Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts Votes For Women Exhibit Part 1 20240712

Gallery. An exhibit marking the cen ten val of the 19th amendment using images of early suffrage leaders, miss lemay shows how the movement interacted with the abolitionist and tetraum presen movement. Welcome to the National Portrait gallery. Im kate lemay, the curator of votes for women, a portrait of persistence. For this exhibition i worked about 3 1 2 years researching and teaching myself this history and finding all the objects. In the exhibition we have 124 objects of which there are 63 portraits and i was hoping to commemorate the 19th amendment and tell the history of the 19th amendment and how women lobbied to get this amendment passed and ratified, but also ask questions about it and ask what does it do and what does it not do. And why 1965 and the vote rights act is considered another sort of part two of the 19th amendment. If youll follow me i will take you through the exhibition and show you a few objects that tell the history. Lets go. Were in the first gallery of the exhibition and i mentioned that we have portraits that drive the narrative, but i also wanted to include in the exhibition pieces of art like the one were looking at which is titled the war at home by a female artist, Lily Martin Spencer and she was active in 1860s and i wanted to include this painting because it portrays young children, so you have the four kids, one is a baby, but the three kids are celebrating, and mother who is reading the New York Times and then you have a servant or helper who is cleaning the dishes. What i liked about this painting is that its from 1866 and it depicts sort of the civil war and the battle of vicksburg kind of looking back. Spencer decided to portray this moment in time by looking at the lives of women and the women are very serious but the children are very much engaged in the celebration because they dont understand how severe and difficult that battle of vicksburg was. Vicksburg, during the battle, the men on both sides of the Confederate Army and the union army starved. Because the city was surrounded and embargoed. Why am i talking about the civil war in a suffrage exhibition. Thats a good question. What i wanted to do was to demonstrate the divide between the north and south as well as between the races africanamerican and whites because this plays a big part in shaping the Suffrage Movement, especially when the 14th amendment was passed and ratified in 1869. It includeded the word male and this is the first time in the history of the constitution that gender was specified and it delivered a very severe blow to the Suffrage Movement where women were trying to advocate for their right to vote. If they werent considered citizens, which what is the 14th amendment does, it granted citizenship to anyone born in the United States, then wihen te 15th amendment enfranchised american citizens it only enfranchised half the population. So this was a huge divide. The Suffrage Movement disagreed on how to handle it and thats when they split between each other, so susan b. Anthony and cady stanton wanted to advocate for suffrage by excluding black women where lucy stone was trying to advocate for universal suffrage. Africanamericans were suffrages and if you will come with me now were going to talk about one of the major africanamerican suffrages whose name was Francis Ellen Watkins harper and she gave a speech at a Suffrage Convention in which she said, were all bound up together, and so she was trying to explain to people that shes also an africanamerican and a woman, sort of combined. Its bound up together, its intersectional. Black women really couldnt just sit around and let people take away their rights and not advocate for them, so they became active in Church Groups and they really worked on learning how to speak in public, understanding their rights, understanding how to get those rights by their local communities, by being involved in the local community Church Groups, and thats a really interesting topic that not a lot of people have gone into or understand as much. People do understand that the Suffrage Movement was divided but they dont understand that africanamericans remained very active and so this exhibition endeavors to make sure that we include africanamericans and their stories, like sara parker ramon whose portrait is on the far wall. She was an activist in Antislavery Society of massachusetts and she took her activism abroad. Thats another really interesting story, is how american suffragists were not only focused in the United States but they were also active elsewhere in europe especially. Last what were going to do is talk about seneca falls and what is being referred to as the myth of seneca falls. This is a portrait of Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony. He captured them together, you know, anthony is pointing to a book and theyre very dignified and this is what would be like a publicity shot today. They were using this portrait to represent them to a wider audience. They didnt even meet until 1851, and so seneca falls, as most of us probably recall from our history books in high school, was a gathering, the First National convention, in 1848 in new york in seneca falls and they cady stanton and others penned the declaration of sentiments which is really the beginning document, one of the first documents put into writing that women were advocating for the vote. But what i hope that this exhibition explains by going right back to 1832, women were getting together and talking and advocating for their rights, their Citizenship Rights, well before 1848, and so suffrage just didnt appear out of thin air. It actually has a long history that others would argue starts well before 1832, and so thats a great intellectual debate