qualifying to become a state. They would have a certain number of population, and have a certain number of active 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. And often it was in what was called partial suffrage. And it was School Suffrage and things like that. I think what historian has found is when they get into telling specific stories, especially in the Western State wheres it happened so much earlier, that very often there is a specific situation in that state. Either theyre angling for statehood or have competition between the two major parties or an upstart third party and that somehow then everything lines up correctly and having women vote seems like a desirable outcome but it is hard to generalize. And, yet, i think that we really do need to remember the Critical Role that the west played in this. Because by the time we got to the 1910s, 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 votes. And i think it made politicians think, hmm, if this is coming, i dont want to necessarily alienate these future voters. But the fact that there were so many women already voting i think did help put it over. Now you have a second question you were going to ask me. Yes. So there was an International Congress in europe at the beginning of the first world war. And it was a congress of women. And women from all from many countries got together and i cant remember if it 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. It is a huge we know how that worked out. Well, yeah. That is what happens. 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 well, i think it is a very important thing for suffrage history and it is also a good reminder for those of us who do American History, not to just narrowly tell the story of this one country because one of the things that ive always been struck by is how these suffrages were, they were traipsing around the world. They thought nothing of going to a conference in budapest or one in london or occasionally ones 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 hold up all that well. But even though we could say, well that wasnt necessarily the best model, i think we have to recognize that for many women they really did see reaching out across National Borders as an important way of mobilizing on a global way the Political Rights of women. And it also reminds us that this story, these stories of women battling for the right to vote, i hate the phrase being given the right to vote. They werent given the right. They had to fight for it. These happen in specific countries all over the world and it behooves us to put the United States conversation in with that. Nobody over there. So you. Hi. You could say a little bit more about the role of men in movement. You flashed a banner early on about that and im curious about that, particularly the importance of having men as allies and what kind of an approach they might have had towards bringing in the allies. Ive heard Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg about the importance of choosing cases that showed the discrimination hurt men as much as it hurt women and im wondering what kind of approach the Suffrage Movement might have had toward that. The way to start to answer that question is to remember that suffragists are part of family units. Theyre not just on their own. And so many of them are married. So if a woman signs on full timd to be a suffragist, she might not be there at dinnertime and rushing off to ohio to campaign. So you did need often to have a supportive husband willing to go along with it. But much more broadly than that, i think that by certainly by the last decade, the suffragists realized that having accept raet r separate organizations of men could be a good political tool. So when you have these various suffrage parades and marches, especially in new york city, the men would march separately with their banners like the harvard 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 women had always been there to help the Mens Associations. And here we have a case where the Mens Association is not trying to lead, it is not trying to take over, it is just trying to be supportive. And so theyre out there lobbying and marching and whatever. And so i think that is 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 suffraget which i highly recommend. I live and vote in the last colony in north america, washington, d. C. And i think the parallel of campaigns for womens right to vote and in the womens campaign every senator had a mother and yet they women werent quite real people and d. C. Wont get statehood, we have no congressional Voting Rights and the white man feels bound to respect, unless we change the hearts and minds and wake up hundreds of millions of americans who have senators and such like you know, how do you do that . There are so many issues of who matters and who is real and what can do you about it and when is the same dynamic on a deeper level and i maintain the reason the country is the way we have with the National Debt and in afghanistan that with started at home that were not real people and people are blind and deaf to us and how do you change it . Im not going to have a full answer to that. I want you to keep on thinking. It shouldnt be a fly by answer. It should be keep on thinking. No. And i think that one of the things that i really noticed about just try fing to figure o what was it finally got the 19th amendment through. And you really, you could point to certain factors like entering world war i and the years of mobilization, political mobilization and the militants of the National Womens party and it all konl comcomes togeth sometimes there has to be the constellation of preconditions that make Something Like that happen. And with getting votes for the direct of columbia, youve had several moments where you got it, you at least got it to go to the states and didnt have that forward. But the suffragists would say, they would say on ward. Just keep trying. So, yes. One of my arguments that were like colonials and rest of you will are like cocolonials like coalcoholics and we indian to find that kind of argument and apply it to everyone. I think you have a lot of support in this room. Yes. What suggestions would you have for how we could 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. Youve thought about the Suffrage Movement as 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 celebration. 