Transcripts For CSPAN3 Role Of Men In The Womens Suffrage Movement 20240712

Well, good evening. Welcome to the william g. Mcgowan theater at the National Archives. Im debra wall. Deputy archivist of the United States and im pleased you could join us for tonights program, whether youre here in the theater or joining us through facebook, youtube, or cspan. Tonights discussion of womens suffragists and the men who supported them, the suffragents is part of the series events related to our current exhibit, rightfully hers, american women and the vote. Our partners are the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative, and the one woman one vote 2020 festival, and we thank them for their support. Our special exhibit, rightfully hers, tells the story of womens struggle for Voting Rights, to secure these rights women activists had to win allies among men and influential positions. It was men who sat in the state legislatures that would ratify or reject the 19th amendment. Whose centennial we now celebrate. When rightfully hers opened in our Lawrence Obrien gallery last may, guests at the opening reception were offered a yellow rose pin as they entered the museum. That evoked the badges worn by the mens league of womens surerage. This nod to the role men played came as a surprise, so tonight, were going to take look at those suffragents and their contributions to the Voting Rights struggle. And its my pleasure to welcome nancy tate to the stage. Since 2015, nancy has served as the cochair of the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative and is also on the board of the turning point suffragist memorial. From 2000 to 2015, she served as the executive director of the league of women voters. Previously, she served as the chief operating officer of the academy of Public Administration and in the department of energy, the department of education, and the office of economic opportunity. Please join me in welcoming nancy tate. [ applause ] well, thank you. Its wonderful to be here, especially at the National Archives, since they have opened this really lovely exhibit on women and the vote. And as she said, its called rightfully hers, american women and the vote. I myself have toured the exhibit twice. Its great. And i encourage everybody else to come and see it too. So as she mentioned, im the cochair of the women Vote Centennial Initiative and the former executive director of the league of women voters of the United States. The league is one of the cofounders of the womens Vote Centennial Initiative. And that group, which in short hand is wvci was formed an an information sharing collaborative of the scholars working in this area. We want to celebrate the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment, which will be of course officially next year, 2020, and in doing that, we want to shed light on the powerful but little known stories behind that very long and hard struggle to win the vote. The league itself was founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman kat, who was the head of the largest suffragist organization, the National Womens suffrage organization, and the league under her guidance was formed six months before the amendment would pass. The league, so tlefherefore, th league is also having its own 100th anniversary next year. There is a league in every state and approximately 700 cities and counties around the country, and the league has been spending nearly 100 years now continuing the fight for full equality for all americans and we do that through both education and advocacy. But let nee just say a few more words about the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative. We work to establish and connect people, networks all around the country, girl scout troops, universities, any kind of organization who is interested in learning about our suffrage history and how they can be part of these celebrations that they may even want to create themselves next year. Here in the d. C. Area, these Educational Programs that we put on with the archives and other groups is the main thing that we undertake. So tonight, as debra said, this particular evening is part of wvcis women and the vote symposium series. This is the fourth one we have done here at the archives and we hope to do at least one more in 2020. But when we picked the topics, each one of these focuses on some of the little told stories about what went on to enable women to finally get that vote. And all of the panels, including this one, will look at how some of these lessons show relevance to the issues of today. As many of you know, the 72year fight for womens suffrage is a powerful historical story. And it can be used to enhance our understanding of our own times and how to navigate it. You can learn more about wvci by visiting our website, facebook, instagram, and twitter. Using the hashtag at2020cent n hashtag at2020centennial. Im pleased to introduce tonights panel. You have their full biographies in your program so im going to call them up by name. Come on up, ladies. We have our moderator, Betsy Fischer martin, who is the executive director of women in Politics Institute at american university. Brooke kroeger, the author of the suffragents, how women used men to get the vote. Johanna neuman, who is the author of gilded suffragists. And susan ware, who is the author of why they marched. So betsy, i turn it over to you. Thank you very much, nancy. Welcome, everyone. Really nice to be here with you today. So we have a special treat. Three terrific experts, and i well tell you just personally, i had a wonderful time reading and learning