Good evening and welcome to this special celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. My name is lauren leaner, and im the cofounder of ceo of all in together. All in together is thrilled to host tonights special virtueing town hall in partnership with the lbj foundation, the george and Barbara Bush Foundation, the Ronald Reagan library, the National Archives and the 19th. All these partners have worked tirelessly to make this program possible. Thank you to each and every one of them for their contributions and support. Id also like to say thank you to angie and mark, this would not be possible without them. All in together is a non partisan womens civic organization. Since our founding, we have trained tens of thousands of women and the tools of civic leadership, we are working to ensure women have power and agency and american democracy. In this centenary year our work remains urgent and vital. This Program Honors the heroism of the suffragettes, who reminds us of the many women who were left out of that victory, we celebrate that women as we remember that women of color cannot exercise their right to vote until so many years later. In fact, tonight is also the anniversary of the Voting Rights act, which was passed into law on august 6th, finally eliminating barriers to black women and men accessing the right to vote. Tonights program is a chance to better understand the passed, the president , and envision a future of true equity for all. To contribute to our conversation about the 19th amendment centenary, please join us on social media using the hashtag, 19 at 100. There is much to celebrate about the progress of women from 1920 until now. Women have become half the american workforce. More than half of the College Degree earners, they are primary breadwinners and have broken barriers in every field and discipline. Since 1980, women have outvoted men in every election. During the 2018 midterm, women showed up in Record Numbers, out voting men in every age bracket and electing a record 131 women to congress. Now in the 2020 election cycle, more women than ever have filed to run for office. We have come a long way. Yet, true gender equity remains elusive. We may break barriers but american women remain underrepresented in leadership in every domain. Lgbt women, especially trans women, face legal and social barriers to equality that are far from being overcome. Women face shocking levels of domestic violence, the wage gap persists and americans and poverty are disproportionately female. And the time of covid, women face new struggles to manage the burdens of care, health, welfare and Economic Security. As we look to the future and what the next hundred years brings, there remains much work to be done. So tonight we look at the past, the president and the future to learn, reflect and commit to progress. We have incredible conversations ahead with luminary historians, our keynote speaker, nancy pelosi, our conversation with secretary Condoleezza Rice and we look to the future with abby womack and britney cunningham. I hope you will stay with us. Its going to be awesome we begin with the conversation with a look on the past and the history of suffrage, produced by our partners at the National Constitution center, we are thrilled to welcome professor martha jones, professor of history at Johns Hopkins university, and lisa touch alt, associate professor of history focused for on karen naji megans university. Jeffrey rosen will lead the discussion. Jeff, over to you . Welcome to our panel on the past, unknown history of womens suffrage. So honored to be with you with two of americans leading historians of the Womens Suffrage Movement, both have new books out and i cant wait to share the arguments with you. Lisa tate throw. I have to thank you for your great advice, new exhibits on the 19th amendments, how women won the vote, and that beautiful building that is in the backdrop behind me, and the 100th anniversary of womens suffrage. Today we talk to our friends on august 6th, the 100th anniversary of the Voting Rights act of 1965, or rather the day anniversary. You, in your great book about cynical false, the myth of cynical fall, memory and Womens Suffrage Movements, argue that cynical falls was not the beginning of the women s Suffrage Movement. In fact, it began for earlier. Tell us about the origin story of the fight for womens suffrage. I think the first point is that there is no single fight. It is many, many, many fights. It depends whats strand of the story you pick up and where you trace it back to. We have contained a story from 1948 but that was a product of white suffragists themself who were trying to elevate their agenda, particularly Elizabeth Katie sand and susan we anthony, and had to exile and sideline other suffragists who did not share their vision of suffragetteism. Even within a kind of white womens suffrage fight, there were many strands and many parts of the story. So when we tell the story of cynical falls we are reading the understory back to the beginning and missing the complexity. As we unravel on this anniversary and the story of beginnings. In your forthcoming book, how black women broke the barriers, won the vote and insisted on equality for all, you argue that the movements in that have been in point and 1920. In fact, he will do better to think of it as a struggle from the early 19th century all the way up through 1965. Tell us about that and the heroic African American women, and