That just a minute. I have to start out, full disclosure, and say that when johanna wrote me about this event a few months ago and said is there any chance youd be free . I wrote her immediately back and said absolutely. I would love to see you. The book sounds great. I cant wait to see it. We go back to the white house in the early 1980s when both of us were just out of middle school. Well put it this way, we were early on in our career as journalists. I think we bonded back then, even though i was in broadcast and she was in front. We always kind of gravitated towards each other. I was such a huge fan of her reporting and she was such a respected journalist. Johanna, youve gone on to even greater things. She went on to earn her ph. D. As youve just heard, she is a scholar and resident. Shes done extraordinary historical work. For those of you have not had a chance to read it or peek at it, you are in for a treat. Johanna, without going any longer on all the professes, just why havent you changed in 30 years . laughs you covered the white house, you cover the state department, you covered the white house the congress. I want to do a quick background. How did you find your way doing that to being interested in history . We worked for the l. A. Times. Well, i was very happy as a journalist. I loved what i was doing. Can you all hear me first of all . But in 2000 late 2008 when the economy was collapsing, the Los Angeles Times where i worked decided to close its washington bureau. I took a buy out, as many journalists have in the last few decades, and i started freelancing. The Los Angeles Times called me back within a month and asked if i would do their Political Blog from washington in the Morning Hours before anyone in los angeles was up. So if anything happened in washington in the morning, it was mine. Im sure many of you remember this. One day the obamas got a dog. His name was beau and he was a portuguese water dog. Of course, everyone is going to have this tidbit. My job as a blogger is to think how can i distinguish . So i thought and thought and i did a blog post that was titled obamas get a black and white dog. I did a rift on post racial by racial tendency and what it meant for the country that we now had a black and white dog. laughs this thing went viral for about 15 minutes. The editor called me several hours later and said this was fabulous. Lets have more of this. This is fantastic. First, i said i have to find something more substantive to do. The dog lovers here may resent you. Thank you. That is the truth. We then started brainstorming about what i could do that i loved. I had always loved history. My father was a great history buff and gave me the bug. So i decided and an advanced age to go back to school and get my ph. D. In history. This is my first book as a historian. Its also, for me, its the first test of my conviction that you can marry the deep Archival Research imperative of the historian with the narrative skills of a journalist. Why did you want to write about these women and the suffragists . This wasnt just the suffragists movement, this was an aspect of the movement that has gotten virtually no attention. You know, i went back to school i knew very little about the Suffrage Movement. Its not like they thought it in school. So it was one of the topics that interested me while i was back in school. I was first going to write about suffrage in the 19th century when there was this terrible schism between the two branches of the movement. Between Elizabeth Katie stanton and susan be anthony on one side and lucy stone and her husband Henry Blackwell on the other. Stone and blackwell, after the civil war, they are staunch abolitionists. They believe that the black man should be enfranchised first. That the 15th amendment which gives blackmon the right to vote should be ratified and then women can fight for their vote. Susan bee and Elizabeth Katie if theyre going into the constitution, were going with them or elsewhere fighting it. For almost 30 years, they had rival organizations. It was deeply damaging for the cause. That was going to be my dissertation topic. I was going to prove that they were horrible people and they had ruined the movement and so forth. But it was so depressing. My faculty adviser has kindly come here today and he can remember that i walked into his office and i said i want to start thinking about what finally worked. I want to look forward to the positive news that women finally got the vote. So i started researching the early 20th century to see what was going on. I started reading newspaper accounts and i tripped over these women. Nobody had noticed them. They were there, they were sort of too famous to notice. So you didnt know about them when you started this thing . Is that right . No. I was reading newspapers from the 19 hundreds there would be occasional references to advance where these facie hubert wealthy celebrities socialites were coming out for suffrage. What happened when they joined suffrage in 1908, again, this had been a movement that had sort of been in the doldrums. Its languishing. Its considered a cause of the intellectual fringe. Theres various cold words. Theres cold word for lesbian fringe or radical fringe, but clearly not the mainstream. Then come these Society Women and they are covered already. They are celebrity figures that are covered by the press for they their decor, their clothes, their travel, their entertainments. They are just over the top, which is one reason it is such a fun read. But when they came out four votes for women, electrified Public Opinion. Its sort of interested the mainstream. You would be like Angelina Jolie embracing you when and suddenly you and refugees get but thats what happened, i believe. What was the moment touching back on your point about race, that comes up again, as a turns up in what you write about. What was the moment let me put it this way. When did you realize they were consequential enough to devote this much attention to . What made you realize that . Im not sure. I just liked their stories. laughs i just thought they were yeah, i just thought they were delicious. It was the journalist and me that resonated first. As i studied them i noticed the consequences of their involvement. You could really see it. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book as about a woman named florence nightingale. What was her last name . Not the other. Not the other. She was a canadian immigrant. She moved to new york. She opened a beauty business. The reason i cant remember her last name is that she changed her name to elizabeth ardern. Elizabeth ardern was never political. One day she shocked her staff by leaving her staff and going out to join one of the suffrage parades that was iconic. You may have seen photos of it. It was iconic. Along fifth avenue. When she got back her staffers were like, we did not know you supported the cause . She said i dont, but our clients do. laugher thats when i knew they were consequential. Talk to us a little bit about the instigators of this. The first women from the Socialite Group class, whatever we want to call it, who were brave enough, bold enough, ahead of their times enough to stick their necks out and say im going to do something about this . The first one and there was a first one, was catherine nikki. She was the daughter that the descendant of great old money in new york. She marries new money. Have silver mining fortune of nacky and his money. They have this existence. They have a place in manhattan. They rent every season in newport. They have 628 acres of a state in roslyn on long island. Catherine is beautiful. She is stunningly beautiful. She is covered for everything she does. When she decides to run for a seat on the school board of roslyn it is a shock to everyone. Two years later she decides shes going to fight for women s rights to vote. It is electrifying. Lucy stone who i mentioned before from the 19th century, her daughter alice wrote this beautiful description of what happens when nacky joins the effort. She said you know when elissas mother lucy was campaigning for womens rights and against slavery in the 18 forties, men hissed. In the audience, right . The hissed. He threw right next. And alice was just beside herself that now nacky speaks. People are clambering for tickets. They cannot wait to hear her and they ares suffrage has a spring in its step finally. People are excited about it again. I believe that is really one of the assets they bring. The other asset they bring we can develop this later, but i think there what we would call an obsession clearly their fascination with fashion trend was an asset they brought to the campaign. They understood that if you want to sell something to the mainstream, he had to presented and such a way that it would be appealing as you would in any consumer product. Nature eat it the campaign as if it were a consumer effort. I think i was one of her great contributions. Way ahead of their day. Talk a little bit about how they were received by the established. What was the movement then . They came out of left field, right field, i dont know what you want to call it. They were out of the field. A field that most of us will never understand. The one thing can i tell a story . Thats what we love. One of my Great Research adventures was when i i went to many archives and libraries across the country, because these women left bread crumbs everywhere. Or some of those libraries . If they had all left their materials at the library of congress it wouldve been much easier, but some of them left it at this lessons are library. The Huntington Library in pasadena. So this was on a trip to los angeles. There are a few collections i wanted to look at it ucla. One of them was an oral history transcript. Mrs. Mackies secretary. I was pretty excited because as a journalist, to interview people all the time, as a historian, you learn to interview documents. You can ask them questions. They dont always answer. I was very excited. I get there. A request the file. I open it. There is one page. It says this transcript is missing. I dont know if every if it review have ever seen as 60 something woman have a hissy fit laugher the librarians escorted me out of the research from. Truth. They summoned this marvelous lady ahead of the Oral History Department at ucla. I explain the problem. Teresa burnett. She said i will promise to look for this. We will Commission Research a resistant. We will scour the library. We will try to get you the transcript. But because of the rules of World History at the time this interview was done which was in the 1960s, so this woman was interviewed in the 1960s about advance in the 19 tense. We cant send you a pdf. We will have to come back to california. I am a student on a little budget. Two weeks later i get an email from her and she says im really sorry, we never found the transcript, but we did find the tapes. She said we are going to digitize it. We will put it on a cd. You can come out here