i encourage you to look into. I brought us up to 1869 and then now were going to move into the next gallery in 1870. Were in the second gallery and i wanted to make sure to include representation of the Womens Christian Temperance Union because it helps us get into at lot of the different issues that american women were facing. Temperance was a Large Organization that had about 150,000 women across the United States involved and they would gather and meet in what was called chapters and so in 1873, the Womens Christian Temperance Union actually endorsed the suffrage cause, so all of a sudden suffragists expanded their membership and their reach by 150,000 members, which is an incredible amount of people for that era. So at the top you see the womens holy war and whats great about this very active, energetic print is that theres a woman on a horse and shes like a joan of arc figure and shes leaping over these really well marked barrels of alcohol. So you can see gin, whisky, beer, rum. Behind her are her compatriots, women who are wielding axes and hatchets and part of the temperance league. In the name of god and humanity, that reads the banner that one of them was carrying, so the battle was against alcohol and when women were married to alcoholics, they became a very vulnerable population. So they were organizing amongst each other in ways that helped them not only get support, but also understand their rights. And what they could do to advocate for their rights. On the bottom, you see the oratorical prize and it says Womens Christian Temperance Union at the top and i wanted to include this little medal because i was curious to know how women were teaching themselves to speak in public. So if you think of like toastmasters of today, thats a good analogy of what they were doing in the Womens Christian Temperance Union, because they were actually awarding prizes to women who were speaking and having little contests in order to award them for good speeches. And, of course, they were talking about christianity and temperance, so thats 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 cause was the word about it was being spread through speeches. A lot of women were going on whats called the lecture circuit and they were speaking in auditoriums at the time and they were being paid lots of money. Analyze best dickinson earned 20,000 annually in 1873. She made more money than mark twain. I think thats kind of an interesting comparison because whose name do we remember today even though Anne Elizabeth dickinson was more famous than mark twain at the time. Next were going to talk about some of the scandals that the suffragists got involved in. Victoria wood hall was well ahead of her time. She started her own business as a wall street banker with her sister tennessee. She advocated for free love, which means sex outside of marriage, which was definitely outside of the norms for women in the 1870s. She also ran for president on the thirdparty ticket 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 you werent supposed to vote as a woman so here she is, you can see her, shes pointing her finger in the air and asserting her right to vote. Shes just dropped the record of her vote into the ballot box and lots of women at this time were doing what would be referred to today as illegal voting. It was explicitly illegal for women to vote so Victoria Wood hall was one of thousands across the country who sought to change the system by going out, voting, getting arrested, not paying the fine, then serving a sentence in jail so that then they can appeal through the court system and they tried to change the laws that way, but they failed. There was another severe blow that was dealt 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 up through the court system but then the Supreme Court found that women should not vote legally in the United States. We were discussing how Victoria Woodhall asserted her right to vote by placing a ballot in the ballot box. Here we have a different type of ballot box. This one is made out of metal, whereas the one in the Victoria Woodhall portrait was made out of wood. What i like is that it says womens ballots on it. So its very much in your face that women were voting separately and most likely not on equal terms for equal types of suffrage. They could maybe vote for municipal suffrage or School Suffrage or in some states before 1920, about 15 i believe were allowed women to vote in the president ial elections. This box is from elwood, indiana, one of the states that allowed women before 1920 to vote in the president ial elections. It was made by the barnard and company out of st. Louis and they made these boxes between 1860 and 1920. I think its really an kind of piece an interesting kind of piece of culture that illuminates what womens rights were like and what it looked like and felt like. Were looking at a caricature of Victoria Woodhall. Done by tombs thomas mass in 1872. And this exemplifies some of the struggles that women were going through at the time. So if you see this is a caricature. Victoria woodhall has she was known for wearing like victory rolls on top of her head but the cartoonist turned them into devil horns and fitted her with devil wings and shes become a demon. Then shes walking away from a woman whos looking over her shoulder as if, you know, maybe a little undecided that shes made her decision. Shes going up this mountain and you can tell one, two, three children shes carrying as well as the alcoholic husband strapped to her back. And so this exemplifies the choices that women had. Either you throw in your stock with somebody like Victoria Woodhall who was advocating for free love at the time and that is a very, very soft term for sex outside of marriage. She was advocating that women should enjoy sex and have sex