the stories you tell. When we take the vantage point, it turns out that the start and in the point is very different. Vanguard begins in the first decades with a truly path breaking African American women, who first and foremost deliver a political critique that decries wealthy influence of racism, as well as the influence of sexism on american politics. This becomes, if you will, the signature defining feature of African American women in politics Going Forward. Yes, 1920 is and landmark moment for some African American women in states like new york, illinois, california, black women will be voting and for too many African American women, the 19th amendment is the gateway to Voting Rights at all, and states laws like poll taxes and literacy tests will keep far too many black women from the polls until, in 1965, the passage of the Voting Rights act gives it kind of teeth to both the 15th amendment from 1870, and the amendment from 1920 and opens up a new chapter in Voting Rights for black americans, one now there will be federal oversight that looks to guarantee the right to vote for the very first time. Lets take the story of chronologically, so we understand the relationship with the movement for womens suffrage from cynical false leaders and from African American women. Lisa, if i may, tell us about susan be anthony, women at the heart of the senate false movement. What was a cynic a false convention arguing for when evoked the declaration of independence to argue that all women and men are created equal, and what began as a movement for women civil rights more generally focused on the right of a mentor vote . Thats a big story. I would start off with saying that this begins at the founding, more broadly early. There are women at the founding. Probably many more than we now have because many voices were not preserved. Already saying if man is capable of self government, why not i . We know quite famously that african adams would say remember the ladies, but the founding framers of the constitution and others spoke repeatedly of the up selling of desires for Self Governance and at the time of the founding. I dont think we have a clear picture of how robust that sentiment was among women, probably because those records have not been kept. But by the time we start to see some starring for voting, it is a very different kind of american democracy. We cant really tell the story without the democracy itself, because its not an isolated democracy. As voting starts to become something that is more central to peoples lives but the 18 twenties and thirties, many people start to incorporate that into their overall calls for rights, but not in a way that they sent threats as the most important of their rights, and for many people, what was necessary with Something Else entirely. For example, the abolition of slavery. The cynical convention is, as we know it, the first Womens Rights Convention and not the first conflict to vote. Thats part of the methodology that i trace. Although she has played there and her obituary, she began the fight at cynical falls. It was a local, impromptu convention that no one would have thought was a Smart Movement or that began the movement. Nobody would say that really, that this convention, which took the founding document and turned into a cry for womens rights, saying that we hold that all these women created equal, they are manifesto that they issued. Instead of listening grievances, they lets grievances against man. In the series of demand which include everything from voting to equal pay, equal education and an end of the sexual double standard, to property holding. Again, many of these are concerns that address a certain type of life, but are not addressing the concerns of either limits. So this is a kind of agenda that put the vote in it, but does not happen a little bit later. We can talk more about, that but that sense that this began the movement, sonic of all sizzling that gets created after the American Civil War and then right back onto the beginning in a way that is about politics after their, and susan bee anthony has been placed their erroneously. Martha jones, help us understand how, after the civil war on the right to vote and you tell an amazing story on how activists women who actively are marginalized became community leaders, introduce if you will the complicated important relationship between the Womens Suffrage Movement and the abolitionist movement. We have fredericton glass standing with womens suffrage and the womens splinter there. Its a complicated story. Bring us to the 18 sixties to an extraordinary, revolutionary moment in the history of american law and politics. This opportunity to rethink the terms of the 14th amendment that establishes birthright citizenship, and finally the 15th agreement that will prohibit states from using race from giving out Voting Rights. There is an Old Coalition of womens rights activists, abolitionists who have known each other for a very long time. They reconvene in the 18 sixties, and a question before then is what is being wrought, not in their meetings, but in congress. You have Elizabeth Katie stand ten, veteran douglas, window phillips. Its true that this coalition struggles how to endorse and how to support ratification of the 15th amendment, which will, again, speak to face. But not speak to gender when it comes to Voting Rights. Oftentimes this is a story thats told about an African American man this is a troubling myth its a