so much about this issue in preparation for tonight, so im excited for you all to hear it as well. So brooke, let me start with you. Your book tells a story of rich and powerful men, mainly in new york, that came together to help women earn the right to vote. Take us back to 1908 and tell us what brought these men together for the movement and how did they first come together to form the mens league for womens suffrage . Its a pretty good story. Starting around that time, ann compton sanderson, who had been imprisoned in britain, came to the United States on a lecture tour. Because she had been in jail, she could not come through a normal port, so she snuck in through canada, causing quite a big stir. She lectured around the country. One of her themes was how pathetic the wealthy women of america were in terms of understanding how to engage in a political process. And further, how the men of england had been very supportive of women in their fight for the vote and how nothing of this nature was going on here. So this was in the press. And very much in peoples consciousness, at least people in certain circles. Around the same time, Anna Howard Shaw wrote to oswald garrison ballard, who was the editor and publisher of both the nation magazine and the new york evening post. Thats a nice combination. I was going to say, a heck of a combination right now, but it was at the time. He was also the son of fanny garrison ballard, who was an important suffragist and the grandson of an abolitionist and suffragist. She wrote to him remembering when he was at harvard in 1904, he had made a wonderful speech at the massachusetts suffrage organization, and wanted him to speak at a convention. So he wrote back saying he was taxed to the limit of his strength. Didnt think he could commit to anything of that nature, but he was thinking it would be a very good idea, and i think this was in the zeitgeist, that a group of men of prominence would come together, not to do much more than lend their names and trot up to albany or to washington to speak to legislatures and politicians if the need arose. She wrote back and said that this was not a new idea, that the suffrage organization which at this point was very much in the doldrums, had had the idea before and in fact there actually was a mens Suffrage League that started in 18741875 in the east village in new york, met about 80 times, and then fell out of existence and memory, and i think this must have been what she was referring to because she said the men who have been willing to engage are so full of isms, and we have so many women full of isms. Its about the last thing we need. The men who we really need, you, oswald, you know, basically what she was suggesting, never seem to have the time for our cause. So he wrote back, and he said, you know, of course, im paraphrasing. He said i think i could find a group of he didnt say i can find. He said a group of men could be found who would do this work as long as there is someone to do the heavy lifting. And so some time passed, and she writes back again, and of course, in perfect womens style, says and well do all the work to get this organized. And to his enormous credit, he said that is not a good idea. The more Strategic Plan would be for us to form this ourselves. Providing we can find someone to do the work. And that would be the way to make this really effective. So he summons rabbi steven weisz and john dewy, the philosopher and columbia professor as his triumvirate, and they, dewys student at columbia was max eastman, a philosophy student starting to have a writing career, obviously short of funds. Living down in the village. And he becomes the secretary treasurer of the organization. His charge was to put together a list to keep this very secret and put together a list of 100 names that would just wow the world, from every profession, clergy, professors, names that america knew. And then announce this as a group that was organized to promote the suffrage cause. And so he gets to work, he gets the help of his mother, reverend anise ford eastman, who is from upstate elmira. She comes down. Theyre writing letters, the letters are going everywhere, so its unimaginable with what, 10, 15 newspapers in new york at the time, that someone would not get wind of this. And of course, the niemsz dthe times did and runs a chiding front page article with a headline that was something like, you know, mens voices to join the soprano chorus for womens votes. And then it names all these people whose names they had gotten wind of. Of course, there were only 25 at that point. One the director of Bellevue Hospital resigned. He was so embarrassed. But most were okay. Eastman was mortified, and he but he had recruited George Foster peabody, who became the financial mainstay of the league, and he said dont worry about it. By the time were really ready to announce, everyone will have forgotten this and all will be well. That is what happened. By november, he didnt have 100 names. He had 150 names. They had their first meeting in early november. By january, they had produced their first booklet with all these names and addresses listed, with their charter and constitution. By later in the year, they gave their first banquet, 600 people, to honor ethyl snowden, the wife of the british mp. This was very elite in its construction in the beginning. Later, they invited men of all sorts because it was understood what you needed was men who voted. This was really the point. And having this kind of male support was key. And then that leads us, and im sure someone else can tell the story of the