with your laptop and you can listen. You can take notes. This was a great blessing in my life, because i got to hear the voice of someone who knew one of what i have come to call my ladies. It is about as close as a historian can come to touching history. The thing that tickled me about ethel, ethel was an immigrant from hungary. She talked about mackie and how she had influenced her to dress. She said mackie dressed her. She said she never addressed overdressed mean. She dressed me as a secretary. She spoiled me for cheap clothes. Mackie took her on family visits twice a year to paris. She was treated to a finishing school. Refined living. What was interesting about and that mackie understood the rule that fashion played in getting people including the reporters because that is what they want to report on. What mrs. Mackie was wearing. Imagine the press . I cant. She said the reporters never left one of our events without a statement from mrs. Mackie about the womens Suffrage Movement. The other thing that was marvelous about listening to it instead of reading it is that the historian was interviewing ethel not because she had been mrs. Mackies secretary, but because leader and life she marries Harry Hopkins. Harry hopkins, as many of you know went on to be fdrs key aides. A historian keeps trying to push her to talk about harry. At the keeps wanting to talk about mrs. Mackie. She finally sort of connects both of them by telling him, i just want you to understand that the reason Harry Hopkins married me is that when he met me he did not see a hungarian immigrant. He saw a lady of refinement. Fascinating. Quickly, go back to the question of how did the movement receive these women . It was mixed. Yay harry stanton, saw early that they were going to be key to one of the emerging aspects of the movement, which was a broad based cross class coalition. Blanche had already reached out to working class women and factory workers, immigrants. Professional women and teachers and librarians. Middle class club women. Now she could add this piece and he idea of these parades on fifth avenue was really to demonstrate that all kinds of women wanted the vote. It wasnt any longer the interest of a few. I just want to say in about five minutes. We will take questions from all of you. Start thinking about questions you want to ask. How did when did it click . Youve got so many wonderful stories and hear about the tactics. The rivalry between these women. Weve heard wonderful anecdotes about that. When did it click . When it was it clear that these women who later did not get the attention or appreciation that you point out they rightfully deserved . When was it clear that they made a difference . I think it was clear by the mid 19 tens. 1915. They were such a staple of the movement. Actually by 1912. In 1912 this middle portrait oliver element. That was mrs. Mackies great rival. The fact that two women of the social class with both want to be queen bee of suffrage was kind of interesting. But in the early 19 tense, harriet blanched tries to get them to join the parade. The parades at that time are controversial. First of all a parade is seen as a very male, almost military kind of function. Secondly, the idea that women would be walking in the streets was offensive to them. Mackie was horrified. Bill mott retreated to her home in long island. There was a great deal of fear, not just among the elite women but among the middle class women, that they would be taken for radicals or streetwalkers. In 1912, and maybe this is the turning point, its decided that Public Opinion had shifted and would accept women of her standing walking in the streets. She led a contingent in that years parade. Several journalists commented afterwards that the push and she gave the movement, the public acceptance, it was a singular contribution. I dont know if enhancers. It does. There are so many fascinating questions. How hard was it for the intellectual, the intellectuals of the movement, to accept the idea that it took this appeal to broaden the popular appeal of the movement. I think it was very hard. They were accustomed to doing things their own way. There was also a great deal of tension over tactics. There was a mainstream movement called the National American womens suffrage association, with 2 million members at its peak. It was the goliath. They were very much mainstream. They did legislative appeals. They did petitions. They courted the president , wanting to get his endorsement. There was a smaller sort of ragtag group of radicals headed by alice paul called the National Womens party. In 1917, alice paul started picketing the white house. We are at war in europe and a lot of people find this with an air per se ding pervading this is society, its very controversial. So there is this tension over tactics. I wear this pin, this is a jailhouse door pin that was made for all the suffragettes, suffragists who went to jail for the right to vote. To me, its a meditation on the difference between moderate and radical and makes me sort of ponder which one is more effective at bringing social change. Maybe all of these things contribute. Maybe the fashion ability of the gilded ones and the mainstream legislative appeals of the mainstream suffrage activists and the radicals pushing us further out about our comfort zone. Thats one of the injuring questions. Im about to turn it over to the audience. Why do you think that these women were essentially forgotten for so long . I dont know that the answer to