About 3. 5 years researching, teaching myself this history, and finding the objects. We have 124 objects. There are 63 portraits. Commemorate the 19th amendment and tell the history of the 19th amendment and how women lobbied to get this amendment passed in ratified. It also ask questions about and what does it do and what does it not do. Anothers considered part two of the 19th amendment. I will take you through the exhibition and show you a few of the objects that tell the history. Lets go. We are in the first gallery of the exhibition. We have portraits that guide the narrative. I wanted to include pieces of art. Like the one we are looking at. It is by a female artist. In 1860s and i wanted to include this painting because it portrays Young Children you have four kids the kids are celebrating and the mother is reading the new york times. You have a servant or helper cleaning the dishes. What i liked about this painting is that it is from 1866 and it and thethe civil war battle of vicksburg. It is looking back. The artist decided to portray this moment in time by looking at the lives of women. The women are very serious. The children are very much engaged in the celebration. They do not understand how severe and difficult that battle of vicksburg was. The men on both sides, the confederate and union, starved because the city was surrounded. Why am i talking about the civil war . That is a good question. What i wanted to do was demonstrate the divide between the north and the south as well as between the races. Savingays a big part in the Suffrage Movement. Male. Luded the word this is the first time that gender was specified. It delivered a severe blow to the Suffrage Movement. Women were trying to advocate for their right to vote. If were not even considered citizens, which is what the 14th , when the 15th amendment clarified american citizens, it disenfranchised half the population. This was a huge divide. The Suffrage Movement disagreed on how to handle it, and that is why they split between each other. Susan b anthony wanted to advocate for suffrage by excluding black women. Americans were suffragists. Her name was francis harper. She was trying to explain to people that she was also an africanamerican and a woman combined. Black women couldnt just sit around and let people take away their rights and not advocate for them. They became active in Church Groups and they were learning how to speak in public, understanding their rights, understanding how to get those rights by their local communities by being involved in those local community Church Groups. Thats an interesting topic not a lot of people have gone into or understand as much. People do understand the Suffrage Movement was divided, but they dont understand that africanamerican remain very active. Mike sarah parker, whose portrait is on the far wall. She was an activist in Antislavery Society of massachusetts. And she took her activism abroad. This is another interesting story in how american suffragists were not only vocus focused in the United States, but they were also out of active elsewhere in new york. We are going to talk about seneca falls and what is being referred to as the myth of seneca falls. This is a portrait of susan b anthony. Anthony is pointing to a book, and they are very dignified. This would be a publicity shot today. They were using this portrait to represent them to a wider audience. They didnt even meet until 1851. Seneca falls, as most of us recall from our history books and high school, was a gathering, the First Convention in 1848. Elizabeth cady stanton and others penned the declaration of sentiments, which is the beginning document, one of the first documents that women were advocating for a vote. What i hope this exhibition explains is by going back way back to 1832 is that women were getting together and talking and advocating for their rights, for their Citizenship Rights well before 1848. Suffrage just didnt appear out of thin air. It has a long history that others argue. Starts before 1832. That is a great intellectual debate i encourage you to look into. I brought us up to 1869 and now we are going to move into the next gallery, which starts in 1870. We are in the second gallery and i wanted to make sure to include representation of the womens christian Temperance Union. It helps us get into a lot of friend issues that american women were facing. Temperance was a Large Organization that had 100 150,000 women across the United States involved. They would gather and meet in what was called chapters. The Temperance Union fully endorsed the suffrage cause. There is a woman on the horse. You see the womens holy war. There is a woman on the horse. Like joan of arc. She is leaping over these well marked barrels of alcohol. Behind her are all of her compatriots. They are part of the temperance league. In the name of god and humanity, that is with the banner one of them is carrying. When women were married to alcoholics, they became a vulnerable population. They were organizing amongst each other in ways that help them understand their rights and what they can do to advocate for their rights. On the bottom you see the prize. I wanted to include this little metal because i was curious to know how women were teaching themselves how to speak in public. You think about toastmasters of today. They were actually awarding prizes to women who was speaking and having a contest in order to award them. They were talking about christianity. There was an interesting object i was able to find. The