parade, but they march as a group of 89 men in top hats and bowlers in the Second Annual new york suffrage parade in may of 1911 where theyre pilloried and mocked and every sort of insult is hurled. And they embrace this. It galvanizes them. From then, they are no longer just offering their names, they are really ready for work. Johanna, why was this so controversial to have men, and what did they they were ridiculed in a lot of cases. Well, i did want to pick up on brookes point. Yeah. So there were 89 men in the 1911 parade. One year later, in 1912, there were 1,000 men. So thats how much the movement grew in a very short period. A year later, there were 35 states and numbering in the tens of thousands. One of the men who marched, and i was just looking for this quote, was rabbi weisz. Rabbi weisz was a major progressive. He often lectured in the city on progressive causes, those isms that you spoke of that was just a time of great ferment. There was debate among students at columbia and in max eastmans circle in greenwich village. Is capitalism the right thing . Should we look at socialism . Should we explore free love . It was everything. Imagine a time where everything was up for debate. And rabbi weisz participated in the 1912 parade where many of the men he knew from elite circles were in their clubs looking down on fifth avenue, hurling insults, as brooke suggested. Those guys were rolling their eyes. On the street, they were hurling insults. He wrote, i dug out his diary, and he wrote of the mockery that he encountered that day. For a few moments, i was very warm and took off my hat. Whereupon someone shouted, look at the longhaired susan. Some of the other delightful explanations that greeted us were, whos taking care of the baby . Oh, flossy, dear, arent they cute . Look at the molly coddles. Another male suffragist, also another suffrage husband, as they were called, was george middleton. He recalled hecklers crying, take that handkerchief out of your cuff. Oh, you gay deceiver. You forgot to shave this morning. So i think we have there some suggestion of why it was so controversial, because it disrupted this gender role expectation that men had. And throughout the 1910s, what i think happens is that the theres a succession of events that help to normalize the idea of women voting. And, you know, the great fear among men, after all, the only voters here, the only people eligible to vote for womens suffrage, either as voters in their states on referenda or as members of legislative committees or lawmakers in congress. There was this great fear that politics would harden women and emasculate men and also hurt the family. And a lot of things that the suffrage leaders did in those years was to reassure the public that women could be in political life and still maintain their femininity. It is probably worth saying somewhere that men have always stood, some men have always stood with women. There was a famous judge in massachusetts in the american revolution, who wrote to john adams and suggested that they consider universal suffrage. So here we have at the founding some agitation for women to have the vote. After the civil war, when Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony split the woman, the Womens Movement apart by vowing that they will not support the 15th amendment, which removes the barriers to black men voting, they wont support it unless women are also included. And this horrifies the other women who start a rival organization. So for 20 years, you have these two rival groups working at cross purposes. But one black man named robert pervis stood up for Elizabeth Cady stanton and susan b. Anthony in this rather unexpected decision to fight the 15th amendment. And pervis said, if my daughter cannot have Voting Rights along with my son, i wont vote for it because she has a double curse of being a woman and a black woman. So i think, you know, we have to say that there are always some men who have stood with women, and i just wanted to throw that into the conversation. I think whats distinct in this particular era is that they organized. Absolutely. And you know, celebrity endorsers, there have also been, back to thomas payne, theres always been those, but this was really a unique happening. I agree. What else is strange about it is that the few people in their memoirs who write about it at all write about the 1911 parade or the 1912, and the response from the crowds. I mean, that seems to be a very affecting experience. And they talk about it also, the only thing he mentioned. No one ever mentioned the league by name. Only james lees laid laws obituary mentions it because his wife probably wrote it and she was such a great suffragist. They never talked about it again. I wondered why. Like, was it chivalrous to not ever take credit . Were they just, you know, the consummate allies, as we would talk about today . Or was it insignificant in the history of these very active lives, and by the time they die, you know, six decades later, its it wasnt an important aspect of who they were . Only laid laws and eastmans make any mention of it. Its kind of fascinating. George creole, as soon as he becomes head of the committee on public information, hes not talking about it at all. Because wilson, of course, wasnt supportive. So its interesting. Susan, i want to get back to sort of the home life, if you will, and you know, a woman goes off and joins the Suffrage Movement. What does that mean for the home life and for the husband during that time . I think it really changes, can really change all aspects of it because, especially if a woman