outside of marriage and why get married therefore. Why have this burden of the ill husband and all these children without any support. So Victoria Woodhall was trying to promote sort of choices that women had. Of course at the time women werent definitely werent supposed to be having sex and definitely werent supposed to be enjoying it. This is very much a taboo subject. Thomas really captures that in this character of Victoria Woodhall as this demon lady. So were looking at a portrait of velvet ann lockwood. She was the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court in 1880. She was arguing for cherokee land rights. She became an Expert Witness for native americans in subsequent trials. What i like about this portrait is now dignified she looks. Her hair is bound up in this beautiful coif. She has her lace collar on and it really represents her as this respectable woman. Because she was a suffragist and they were constantly being accused of being outside the bounds of femininity. And so she was actually the first woman to campaign for a presidency. I mentioned Victoria Woodhall who was the first woman to actually name herself as a candidate for presidency but she couldnt campaign because she was serving a jail sentence, and yet she had founded what was called the equal rights party, so this is like a Democrat Party and like the republican party, but its a thirdparty ticket. The suffragists were running for president on whats called a thirdparty ticket. And its really thanks to victoria that velvet anne was able to run in 1884, then in 1888. So shes a really good example of sort of what women could do. She was a lawyer. She was advocating for rights in the Supreme Court. She was also running for president. Over here we have a lovely portrait of Abigail Scott donnaway, an oregon suffragist, active trying to persuade male legislators to change the laws of the western states and she was based in oregon and she founded the new northwest, which was a newspaper in 1871 that advocated for womens rights and so a lot of people think that suffrage was only based in the northeast. But in fact, it was very, very active across the United States. There are lots of mormon women advocating for suffrage in utah and wyoming famously became a first state to endorse suffrage for women in 1869 then utah later in 1870. So theres a nationwide approach to this movement. It was probably one of the longest reform movements in the United States in American History, and also one of the most widespread. Were in the third gallery now. This is entitled the new woman. It begins in 1892 and goes right up to 1912. The new woman was educated, she was out on her bicycle. She was out and about, not in the home, you know, physically active, and this puzzled a lot of people. As you can see in this depiction of the farmer, his wife and possibly, probably his daughter. The new woman in her riding habit, shes wearing what looks like bloomers or pants, shes asked them for a glass of water and so they, of course, oblige, but as shes drinking the glass of water theyre thinking to themselves, who, what is this person . Is she a woman . Is she, you know what is she doing . Why is she outside of the home . You can really kind of tell the confusion that a lot of americans had when women started to advocate for their rights, but then also enact their rights. Enact their freedom to move around in society. And to go to school and to get educated. So magazines were picking up on this. Leslies was owned by Miriam Leslie who had married frank leslie who had died so she changed her name to become mrs. Frank leslie in order to assume the authority that it took to publish a magazine like this. And so you can see the use of the color. This is women riding open aired carriages in a parade. And so shes obviously carrying the banner that says votes for women. It speaks to some of the privilege behind the movement so a lot of wealthy white women were the ones that were out there advocating in parades like this, in part because the parades excluded africanamericans, but they were doing they were doing well in getting the word out and so Miriam Leslie changed her magazine to make sure that it included illustrations like this. If you study leslie after she took over, you can see a clear sort of trajectory into the feminist causes of the era, which is kind of interesting. And finally, were going to look at an example of antisuffrage and this is from puck. This is from 1894 and 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, the referendum failed. This sort of exemplifies what was happening in this era where the suffragists had taken on a state by state approach. They were no longer going for this sort of amendment change that had been proposed in the 1870s or judiciary changes, they were trying to do a fullcourt press state by state but it wasnt going very well and it was very frustrating. Puck is not supporting the womens cause here because you can see it says a zell cher from womens suffrage how can she vote when the fashions are so wide and the voting booths are so nare prop its depicting this woman as a fanciful, not serious, if you will. She cant figure out how to dress herself much less fit into a voting booth so how could women see themselves in this role of having a political voice. Theres a lot of antisuffrage 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 i was more interested in how africanamerica africanamericans were really involved and what the strategies were in the movement. So were looking at two examples of womens Voting Rights in colorado. I wanted to highlight colorado because its the first state where suffragists were able to lobby and convince the male legislators to change their state constitution, to make sure that women could vote. If that makes sense because when wyoming was a territory, they