Of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Wilson and his wife edith lived in this house. They turned edith turned it over to the National Trust in 1961 on her death. And it has been lovingly cared for. And so we welcome you tonight. I wanted to tell you a little bit about how we started this suffrage speaker series. Our senior manager of collections and interpretation said to me this summer when i first started the job there is a commission on the suffrage, and i think we should go to that meeting. It is the womens Suffrage Centennial commission. And i said ok. I am going to go with you. We went down to the library of congress, and we sat at a big table. And they were about 20 women in the room, a big square table. There were another 20 women on the telephone. And everyone goes around and they are introducing themselves. And they are from the alice paul house, this commission and that commission. And, you know, from the National Portrait gallery. All these places. It comes around to us and i introduce myself. Im from the Woodrow Wilson house. There was a collective suck and sigh like what not to mention maybe one or two cases of whiplash. There was no oxygen left in the room. They all turned to look to us to say, do you know where you are . What are you doing here . I said, yes. They said, who are these crazy women attending this meeting . I said, you know, we are not crazy. We are passionate. We are passionate about telling stories. We are passionate about telling inclusive, diverse stories in this house. That is why that is how this all formulated. It is my pleasure to have you here to start this with us. This is really we are embarking on something that we are very excited about. So with that i will introduce you lets see. I am thrilled that karen is here. And thank you. The womans Suffrage Centennial commission was created by congress in 2017 to ensure suitable observance of the centennial of the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment to the constitution of the United States providing for womens suffrage. It is led by chairwoman susan collins, and a Bipartisan Group of women leaders. And they have welcomed us, truly welcomed us and embraced us, helping to commemorate history, celebrate the story, and educate future generations of learners and leaders. So karen hill is here tonight. She is the president and ceo of the Harriet Tubman home and National Historic park, which is was established to operate and manage the home of Harriet Tubman. In her role at the tubman home, karen hill shares tubmans core values with visitors who tour the property. She was also influential in establishing tubmans home as a National Historic park. So with that, please help me with a warm welcome to karen hill. [applause] asantewa good evening, everyone. I do need this mic. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. It is such a pleasure to see you all in attendance tonight. I want to thank ms. Karen hill for gracing us with her attendance, and i look forward to a brilliant conversation. As elizabeth said, i am the curator of the house here at Woodrow Wilsons final home. After the presidency he moved directly into this home from the white house in march of 1921 and lived here until 1924. We, two years ago, with the leadership of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and in concert with the Woodrow Wilson house decided it was extremely important and urgent to address Woodrow Wilsons legacy on race by exploring more African American history of the era, and that era which preceded wilsons presidency and to highlight womens history in particular because Woodrow Wilson was in office when the 19th amendment was ratified. So this first series is starting to look back at the beginnings of the movement. You might think what is the connection with Woodrow Wilson and Harriet Tubman . Tonight we want to explore the life and work of Harriet Tubman. She obviously is one of the most famous women, people, africanamericans in u. S. History. But we thought it would be interesting to explore one of her lesserknown legacies, which is her role not just for womens suffrage and supporting that movement but also for womens rights more broadly. We will get into conversations about that. So i will start first, ms. Hill, and your mic should be on. Most of us are familiar with Harriet Tubman, the leader of the underground railroad. The moses of her people as she was called, who brought enslaved people from the south to the north seeking freedom. And emancipated herself. But looking back to the Womens Suffrage Movement and understanding the Seneca Falls Convention happened in 1848, Harriet Tubman was still enslaved in maryland. However, after the war, Harriet Tubman would aid the cause of womens suffrage with the various leaders who convened at seneca falls and the various africanamerican womens clubs like the National Association of colored women. So considering her obviously amazing story from enslaved to free, and the racial divide that was within the movement, what was tubmans stance on womens suffrage and how did she articulate her position . Karen that is a great question and good evening, everybody. Glad to be here. Let me just tell you a little bit about tubman first. And then i think it is easier to kind of back into where she stood on the question of suffrage. It is complicated history. How many if you have seen the movie harriet . Ok. A good number of people. So you know Harriet Tubman had this innate ability to see far beyond her circumstance. Far beyond. And she had seven core values. Faith, freedom, family, community, social