signs on to the Suffrage Movement. Its kind of like having a religious conversion. And if shes all in, its like having a fulltime job. Its an unpaid job, but its fulltime, and this is likely something that she hasnt done before. And you can see how there would be a ripple effect, that the kind of wifely or daughterly duties that she might have done before, like being there when the kids come home from school or being there to entertain at dinner, those things arent going to happen anymore. And i think that what we need to remember is that its not just if a woman says okay, im going to support suffrage, it can effect all kinds of other things in her life. It can affect her family of orig origin, who shes partnered with, her colleagues. It can affect where she lives, where she travels, it can affect where she dresses. Its really a big commitment, and one of the places where you see it really hitting home, literally, is in suffrage marriages. You write in your book, why they marched about a married couple, ray and Gertrude Foster brown. Tell us about them. Well, ray and Gertrude Foster brown were very much a suffrage couple. She was head of the new york state womens suffrage organization. Quite powerful position. And he was a journalist, and he wrote a book, a pamphlet, published anonymously, he didnt put his name on it, called how it feels to be the husband of a suffraget suffragette. And in that pamphlet, you can tell hes a true feminist. He supports womens economic independence and he talks about having a wife who does things beyond the domestic sphere is so much more interesting to have around than someone who just stays home. Hes sort of saying all of the right things. So he puts on this wonderful public cheerful face of this is great. This is what its like being married to a suffragette, and yet, in private, things are a little more complicated. She is off traveling. She goes to conventions. Shes giving speeches. Shes out every night. And hes at home. And hes missing her. So theres this sort of difference between the cheerful public endorsement of it and that sometimes on the home front its a little harder to make it work. And that hes the one whos really feeling left behind. And this had happened once before in their marriage. She was a talented singer and musician, and she had gone off on the road, had a very successful career, and he then felt like he was being left behind. I think whats interesting is that both times, they managed to work their way through it. And they stayed married until his death in 1944. And i think its just a good reminder that we always need to think about the personal as well as the political when were telling the story. Yeah. Brooke, i want to ask you about the press and how the men were depicted in the press at the time. Well, first of all, as a curiosity, i mean, it was interesting, so it made news. More importantly, the mean who were involved initially made news because they always made news. So it was these were people that were high profile. Followed in the social columns, followed for their business dealings. They were followed for everything, so being followed by suffrage was extra for the movement because it just drew attention. Another thing to be cognizant of is that a huge proportion of these men who were engaged from the beginning were editors, publishers, writers, poets, dramatists. They were people who had media access. So they were also able to guide coverage. Were talking about catherine duer mackey a few minutes ago. One of the publishers was the publishers so there is this puff piece written about her which is a parallel organization to the mens league also directed at attracting the elite women which johanna could talk about more than i can. And that kind of access to print, to having things published that were positive from a movement that for 70 yea years had been seen as doughty and dull and veragos and it is not a group attractive in a celebritylike way. There is a wonderful cartoon from 1911 where it shows two suffrage women, one who looks like a scold and one who is shapely and very attractive in a beautiful hat and it said the type has changed. And part of that was this group that had now become part of the image. You hear flattering descriptions of ana shaws clothes. So things had really quite changed. And i think this part of the movement really, that elite attraction had brought something that was needed. Well, brooke, looking at me because my first book on this topic is called gilded suffragist, the new york socialites who fought for the vote. And my conclusion on studying them is they were the Oprah Winfrey of their day. That when they embraced this cause, it just gave a burst of energy to the concept. It popularized the movement, many more recruits came in after they joined. There was just an excitement in the wind. I wanted to add, though, on the question of press, that most of the coverage was not favorable, and especially we mentioned earlier the New York Times. The New York Times was very hostile. They were more hostile News Organization than the times who greets the men with editorialized, against what they were doing, suggested that they didnt know their own way, you know, that they were a little misguided, perhaps they had been one editorial in the times suggested that some of the men might have been trying to curry favor with female seamstresses to make their suits. I mean, just unbelievable stuff. There was a great deal of hostility but there were other pains like the herald and others that were kind of but previously they were all like that. So that is the big change. That you had