I am honored to moderate the panel of Accomplished Women who play significant roles in the commemoration of the womens Suffrage Centennial in 2020. My name is colleen and i serve as the vice a chair of the Suffrage Centennial commission which was a commission created by congress to help coordinate and organize the activity. Like everyone our commission had to deal do a curve ball due to cuthe pandemic. The commission and the staff had to switch course and adapt many plans, programs and activities. We made a shift in the commissions legacy projects. What, i mean, by legacy projects are historical markers, statutes, monuments or installations that would have permanency beyond 2020. I think the strategic decision is beneficial for the longterm. Some highlights of the commission included providing Additional Support for the turning point suffrage memorial in virginia now completed and located near the site of the former prison. Weveea provided thousands of books about the suffrage to the library that could benefit from frour donation. We created two podcasts of the movement that would last for a considerable period of time. We hope to support the construction of the markers across the country related to the history of williams suffrage womens suffrage and a lobby by myself that commissioned executive director to the president of the United States so that t we could build a monument to be constructed in washington, d. C. Commemorating the suffrage and that was an interesting story maybe we can talk about later. Other initiatives are worth mentioning. A favorite was the project 19 the skydivers that executed several jobs in the centennial year and who will attempt to set a world record of this fall. States held celebrations and commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the amendments passage. The institutions including the library of congress and the smithsonian exhibits to promote concerning the history of womens suffrage. The art was constructed across the United States and over 100 books were published on womens suffrage and voting. In short it was a terrific year from the. Efforts the Commission Level to the states and localities and other organizations that help commemorate the anniversary. Now i would like to turn the conversation to our panelists who are all leaders in various centennial activities. Lets start with the offer of interpreting the legacy of womens suffrage at museums and historic sites. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and why its important to think critically about how we approach the story of womens suffrage at museums and other historical locations . Hwhat did we learn from the centennial and how did that affect the teacher interpretation . Thank you so much and thanks to the National Archive as well for inviting me and the rest of the speakers tonight. I look forward to what will be a wonderful conversation with my colleagues. So the book is interesting it comes out on a september 15th so its not quite out yet. It started as an idea when i was the executive director of the Belmont House museum on capitol hill in washington, d. C. For those i of you that dont kw the museum, it was the fifth and final headquarters for the National Womens party that was a Prominent Organization that worked for suffrage. In 2016 its designated by president obama at the womens Equality National monument and i was that her doctor there from 2008 until 2017. So it was a good nine year span where i was able to learn more about the Suffrage Movement, invite people in the public certainly lots of School Groups came through to talk about suffrage and one of the things i heard most often was how come i never learned this ine the schol and that came from most adults into second as they would look around and see the photos and exhibits of all the suffragists they would say where were the women of color and i can honestly say we were not at that time doing a very good job of sharingg the full story so i think one of the most important pieces that will contribute to the legacy of the centennial is that that is now expected. For people that are interested in history and learning a little bit more about the previous celebrations so the book starts with taking a look back at the 25th anniversary, the 50th anniversary and then the 75th anniversary and i talk about how the changes culturally, politically, socially the changes from those previous decades really impacted the suffrage commemoration at that time so if there was a lot of difference between 1920 and 1945 and again between 1970 and now here we are after 2021 talking about the changes between 1995 which was the 75th and 2020 for the centennial. So its an interesting look back but i advocate for a few things. First to expand the timeline so when we are talking about suffrage in most cases where i would take traditionally organizations and people tend to start with 1848 with the convention and ended 1920 with the ratification of the 19th amendment so i and many other ntpeople advocate for extending that timeline. I started in 1787, talk about the constitution and ran all the way through to 2021 with the election of khamala harris. The full story of this means the many women of color who were involved in the Suffrage Movement. There are too many to mention but the other piece of this is also discussing the bias and the systemic racism that allowed the Suffrage Movement to be a controversial storyline so it s not about, i will clarify what it is not about is saying this person is sad or their actions are bad or this person is good because they never did anything wrong. Its about having conversations and learning more about the context in which these historical actors that we go back and research it really is talking about what was their social culture like and what did they