reason why was important for women to know how to speak in public was in part because the suffrage cause, the word about it was being threat angst spread through was being spread through speeches. They were speaking at auditoriums and being paid lots of money. Dickinson earned 20,000 annually. She made more than mark twain. I think that is an interesting comparison. Whose name is remembered today . Even though and elizabeth was more than dark mark twain of the time. She started her own business as a wall street banker. She advocated for free love, which means sex outside of marriage, which was definitely outside of the norm for women. And she also ran for president on a word party ticket. A third party ticket, the first woman to do so. We have a nice portrait of her attempting to vote, asserting her right to vote. She voted when you werent supposed to vote. Lots of women at this time were doing what would be referred to as illegal voting. It was illegal for women to vote. They would hold one of thousands across the country who thought to change the system by going out, voting, getting arrested, not paying fines, and serving a sentence in jail so they can appeal through the court system. And they try to change the laws that way. And there was another severe blow dealt to the Suffrage Movement in 1873 when the Supreme Court ruled against a virginian minor who tried to vote and got up to court system. Then the Supreme Court found women should not vote legally in the United States. We were discussing how victoria woodhall asserted her right to vote. Here we have a different type of ballot box. This one is made of metal. What i like is it explicitly says womens ballot on it. Very much in your face that women were voting separately. They could may be for municipal suffrage. Or in some states, about 15 were allowed to vote in the president ial election. This is from indiana, which is one of those states that allowed women before 1920 to vote in the president ial election. It was made out of st. Louis, and they made these boxes between 1860 and 1920. I think this is a peaceful piece of material culture that eliminates what womens rights were like and what it looked like, what it felt like. We are looking at a caricature of victoria woodhall in 1872. This exemplifies some of the struggles women were going through at the time. Victoria woodhall has been known for wearing what is known as victory rolls. But the cartoon turns them into devil horns. She has become a demon. She is walking away from a woman who is looking over her shoulder, maybe a little undecided that she made her decision, she is going up this mountain. You can tell there are three children she is carrying as well as the alcoholic husband strapped to her back. This exemplifies the choices women had. Either you throw in your stock with somebody like victoria woodhall, who is advocating for free love at the time, and that is a very soft term for sex outside of marriage. She was advocating that women should indulge that and have that outside of harwich, and why and whyde of marriage get married therefore . Why have this burden of ill husband without any support . Victoria woodhall was trying to promote choices women had. At the time women were definitely not supposed to be having sex and enjoying it. This is very much a taboo subject. And thomas capture that in his caricature of victoria woodhall. We are looking at a portrait of velda and lockwood. She was arguing for cherokee rights. She became an Expert Witness for native americans in subsequent trials. What i like is how dignified she looks, she had her hair wound up in this beautiful cloth. She had her collar on, and it represents her as this respectable woman, because she was a suffragist and they were constantly being accused of being outside the bounds of femininity. She was actually the first woman to campaign for a presidency. I mentioned victoria woodhall, who is the first one who would name herself as candidate for presidency, but she couldnt campaign because she was serving a sentence. Yet she had founded what was called equal rights party. This was like a Democrat Party and the republican party, but the third party ticket. The suffragists are running for president on what is called a third party ticket. It is thanks to victoria woodhall that she is able to that lockwood is able to run. A good example of what women could do. She was advocating for rights in the Supreme Court and running for president. We have a lovely portrait of Abigail Scott dunaway, who is active in trying to persuade male legislators to change the laws of these western states. She founded the new northwest, which was a newspaper in 1871, that advocated for womens rights. A lot of people think suffrage was only based in the northeast. It was active across the United States. There were mormon women advocating in utah. There is a nationwide approach to this reform movement. It was probably one of the longest reform movements in the United States in american history, and one of the most widespread. This is entitled the new woman. It goes up to 1912. The new woman was educated, on her bicycle, not bound in her home. As you can see in this depiction of the former, his wife and possibly his daughter. This new woman, she is wearing what looks like bloomers, pans, or pants. She asked them for a glass of water. They of course oblige, but as she is drinking, they are thinking, what is this person . Is she a woman, what is she doing, is she outside of the home . You can see a lot of the confusion