this wave of positive response that started to create that turn. I think there is Something Else that is going that is sort of a general context for what your two books are about, which is your organization starts in 1909 and yours 1908. The phrase i use is a kind of quickening of suffrage activism right around that period, 1908 to 1910, where things really burst out into public in a way that for the first 70 years or so of the movement, it really was taking place in church parlors and lecture halls. It wasnt engaging the public. And for a variety of reasons. Things really began to pop. And it makes, and then there is a selffulfilling and then you have this escalation for the next ten years leading up to it. I think the reason for that is that, as you said, until this period basically suffrage people were talking to each other. It was preaching to the converted. And i think there was a donning realization that you have to reach the public. So in the 1910s, they start to use all of the new science of public relations, weapons of spectacle, the public parades, all kinds of things. They had suffrage days at the polo grounds. They had women pilots dropping flyers from airplanes. Calling the day, calling people at the baseball field and they would have fans that said be a suffrage fan. Things like that. They tried all kinds of stuff. They just got savvy about public relations. What is the term suffragettes come from. From england. It was a pejorative and not a official term and on this side of the puddle it is mere men, the suffragettes and there were a lot of dominatives. And suffragette is a fraught word in the United States and i noticed that when ray brown used it in the title of his pamphlet and i think he was maybe making a subtle jab at his wife. But most american suffragists tried to distance themselves from the term because it was associated with the British Movement which was more willing to embrace violence against property, which is something that the United States Movement Never did and very much wanted to draw those lines. So you find that i cant really think of hardly any instances where women in this country would call themselves suffragettes, but you find that the term is very often used to describe them and it has a somewhat pejorative cast to it. And were finding that again today as were facing, looking forward to the centennial. The term suffragette is coming back and i find myself often waging battles and saying, no, no, that is not the right term. Even Hillary Clinton used it in her book. And i wrote her a letter and explained to her, as a fellow wellesley grad, why she shouldnt use it and she never responded. I think it is just people dont know the difference. Well maybe she didnt get the letter. Brooke, i wanted to ask you about the Financial Support that was significant in terms of funding the suffrage fight. Sure. Even behind the scenes or in some cases from the grave, they were funding the Suffrage Movement or widows that would be alba belmont and divorced and widowed and used the money toward the movement. Mrs. Leslie made back the money her husband lost, a precursor to the old life magazine publication. She made the money and when she died gave 2 million to the movement. She wasnt even really a big activist, but was obviously very supportive. And that was a that made a huge difference, that money. Huge. And so did alba belmont because the headquarters were built by those funds. And couples like the laidlaws and other Health New York couples engaged with the movement were financially supportive. They would do a challenge grant during a convention. Most of these member served on the finance committee and were very involved in after the 1950 defeat in new york, there was a huge gearing up for the 1917 battle which succeeded and was extremely important because when the suffrage amendment pasted in new york in 1917, that brought 44 congressman who were prosuffrage which gave wilson away with that much support in congress to counter the opposition from the south. So all of these things really fed into creating that burst of activity through the decade that really did make the difference. Susan, i want to ask you, you mentioned the south, what role did africanamerican men play . Well we could all talk about that. I think susan was going to. Yeah, i think it is very important as we think back about the history to Pay Attention to the large roles that africanamerican men as well as africanamerican women played in this movement. If you go back to seneca falls, there is Frederick Douglas with Elizabeth Cady stanton and he splits with her in the aftermath of the civil war about who will get priority about voting but he never loses his faith in the importance of votes for women and universal suffrage. And then if you think about someone like w. E. B. Dubois as the editor of the crisis, and the crisis was the magazine of the National Association of colored people which was founded in either 1908 or 1909, it practically reads like a suffrage magazine. There are so many editors that hes writing. And there is a reason for that. It is because africanamerican men who fought so hard for in the civil war and received the vote after the war only to have it taken away in the south by jim crow restrictions. They now how important the vote was. And could see why it was important for women as well. Because all of the arguments that were given against giving women the vote had also been used against men. And so de bois makes that point and many others in the community do. And dubois makes another point but if women get the vote, black women get the vote