justice, selfdetermination and equality. Those were her touchstones. Even when she was enslaved in maryland. For those of you who saw the movie, you know the power of faith. Her faith guided her walk, her steps. That is what led her to her freedom journey for herself and principally her family and friends. She freed about 70 people from the Eastern Shore of maryland and provided direct instruction for 70 more. But in the quest for her to have a more personal relationship with her god, she went deeper. And that is a part of a liberation theology. She was a testament to liberation theology. When you said she was emancipated, her coming from the Eastern Shore of maryland up through st. Catherine and as far north as st. Catherine and ultimately settling in auburn, that was an important but only part of her liberation theology. So everyone thinks of harriet as very familiar with the underground railroad and all she did not to diminish that because it was what provided Frederick Douglass the Empirical Data he needed to have for his gift of oratory to talk about the importance of the value of freedom. Harriet, through her faith walk, knew that that was one part of her emancipation. So that is how she got to suffrage. Ok . Because it was becoming free along the Eastern Shore, and then becoming more emancipated as a woman in her own right. If you saw the movie, you saw she was always challenging people were challenging her. You cant do this. You cant i can do this. Dont tell me what i cant do. You know, that was very profound. Dont tell me what i cant do. I know what i can do. She was very determined. So she took very good care of her vessel. She lived to be 91 years of age taking good care of her vessel while continuing her work. She was truly a pacifist, but she knew there were some just wars, i. E. The civil war. That is why she lent her person, self, you know, herself to that journey. And she challenged the u. S. Army. She was a nurse, scout and spy. She actually led the first armed raid by a woman into battle. Ok . Along the combi river in south carolina. And i have been on the banks of the combi when they dedicated it to Harriet Tubman. They dedicated the bridge that brings along beaufort and college counties. Connects them. When i was doing the research about that, i discovered that highway 17 was determined by the department of transportation. It is one of the most dangerous roads in america. One of the most perilous. And i said, how perfect is it that harriet would be a part of the process of adjusting that and bringing people together and connecting people . So you know, her emancipation continues today. It continues today because we see it in all the murals that we see everywhere we go. We see harriet being depicted. In some places i am a little bit not pleased but depicted everywhere nonetheless. So her getting to suffrage, she knew that she was stepping into auburn. You should know this. They dont teach geography in school anymore. But seneca falls and auburn are in central new york. Very different from new york city. It is like it is two states. You know, central new york, upstate new york, downstate. People are more familiar with downstate. But auburn and seneca falls are maybe 20 miles from each other in the same locale. And the Abolitionist Movement was very fervent in auburn. So when she decided to settle in auburn, she knew she needed to be at least in an environment politically where the question of free or slave was had already been asked and answered. But still, segregation still existed in auburn. Ok . Tubman, on her property, created nine cottages that were a series of homes. It was the home for the agent aged and indigent negroes so they could age with dignity and grace because auburn had, still has that home for the aged. At the time it was segregated. Blacks were not admitted into the home. So rather she knew that was unjust, but she knew she had an ability to do something about it. Her emancipation im sorry. I know we are going to talk about suffrage, but i have to share this. Her emancipation was also economic freedom. And she knew becoming a landowner was a part of that economic freedom. That is what allowed her to bring her family ultimately up from the Eastern Shore to auburn where they settled. That is where she was able to have, as i said earlier, create the nine cottages on the property where she housed seniors, africanamerican seniors. That is where she, guess what, provided Free Universal Health Care to everybody at the john brown hall. This was a woman who just saw freedom through a lot of different lenses. And i feel like we are just now on the cusp of this country of a turning point. Do we want turning point. See, i got you in there. How do we go forward with that legacy . Suffrage was really key because what was happening is that Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony and others wicked booed out of these halls when they would try to talk about suffrage. They would be black men in the audience because the fact that women for going to get the vote does everybody know what happened . Women got the vote and then states determined to take the vote away from black men. From black men. Africanamerican men through the 15th amendment. States began to pull back. That was for tubman quite a dilemma. To advance women getting the vote, not including herself, and then black men very specifically, their right to vote was going to be abridged. It was not going to be there. That put her in a real difficult situation. Susan b. Anthony and the other women part of the leadership of the movement