think aboutor and how did they impact the Suffrage Movement . I know some people say its complicated we dont need to get into that and i certainly as the director have heard of that from lots of people, visitors and lots of other people but what ive said as long as humans are complicated, our history is going to be complicated so it doesnt serve an actual purpose to continue saying things like she was just a product of her time and that was common during that era which both are true yet we can dig a little deeper and talk about what were the systems, policies, the communities thatte were in place that did impact the women of color more than the white women who were suffragists. I will leave it at that. I did to say it would be out september 15th and thank you for letting me tell you a little bit about it. Its American Association for state and local history available on most websites as well as amazon. I would like to bring karen into the conversation, a fellow commissioner along with me who served on the commission but is also the executive director of the Harriet Tubman house. Can you talk to us a little bit about how did you think this centennial highlighted previously Untold Stories particularly about women of color . How were different organizations including the commission able to do that and what was done well and what could have been done better . So good to see you again. The last few days i figured out this isnt an easy discussion for me to participate in to be honest. I felt the pandemic curtailed a lot of the things we wanted to do and amplified how complicated the history of the suffrage has beenas and is in this country. But when i think about the commission to commemorate the 100th anniversary i felt your self from the smithsonian did an incredible job keeping the politics out of it and steering the ship for the purpose of havingit a documented case towad what we tried to do and what the facts were. Having said that i felt the commission wasnt nearly as effective as it could have been amplifying the history and how they were in the womens movement. I am the president and ceo of the area tubman home which is the National Historic park and im also a member of delta sigma a sorority that fully participated with the Suffrage Movement and the important parade in 1913. I come at this from living in this space all the time as a leader responsible for carrying fourth. Tubmans legacy and she was about 20 miles from seneca falls in 18491 year after the establishment and she dealt with thee complexity of race and how it impacts all that we do and frankly let me say i felt the commission should have done a much better h job amplifying the historic number of women that we elected to congress and colleen helped me, was it the 2018 . That was a real moment to have 100 plus women in National Elected office, and i dont think, because we stayed away from any kind of political concerns, we didnt amplify that i felt in a way that it encouraged all women at all levels to know that they should fully participate. Then there are so many relationships that are complicated that we need to amplify and we need to really dig into what happened, for instance the relationship between Elizabeth Cady stanton and douglas was complicated and i think again i keep messaging colleen but i said all the work shee did was sort of helping us to deal with that because that really called other people of color which is a negative insult and she called Frederick Douglass was the one go to black that she knew and he told her what was wrong with that but yet he tolerated and called her behaviors and many of the people in my community flat out called her a racist even for all the good work she did and suffered for. They were very good friends in spite of that so i think there were invaluable lessons to learn aboutt that because he was lodgd in her home for a period of time and when she died, he did her eulogy. And that was her choice, so there was an engineering relationship but there was one where she was just tone deaf to the americas original sin of racism and i think that is something that really has to be reckoned with and i would say that i dont think i can participate in the womens groups without really saying that weve got to come to grips with this to be very honest when the monument wasnt sponsored by our commission today but in central park there has been no statute and then there was the determination that there would be. It was originally going to be and then he and a standin. That wasnt inclusive enough so they included sojourner truth. A lot of money had to go into that. Over 1. 5 million to keep up with the upkeep of the statues so they could show to the public she could sit there with Elizabeth Cady stanton and you might want to say thats great now we have women in the renowned central park except for me when i heard that there were no statues of women i said at least thats one thing women got right until i found out they werere going to go ahead with te statues because the land on which central park is built that it used to be the only place that it was legal for people to own property so theres still a lot of concern about that and reparations with of the land being taken away. It was taken away to make way for the design park so i put it to senator mikulski to always encourage the commission to look at the underbelly to know all the stories, the good, the bad and the ugly and yes we should lift up everything that has been done but i truly feel there is so much more work to do in franchising all people you get to the ballot box and know that every vote matters and is so important. The biography of Fannie Lou Hamer talks about the struggle and i recommend that in a foregone there has to be. Sojourner changed her name at the altar of the methodist church. Tubman