sort of grandfathered in the right to vote when it became a state. Women didnt have to lobby wyoming legislators after it became a state to get the right to vote. It was already kind of written into their constitution. The colorado example is pretty interesting. If you come in close, you can see the three Party Tickets and then at the bottom of the ballot you can see this is what they voted with. You can see equal suffrage approved or equal suffrage not approved. Once colorado women achieved the right to vote, they then, of course, elected female legislators. This is a portrait of three of the four female legislators from the era from the 1893, 1894 and its louise kerwynn, louise journal and agnes riddle. So in the back you have three portraits of africanamerican, ida on the left, anna in the middle, and Mary Church Terrell on the right. These are studio portraits made of these women while they were students at owe Berlin College which was founded by abolitionists which was one of the first liberal arts school in the United States to accept africanamerican students. What i love about these portraits is how young they are and you know that they each went on to lead great lives as activists, as women that were advocating for Citizenship Rights for all people of the United States, but particularly for africanamericans. Especially Anna Julia Cooper was a teacher at the M Street School in washington, d. C. , which is now the dounbar high school. She was living the life of someone who truly believed giving liberal Arts Education to africanamericans, as did Mary Church Terrell, who in 1893 founded the National Colored womens association, but she was also teaching at the m street colored school, the Dunbar High School in washington, d. C. What i like about these two women is that they were taking on sort of the responsibility to assimilate africanamericans in the postcivil war reconstruction area in a way that would give them a white collar access. They became, once they went to the Dunbar High School, they went to college, they were business people, leaders, other teachers or nurses, and so they embodied that argument of we bodys and booker t. Washington that these two men had been having as to how to best assimilate africanamericans during the reconstruction. So booker t. Washington advocated for Technical Training whereas deboys advocated for liberal arts training. These women were walking the walk, but theyre less recognized than the men, and they are very much equal to both of these men in the ways in which they were strategizing how to make life better for africanamericans during a very difficult time. These three women are in the exhibition because they were not advocating for only suffrage but advocating for other things outside the parameters of the single issue focus. Africanamerican women were doing lots and lot of activism. Even though they were still excluded from the National American womens Suffrage Association which the two fractions we were talking about in the beginning in 1870 when the Suffrage Movement divided, they had come back together in 1892, and so they then moved forward with great force and good strategies. Theyre doing still the state by state strategy, but theyre also excluding africanamericans the whole time. So my point is these women were not just sitting around you know waiting on the sidelines. They were being very, very active in and of themselves within their own groups and their own societies and their own local communities. Were standing in front of a banner thats carried by ann in 1911. The writing is actually an excerpt of scripture called the glorious line written in 1871 by the british dean of canterbury. What i liked about this banner is how it has that sense of spiritually that i think was so important to the suffragists during the first up through the 19 teens and it also has that sense of emerging and onward and making progress forward. So i wanted to make sure we includeded a couple banners that we borrowed from the National Womens party because they really speak to the thinking thats behind the movement and point to the activism. This actually concludes the first half of the exhibition. We have covered the movement up through 1912. Weve covered the first generation of suffragists and from this point on were going to discover that suffragists still havent achieved the right to vote, women still dont have the right to vote in the United States, but well trace how they switched tactics and really achieved progress in a very comparatively small amount of time up through 1920 and then talk about the changes and the ongoing battle through 1965 in the second part. This was the first of a twopart tour of the National Portrait gallery votes for women exhibit marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. You can watch this and other american artifacts programs by visiting our website at cspan. Org history. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3 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 due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gorbachev did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press which well get to later, i should mention madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is, indeed, freedom to print things and publish things and it is not a freedom for what we refer to now as the press. On cspan 3, every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Next, a visit to the smi smithsonians National Portrait gallery. In the second of a two part program, American History tv is given a guided tour marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. Miss lemay explores the National Womens Party Tactics under the leadership of alice paul. Hi, im kate lemay, the curator of votes for women, a portrait of persistence, which is an exhibition on view at the