troubling myth. There are also African American women soldiers of truth. Very known in this period for anti slavery in womens rights. There was someone of a new comer i want to focus on harper because when we focus on her, every African American women can learn something. Harper comes in and she skeptical about everybody in the room. Shes quite sure that no one quite appreciates the circumstances that African American women face in these extraordinary moments as they look to politics to address both racism and sexism simultaneously. Its possible her often quoted line is we are all bound up together. This becomes the contribution that African Americans will make even into our own time. This view that it is not possible to parse out access to the polls, access to office holding, along manmade differences like race and gender. She asks this coalition, including douglas to lift their sites to the interest of all humanity, and she would put it. This is the position that black women would put on the table. They were press the position coming all the way to the 19th amendment and beyond. I will leave it to another panel to decide whether we have actually arrived to that ideal. You tell the story not only Francis Harper but other black women and more. Tell us about their activism during this crucial position during the 19th of amendment. Some activists were arguing are you in for the change of state level and others were arguing for courts to recognize the suffrage. What was the position of these African American women you write about . How successful were africanamerican in particular and getting the right votes in the states in this crucial transition period . The important facet to the story in my research was to recognize that while we have been able to recover small and important wonders of African American who are part of the womens Suffrage Association from the civil war to the 19th amendment, it was a small number of African American women. Part of my work was to ask where were these women . One of the myths about them as they had not been interested in politics. Not interested in Voting Rights. I ended up following them, if you will, to the places where they do gather. It turns out African American women gathered and tens of thousands. First and churches, that this churches. In the same period they are engaged in pitched debates over political power for religious nominations. Preaching licenses. Offices with denominations. Will they be retained to the ministry . When they engage in these debates they are speaking precisely this kind of language, and making sorts of arguments that animates debate at this very same moment. By the 1890s, 1896, African American women are gathered to prepare but it will not be a Suffrage Association. It will be the National Association of colored women. It will be a Club Movement that gathers together hundreds and thousands of local black womens clubs across the country. It activates them for a whole range of political these clubs organizing and advocating for federal legislations led by the great black suffrage is, ida b. Wells. Im the founding of black politics is a companion to the suffrage of women comes to adopt suffrage women as part of the second and to work hard to that and, but at the same time is active and committed to what we would say in the 20th century anti racist they move for federal anti black women do not find a comfortable home in suburb associations. The important degree to which racism has informed that movement. Where women strategically and instrumental means African American women never find a comfortable home here. At the same time they are already part of the political machine in cities like new york and chicago on San Francisco even before the 19th amendment. So theyre beginning to work their political power to influence the agenda, particularly at the Republican Party and at the same time, black women are organizing with one another citizenship schools suffrage schools, because what they know, it was no secret that they were faced with hurdles in many states in addition to intimidation and violence, and so suffrage and citizenship rules become the way black women prepare one another. It turns out they also prepare black men who have been away from the polls for a very long time for a new wave of registration. Passing ballots in the fall of 1920. As we know too much of that will not succeed and will require another movement for womens suffrage, if you will, anne when that begins in august of 1920. Take us up from 1913 to the passage or commemorating sear, in march 1913, the two womens win movements African American women marchers and white women converged on the eve of the president ial inauguration. It led to a dramatic lastminute shift of a vote by a senator who got a letter from his mother and the amendment was proposed tell us white past when it did . It is a cinematic finish, the ratification, the fight for the actual voting. Congress approves the amendment beginning often what people say in this parade, which was a massive peaceful protest on the eve of Woodrow Wilsons inauguration, precisely to upstage him hundreds of thousands of people turn out in the streets. Tens of thousands of women are marching. Violence erupts. This is the kind of violence that many women of color experience on a daily basis. Shocking for white americans to see this happen to good upstanding women. Makes the front page press. There is of course usual racial ten shuns and white suffrage a