visited many societies where she had her membership and participated. Frederick douglass gained his credentials. It is not coincidental the people that participated in the movement chose what is known as the Freedom Church to a large social justice agenda soso i thk that there needs to be some concentration on that but more particularly more recently i was at a meeting where most of the delegates to the meeting were women. There were three women vying for office and maybe half a dozen men ando there were two positios available but no women were e elected. There is also the issue of women still not being comfortable voting for other women, and i think that that needs to be more fully explored by those that come next. As for the Harriet Tubman home and at the National Park, we use our naturalization ceremony to amplify womens suffrage and let them know people fought very hard to have the vote and why it was important for them to participate fully. In previous times, the league of women voters used to be there to give out information to help begin the educational process. I know im taking a lot of time but i feel as an africanamerican woman, i am just so not satisfied in what we did to commemorate the first years and i truly hope that we determining what we want the next 100 years to look like to tell the whole story. Last, there was media done on that a year ago today with the former president and all the commissions for their, the proclamation recognizing the hundredth anniversary. But it was hard for me as a woman of color to be there and as a longtime champion of for housing and anything in the Affordable Housing et cetera. There is the dog whistle if people of color move to your suburbs its White America and the things that were said by the highest elected officials it seems to undo a lot of the work that we were trying to do to really forge r understandings between people and then the media was on every network. I heard from people who knew me from prek to solve the image of me standing there. I think that we need to have better control as it relates to how we amplify women in the next hundred years and i will stop there. Thank you for thoseha reflections. I dont know if weve actually had aw chance to talk that day when we were together in the white house and that was an extraordinary media event by the white house to promote a particular message and we were certainly iss a commission Going Forward appropriately to commemorate the centennial, but we found ourselves in the midst of a media event that was not of our own. I dont want to corroborate your account of that day and i certainly recall the discomfort by a number of people including myself in a nonpartisan position to be put in that type of situation. I want to get to rebecca and then of course shannon. It sounds like one of the things that you are very concerned about was there was a discussion of the role of race in the Suffrage Movement but perhaps it wasnt as indepth as it should be in other words we didnt engage with it ator the level in which would have caused an accurate reflection, is that fair to say . It was an uncomfortable time to discuss but for the purposes of education i think we also had to do something. And we thank you for your work in particular for the video of the National Park service that was shared with allid of us. But i felt that as a commission we didnt use a platform to say that we understood that that was a barrier. I represent the legacy and she was a Property Owner and how difficult it was for her to make the decisions to advance the rights for women to get the vote in spite of her being a Property Owner so she thought doing something beyond her own international benefit propelled her to go into those holes and to speak to audiences that included africanamerican men who had their vote taken away as women were being franchised and i think we just did not to the extent thatul we should have and where we are now. More work needs to be done. That is a good transition and then rebecca has written a book and you said to something we could learn from Harriet Tubman and that is what rebecca tried to do. Given what karen said, can you share with us what can people learn fromnd the suffrage movemt and do they have to understand to really take lessons from it . When we set out to write another we wanted it to be useful almost a practical handbook to become an activist and that includes many so not only does whitewashing the history affect the history of it if you are going to turn that corner from history beingea relevant Susan B Anthony was always welcoming to Frederick Douglass or that mary church carol wasnt ignored when she was the only black woman at the conferences, its not understanding what we can learn from w history and i think that there also its interesting to hear karen say maybe we skimmed the surface and there was racism. But they didnt reallyhe engage with of these issues and to me to some degree this is a sort of broad problem within history because for so long history has been told in this hall of fame model that we hear about the great men doing great things and its exclusionary for so many reasons mainly because they have the abilitynl to hold positions that allow them to do great things but also to not have change happen its sold on one human being changes the world and its not the way womens history happens or the way the Suffrage Movement happens. Even if you dont expand it and even if you do 1848, 72 years so even saying ida b wells was there to. Thats all important but its still adding to that instead of understanding that these movements were long and slow and hard and collaborative and had wins and losses along the way and required the creativity of a huge variety of humans including men. And that it is a convenient way to tell stories and hi