that. I dont know. I would be curious what readers think about why. To me, they are compelling figures. As i mentioned, not just for their substantive role but for their delightful excesses. I dont know why theyve been ignored. I think there were agendas. After suffragists finally enacted at the federal level in 1920, a lot of memoirs get written and a lot of papers are burned, which surprised me, some of the main figures in the Suffrage Movement burned their papers. A lot of major players. So theres a lot we dont know sorry, but i think there is a settling of scores. These women were resented. They were wealthy. They were autocratic. These were not little delicate creatures. One of the things i learned from ethel was that these women were accustomed to running huge states. They were business women. There were executives. They had huge steps to run. When they got into the Suffrage Movement, for the most part they did not join an already existing movement or organization. They formed their own. They wanted to be president. Thats a fascinating piece. All right, questions . I have more, but i want to give you all a chance. We are a bit more than halfway into the hour. Sorry there are also to microphones. I think theres one over here, or just when there. Please step up to the microphone. I wonder if you know why they burned their papers . Thats one question. I also wonder if they used their money to support anybody else his Suffrage Movement . Specifically if they had any connection to the radicals. I also wonder who. inaudible wait a minute, thats a lot of questions. You can come back in a minute. When i went back to school, i would often ask my husband do you think i have a brain cells to do this . Can you keep track of these questions . Concerning the burning of the papers, it has a long legacy. Susan b. Anthony burned her papers. Theres a feeling that im going to leave my biography and then im going to burn everything that might contradict it. The other question has to do, did they endorse other causes . This is a very important question. I had a mentor early on in the process at harvard. He is considered the father of the history of capitalism. Hes into big history, macro history. He was interested in my work because he had written about the money to men of new york, but he had not mentioned the women. So we arranged to have coffee once when i was up at cambridge. He said to me, how many of these women do you have . Im thinking like a journalist. I said way too many. I have 24 already. Im thinking how am i going to tell the story, we have a narrative, make it compelling, like downtown abby on steroids. He said, what can you get to 100 . I said, well, you know, i probably could because i had been reading newspaper accounts of the day and at the bottom of the newspaper copy would be in attendance of the event. I had been ignoring them because i had already had too many. I said, yeah i think i can get to 100. He said, well you need to get to 200. You need to find out everything you can about them. What church they belong to. What Political Party they affiliate with. What causes they support. What clubs they joined. Whether that money was new or old. Whether they were divorced. Whether they had children. Whether they wrote. This took six months out of the research. I stopped going on trips and i just did the spreadsheet. One of the things it taught me was how they are not a monolith. I do want to say that sometimes all they started with in the morning was description of someone mrs. Husbands name. That was all i had. It took me sometimes all day. I looked at census records, birth records, death notices, wedding announcements, and i was so triumphant when i got her first name in her maiden name. I felt i had excavated these people. What the spreadsheet taught me was how myriad were their motives. You really cant talk about, and on the question of radicalism, three of these 200 extremely wealthy elite women did join alice pauls more radical organization. They went to jail. One of them was a great art collector. She was good friends with. And her husband was the president of the sugar trust which the government eventually busted up. They went they had a lot of money and had an incredible collection that now undergirds much of the metropolitan museums collections. She went to jail. Alice paul asked her to come to washington to light a figure of Woodrow Wilson in effigy. Shes not a kid. At the time, shes 63 years old and she comes she never quite lights the match. In fact, she says in a later article that if i had managed to light him on fire, i probably would have gotten a life sentence. Rather than paying five dollar find, she elects to go to prison. This radicalized is her. She writes poignantly about i was in jail thinking where is my uncle sam . Thats why i cant say they were all of one mind. Subject for another book, or two, or three. Next question. What was the impact on their marriages that you could see . Thank you. Thank you so much. They were all married, is that right . Most of them were, yes. I thank you for the question because i always forget to mention i have a chapter in the book on the men. It is called mere men, because that is what the newspapers of the day called them. It was a derisive term. The men who are helping the women. They are not really men. They endear themselves to me because they took such a beating from their colleagues. At the 1912 suffrage parade, there was 1000 men marching under the immensely for womens suffrage and they took more