knew that they needed a speaker like harriet. They needed someone with intestinal fortitude to advance the suffrage argument. Tubman knew that if she advanced suffrage as a concept, one person, one vote, that was the bigger victory to have and then to still fight on for full enfranchisement of all americans. It is amazing that someone born a slave could see beyond their own circumstance. Because that doesnt happen. That could see beyond their own circumstance and advocate fully for her to be for women to get the vote. It is still a real difficult story to tell because there were other women of color who were scholars, who wanted to really be a part of this, who were marginalized in the suffrage argument. But tubman stood her ground. As small in stature as she was, she was twice as large in a room like this. In a room like this she stayed until midnight to hear all she had to say. She had them opening their pocketbooks. I will not ask you for money. [laughter] she had this ability and her faith fueled all of her work. That was something that people were not comfortable with for a long time. It has only been more recently, but the suffragists, particularly amongst the leaders some quite frankly were very racist. Elizabeth cady stanton and Frederick Douglass were great friends, but she called blacks sambo. he took her to task on that. But she did not see anything wrong with it. She allowed him to stay at her house when he needed to. And he eulogized her. Not a lot of people also know that Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass all come out of the liberation theology of the freedom church, which is the african methodist episcopal zion church. I have a zion minister here with me this evening. So, finding in auburn, there was an Ame Zion Church there. That is where she felt like it had everything. It had a vibrant Abolitionist Movement. It had progressive women and men who believed in suffrage, womens suffrage. And it had most important leader the church. Which is where she was fed and nurtured. I think the argument about tubman and suffrage needs to be talked about a lot more because it really gets into what battle are we willing to take up that will advance society beyond our own personal situation . How many of us can ask, what are we doing to make a difference beyond our own personal situation . Asantewa i think that is one of the lessons of Harriet Tubmans legacy. You talked about you mentioned the choice that Harriet Tubman had to make as far as being a black woman in a movement that was quite frankly racist, and thought that many times, and those that know the history well, there was a split obviously between the stanton wing that wanted to take the more conservative statebystate approach that included not supporting africanamerican mens right to vote, to the more radical wing that thought the constitutional amendment was not negotiable and should move forward and were more welcoming to africanamerican women. But i want to pick up on that point about that choice. If you could talk more about Harriet Tubmans role in the beginnings of the African American club Women Movement and the National Association of colored women. These women who history may not mark as separatists just because they did not dedicate exclusively to suffrage, but because of the society, the idea that freedom goes beyond my situation. As a black woman i cant i should not be forced to choose between vote for myself or vote against my people. Karen i want to say that the colored womens club, they actually if you ever come to auburn and you see her headstone, the empire state chapter actually paid for her headstone that is there today. The original headstone broke many, many years ago. They dedicated the headstone because tubman was one of them. She was one of them. They were hers. There was no separation. I think that is the thing that tubman helped people to understand, that we can be together and then there are journeys i have to take that you may not be able to join. It does not separate us, but i am advancing something else. I do believe very strongly that god had predestined tubman to do amazing things. Because time and again she went beyond. Beyond the average person. She was scheduled to be with john brown at harpers ferry, but they kept changing the date. That was only god that had it aligned that they changed the date and she did not feel well on the date it was scheduled. Travel was going to be too much for her. That is the only reason she was not at harpers ferry, because god had more work for her to do. But she saw some people found john brown too zealous. She saw that in all earnest she he understood that she understood the struggle and the pain and the angst that africanamericans endured with slavery. She did not see it as because you are white you could not possibly understand what im going through. That takes a special individual to be able to see life through that lens. In auburn, she was a woman who could neither read nor write. How amazing is that . She could not read nor write but she understood god. There is something that happens on the inside that came out in her walk, her every day walk. This is a woman who could not read or write, but if you came to my park now, you would see her bible. She could not read nor write, but her bible is there. Could not read nor write, but her hymnal was a part she wanted to have those songs. She wanted the hymnal. It put her closer to that. Could not read nor write. Could not read nor write. If you hear some of the oral histories of longtime auburnians, their grandparents told them how tub