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 this might be a moment where we really could be having public conversations about womens history and women in politics. And this is something that i really wanted to be able to encourage and to participate in. Because one of the things that ive always tried to do as a historian, ive mainly written on 20th century history and the history of feminism, is to try and keep my historical work in conversations 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 act vix and feminism is an important discussion to be having today. I think right now maybe it is just because im so deep in the suffrage story, i just keep thinking about the importance of the vote. And 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 at times it is hard. Because you think, well why does my vote matter. And there have been points in many life where ive thought, is this really making a difference. But i just think we have to keep trying. And so for me it comes back a lot to Voting Rights. And i think we have plenty of areas where it is clear that we that Voting Rights are under attack. And that that to me would be the highest priority. Do you think the passage of the era is important. I sure wish it had passed back in the 1970s and we had it on the books. Whether, with all of the pressing problems were facing today, whether that i would put at the top of the list, im not sure any more. I mean, luckily someone earlier mentioned ruth bader ginsburg, the laws have changed in ways that women have, through the 14th amendment, many of the protections that would have come from an equal rights amensment and there are state eras that are in force. But the main reason for do it is it is such a symbolic statement of support and so im of two minds. But i 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 terrell, im a native washingtonian and those of us live here know there is a terrell place right outside. I walked by it the other day. The old company if you want to talk about that. But she had the additional issue, she was a native of d. C. We have no home rule in d. C. Particularly in her time. No Voting Rights for anything until 1964. So how did she had more tan a full plate and how did she balance and work into the intersectionality of black rights and womens rights and d. C. Home rule rights. Well, i think in some ways the answer is it is the strengths of an intersectional vision where you cant separate out any of those things. And that one of the reasons ive enjoyed so much learning more about africanamerican suffragist, is they often had a much broader approach to voting. It wasnt just the vote. It was thinking about the role of africanamericans in the Larger Society and how to uplift communities and families and challenge racism. So there is a breadth to their vision and this is one element of it. But we keep coming back to that question of d. C. Votelessness and how she might have done that. I think for her, she probably saw it as just all part of a larger struggle and as some of you know she kept at it her whole life. I love the picture of her from the 1940s where shes protesting segregation in in accommodations here and here she is a woman i think in her 80s with her purse, looking very respectable but out there on the picket lines as she had been her whole life. And i just find the commitment of women like that, i find it very inspiring and i think there is a way in which by framing these issues broadly, it always helps. So shes someone i was very glad to be able to include her. Anything else . Okay. Oh, one more. All right. Sorry. Dont trip. Im a little shy. I want to know what you think about the idea of mandatory voting like in certain countries. Do you think it hinders or helps . I cannot see any scenario in this country where we could have mandatory voting. But so i would say no. I do think it is an interesting question that really hasnt gotten as much attention as it should. There are two thing that ive seen in the Suffrage Centennial. One is we do need engage the antisuffragists. There were a lot of them, including women, that said that we dont need or want the vote and that is a very powerful statement that was used against the suffragists. But there is also a larger trend that sociologists and political scientists wrote about is the nonvoters, those who are not registered and who do not vote and comprise a huge part of the population. And i do hope that as were thinking about womens struggle for the vote and what it meant, that we could think about waying of enlarging the conversation to think who is not voting and why and is there a way of bringing them in. And so that would be one of the questions that i would really want to put on agenda. Yes. Hi. Thanks for your work. It is wonderful. And im looking forward to reading your book. But i was wondering if you cover in the book or your research the intersection between the prochoice movement and how they do go hand by hand and to the present time and the place we find ourselves right now with the states going the way theyre going in terms of the prochoice movement. Thank you. Well that is and someone asked me earlier about the important 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 the height of the Suffrage Movement. You have a parallel development with the beginning of the Birth Control movement with Margaret Sanger and somebody im blanking on her name. Margaret sanger will do 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 it was having to overcome. But another thing it shows is that it is very important when we use a phrase like women that we remember that women is far too broad a category to be able to include everyone. And going back to that earliyer question about the sense of the International Feminisms and as women come together to end war and improve the world, it isnt quite easy and it doesnt really work that way. And i think that the challenge, when youre mobilizing women, is both to identify the commonalities and themes that could be agreed on but recognizing the differences and that is something that is going to be our challenge as we go forward. As we must. On ward, that is what i always say. So thank you for coming. [ applause ] every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging in to class with most College Campuses closed, watch professors transfer to a virtual setting to engage with students. Boreba chuf. Freedom of the press, madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is the freedom to print or publish thing but not what we refer to institutionally as the press. On cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. This week marks the 100th swrrs of the womens right to vote in the u. S. Certified in the 19th amendment to the u. S. Constitution. Coming up, a look at how that amendment passed. Next, the womens Suffrage Centennial Commission Overview of this historic decision by state and country female leaders on the future of the 19th amendment by a look at the decade leading up to passage of the womens vote. Later, a look at lesser known suffrage leaders. Up next, Hillary Clinton author elaine weiss and carl a hayden talk about the fight for women to be able to vote. This week marks the 100th anve