heckling than any other contingent of the parade. They were called all kinds of names, which i can let you imagine. What was the question . That was it. Most of them were husbands of the women. But some of the husbands had trouble . Yes, quite a few. Quite a few had trouble. Some marriages faltered over it. Yes. I believe that the amendment for womens voting was passed, was finally ratified in 1919. No, it was passed in 1919, it was ratified in 1920. So it was really a bad time for progressive things. We had the palm rates. We had all the germans being lynched during the war. We had the ku klux klan coming in. How was it possible to get such a progressive thing passed . Good question. The flip side of that is that it was the end of the progressive era. It was a time of many reform causes. All of them in that period seemed to attract a cross clasp coalition. A broad tent. So the movements to clean up city hall, to rig City Governance of political bosses, laughs i know him. Its okay. My view is just sort of the flip side. They were the tail end of a progressive area that saw many reform causes over all kinds of issues. There is even some causes even earlier. There is an effort to get women to stop wearing feathers in their hats because its killing off the bird population. Theres all kinds of Reform Efforts that are going on. In fact, max eastman, was the editor of the masses in Greenwich Village and one of the men mentioned in the chapter, he was a socialist an advocate of free love. The whole Birth ControlMovement Comes out of this era. He said that the womens right to vote was the great fight for freedom in my generation. We have a special guest. We have Betsy Griffith whos the author of a book on Elizabeth Cady stanton. She was a nasty woman. Arent we all . I teach history in politics as well. I hope you will be against one of my classes. Suffrage passes because by 1919 women were voting in enough states and controlled enough Electoral College votes that the congress is going to switch rather than have women both them out of office. But there are all these complexities. I cant wait to read your book. Congratulations and thank you. Im interested in the money. These women were sort of the emilys list of that era. I know mrs. Belmont was feeling the bag with cash and come back on the train with it. 3 Million Dollar inheritance were you evil to track actual funds . The traditional women get more. Or all these women about whom you have written, daughters as well as supporters . Thats interesting question. Thank you very much. I think most of them were donors, but the point i was making in the book was different. That aspect of their involvement had been covered before. To me what was more intriguing was not that they will wrote checks, but they actually stood with the cause. They marched. They give speeches. They held events. I do think that belmont, she would tip the scales toward the radical side. She had first funded the mainstream as you know, and then she got sort of tired of them. Impatient with the mainstream organization, because it was not really making a difference. She felt that alice could. Alice was getting attention for Different Things than celebrity or fashion. She was getting attention for radical, controversial tactics. Just a quick followup to that, if these women had wanted to make big contributions, did they have the ability to do that. They have enough control of the money in their household to do that . I would hesitate to make a global statement about that, but i would guess that most of them yes. Most of them did. Most of them did make contributions. Alice had belmont basically supported alice paul. Paid her salary for her whole life. I had this magical event last sunday, almost as magical as this. At the cemetery in the bronx. They called and said, i dont know if you know this but many of the women i wrote about are buried here. I was delighted. They said and we will invite the descendants. I was like, oh, my god. What if i got something wrong. It was a charming event. Afterwards i asked to go to where belmont is buried. She would put in her wheel that she wanted to be buried with a suffrage procession at her funeral. She wanted the female to officiate. I guess that did not occur, but Everything Else she asked for, there were 1500 people at the funeral. Alice paul was there. Harriet stanton lash. Margaret sanger was there. She had a stellar send off. She had requested that a suffrage banner accompany her to her mausoleum and be installed next to her grave. Alice paul, according to the cemetery officials was the one who planted it there. It hangs there still. It is in deep disrepair and they are hoping to get the New York Historical society to restore it. It was a sign to me of how deeply alice paul was indebted to belmont. Any tidbits from the descendants . Katie stantons great great granddaughter, colleen jenkins, she came and we just had a ball there. Historian at the cemetery gate put us in a golf cart. They drove us around to the key sites. This was at night . No, no. laugher i am envisioning. It was not yet halloween. The historian for the cemetery insisted that we stop and mrs. Mackies grave, which has fallen into serious disrepair. You can hardly weed the inscription on the tombstone and she insisted that i stand behind the tombstone and have a picture taken. I was just yeah. Joanna, its very high Society Origin Story about who, when and why the suffragists decided to wear white at the parades . There may be, but i dont know where