women had when they advocated for rights. Magazines were picking up on this. She became mrs. Frank leslie. In order to assume the authority it took to publish a magazine like this, you can see the use of the color. Shes obviously carrying the banner of votes for women. It speaks to privilege behind the movement. A lot of wealthy white women were the ones that were actually out there advocating in parades like this. But they were doing well and getting the word out. Miriam leslie if you studied leslie after she took over, you can see a clear trajectory into the feminist causes. We are going to look at an example of antisuffrage. New york had tried to change its state referendum to include womens right to vote. But it failed, despite having 600,000 signatures in support of changing the legislation, the referendum failed area this exemplifies what was happening in this era, where the suffragist had taken on a statebystate approach. There were no longer going for this amendment change that hadnt that had been proposed in the 1870s. They try to do a full court press statebystate. You can see how can she vote when the voting booths are so narrow. It is depicting this woman as a fanciful serious bit. Ditz. Serious if you cant figure out how to dress yourself, much less finish voting how could women even see themselves having a political voice . There is a lot of suffrage that accompanies the whole movement and in the exhibition i chose to highlight some of those examples and really not focus on it too much. I was more interested in how africanamericans were really involved and what the strategies were in the movement. We are looking at two examples that speak to the history of colorado and womens voting rights. They were able to convince the lobby and legislatures to change the state constitution. Wyoming was a territory they sort of grandfather in the right to vote when it became a state. Women didnt have to lobby wyoming legislators to get the right to vote. It was written into their constitution. The colorado example is pretty interesting. You can see the three party tickets. This would be what they voted with. Equal suffrage approved or equal suffrage not approved. Once colorado women achieve the right to vote they elected female legislators. This is a portrait of three of the four female legislators from the era of 1893 through 1894 you have two democrats and one republican. Weve got three portraits of africanamericans. There is cooper in the middle and mary on the right. These were studio portraits that were made of these women while they were students at overland college. At oberlin college. It is not the first in the United States to accept africanamerican students. What i love about these portraits is how young they are. They go on to lead great lives as activists, as whitman women who are advocating for Citizenship Rights. Particularly for africanamericans. Especially Anna Julia Cooper was a teacher in washington, d. C. She was living the life of someone who truly believed in giving liberal Arts Education to african americans. She was also teaching at the end at the m street color school. What i like about these two women was they were taking on the responsibility to assimilate africanamericans in the postcivil war suffrage era in a way that would give them white collar access so they can become once they went to the high school, then they went to college, and they were business people. They embody that argument that these two men have been having. Booker t. Washington advocated for technical training. Dubois advocated for liberal arts training. And these women were walking the walk. They are 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 this exhibition because they were not advocating for only suffrage, but they were advocating for other things outside the parameters of the focus. Even though they were still excluded from the National American woman suffrage association, which the two fractions we were talking about in the very beginning when in 1870 they have come back together in 1892. They then move forward with great force and good strategy but also excluding africanamericans the whole time. My point is these women were not just sitting around waiting on the sidelines. They were being very act of active within themselves on their own group and their own societies and their own local communities. We are standing in front of a banner in 1911. The writing is actually an excerpt called the glorious light, written in 1871 by the british dean of canterbury. What i love about this banner is how it has that sanchez that sense of spirituality up through the 19 teens. It also has that sense of emerging onward and making progress forward. I want to make sure to include a couple of banners in the National Womens party. It also points to the activism. This concludes the first half of the exhibition. We have covered the movement up through 1912. We covered the first generation of suffragists and from this point on we are 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 they will switch tactics and really achieve progress in a very comparatively small amount of time. And then talk about the changes and the ongoing battle through 1965. This is the first of a twopart tour of the National Portrait gallerys exhibit marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. You can watch this and american artifacts programs. Sitting our website at cspan. Org history. Next, a visit to the National Portrait gallery. In the second of a twopart program, a historian gives americis