they got it. I do know that Harriet Stanton was very into the optics. There had been criticism in 1911 of by the suffrage parade and getting organized. In 1912 she issued orders sort of like a general issuing orders to the troops. We will march on time. We will all wear white. Macys had suffrage paraphernalia. Some things never change, right . She was the one who really instilled in them a need to show discipline. Its a funny thing for us to think about, that somehow male voters were going to judge whether to grant or mere legislators were going to grant win in the right to vote, would notice prompting us or uniforms, but harriet thought it was important to showcase discipline. This is not this is really a tangent, but a similar thing happens during world war one, when many suffragists who have been peace activists decide to work and war relief, because they feel it will convince them that they are committed citizens, and titled to vote. Fascinating. Yes. Im wondering if many of these Society Women traveled to england and were influenced by the painters and the movement going on in england at the same time. English women partially got the right to vote before us and others got the right to vote after. Could you comment on their exposure . Its marvelous, across atlantic conveyance of ideas throughout the movement. Not just among the gilded. Many of the american suffrage leaders took tactical, particularly instructions from the british. The speeches, the parades, the mass rallies. A lot of it was influenced by britain, but sometimes people ask me why are you calling them suffragists . Arent they suffragests . Suffragets, i excuse me. They were mindful of the reaction from american men who might have been threatened by the the british bond buildings. There was heckling of politicians. Assaulting mps, including winston churchill. They did not want to import that. They went with the gender neutral term, suffragists. I know that there were also women who opposed. The National Association and opposition to women suffragists. The senators wife was one. Secretary lansings wife. Eleanor foster lansing. Alice hey. Mrs. Anderson of Anderson House who called themselves the monstrous . Do you know anything about that . They were quite a few of them and especially quite a few of them in this circle. The first chapter of the book deals with the creation of a club in new york all the colony club. It became a sight for debate within their class about whether suffrage would be good for women of social standing or not. Whether they were better off with what i like to call bedroom influence. There was also a fear among both men and women that if women got into the dirty, corrupt business of politics it would make them less feminine. It would threaten the home. All these things were part of the mantra of what was called the antis. In the book i have several examples of sisters who differed on the issue. Some being anti us and some being pros. Part of the thinking of the antis was a more elitist view, that if you extended the vote to all women, you would be expanding the pool of women who were not of their class. Women who were working women, immigrants. They really did not support that. They werent for universal suffrage. They were for educated suffrage. My last question before we wrap up. I dont see another question here. As a reporter, im curious about the role of the press played. I talked about this at the outset. They did this, as you say, mindful that they were going to be covered. What role did the press play in their ability to be effective or not . That is a delicious question, actually. One of the things i tripped over early and always amused me is that the New York Times was famously anti suffrage. Their editorials were more biting and ridiculing than any others. They just sort of lead the train. But there is an evolution. You could see the press turn at some point in the mid 19 tens. And maybe it is the younger people. I didnt delve into the lives of the reporters as much, but there is a coming of understanding, sometimes i think about social change as, well someone mentioned that there were women voting in the states. Thats a reminder that the states serves as an incubator for social state social change. 1. 3 million women were voting in this country by 1912. By 1916 Woodrow Wilson does not get elected without their votes. The other thing you could see about social change is that it just takes time. There is this evolution of Public Opinion. What was once radical, like an hour time, game marriage or medical marijuana, or death with dignity. It takes time to acclimate the mainstream, the middle, however you want to think about it. That is what happened in this as well. It is a fascinating book. I encourage all of you to dig into it if you havent already. Lets thank joanna. Thank you, judy. applause we have books behind the register. She is signing books. On august 18 1920, women when the right to vote with the ratification of to commemorate the anniversary, the National Archives posted a conversation with interpreters from american historical theater portraying Susan B Anthony my name is dorothy and for the next hour i will be moderating our discussion with three key figures in the fight for womens right to vote. As you can see im celebrating by wearing my suffrage sash. I have a centennial pen and i ordered it from the National Archives gift shop. Another way we can celebrate as by sharing our stories online. We have a number of animated stickers and gifts so you can