too. So i think it is very important, as we tell these stories and think about a movement, which has a reputation rightly for being predominantly white and middle class, that we cant let the racism of that movement keep us from acknowledging and making really front and center the contributions of both africanamerican women which are so important but here is a perfect case where putting the men in the story just adds so much. So im glad for that question. Johanna, i read in one of your papers a quote from Frederick Douglas and he said when i ran away from slavery, it was for myself. When i advocated emancipation, it was for my people but when i stood up for the rights of women, south was out of the question. I found lil nobility in that act. I think one of the more interesting questions about this discussion for me is motives. And for Frederick Douglas, and i love that quote, too, so thank you for digging it up, for Frederick Douglas and many others early in the movement, there was a certain nobility in their act. When we get to the modern movement, the league, mens league, i see a couple of groups of people. The first are the what are called the bohemian sexual radicals and these are max freedman and his friends down in the village. Max believes that women should have the vote because it make them better lovers. It will there will be an equalizing of gender roles and women will stop being silly and men could stop being prove ill get and might get to a better relation. Floyd dell was another of his friends there who thought that women that the womans movement, the feminist cause, would liberate men not to have to work. Because they wont have to work. That there wouldnt be an obligation on their shoulders to support women and children. And they are quite enthusiastic. Max freedman calls suffrage the great fight for freedom in my lifetime. So this is at a time of all of these isms and hes saying suv suffrage is the main cause here. But they soon lose, i dont want to say they lose interest, but they leave the league. They start to leave the league by about 1912. Max said that he prefers a cause where you could suffer a little for the good. And by 1912 was getting very mainstream and they sort of peel away. Most of the members of the club, of the league, are now Good Government reformers. These are people join any movement to reform the public space. They join all kinds of causes. They join the causes to rid city hall of corruption, to improve sanitation for immigrants, to improve working conditions for factory workers, to end racial lynching in the south, they have myriad causes. But i think they welcome women because it doubles their numbers. So it makes their progressivism Even Stronger if women get the vote and can help. And so i think there are these different that people come to the cause for Different Reasons and i think one of the great lessons of the Suffrage Movement is that what finally succeeds is a huge, broad umbrella that takes in everyone from working class to celebrity socialites, librarians, actresses, professionals, housewives, men. Its just conveying in its breath public acceptance. And if i could just take one more minute. I think one of the least studied aspects of the womens Suffrage Movement is the role of the states. It is a great lesson that social change begins at the grassroots level. And the states start rolling from the west. Wyoming is the first state in 1890. You have colorado in 1893. By 1911 california becomes the fifth state. And it is extremely close election in california. The suffrage initiative passes by one vote per precinct. But the impact is huge. Because in the 1912 election there are 1. 2 million women eligible to vote for president. And by 1916, four years later, analysts say that Woodrow Wilson would not have been reelected but for the votes of people in the womens suffrage states. So there is this groundswell. And what happens when we get to the 19th amendment, i believe, is that women are no longer petitioning congress, please, please can we have the vote. Theyre coming as constituents and theyre saying we have the power to vote you out of office. And there is another point that just if youre having a cocktail conversation about the 19th amendment and someone says well women got the vote or were granted the vote, i always hate that. But you could say, well, actually, quite a few women were already voting. And really it does start in the west and move eastward. But, again, it is the role of the states. The flip side of that is that very few africanamerican women were enfranchised by the 19th amendment and that is because most of them still lived in the American South where they were restricted from voting by the same tools that kept black men from voting, literacy tests and poll tax and things like that. So we always need to sort of keep both of these perspectives in mind when people say easily, oh, yeah, women got the vote. Well it is a little more complicated than that. And brooke, you spent a lot of time in your book talking about new york and the significance of that. Was that 1917 . 1917, yes. And why was that so significant . And as i said before, because it is the first big delegation to come into congress and create a change and it was the first state east of the mississippi or missouri, how you want to count it, illinois were not a geography group. I think it is east of the missouri to come in, which created this avalanche of change. And it was understood if it failed in new york that would have been the end. And it gave wilson cover in a sense to start changing his mind. He always used the states argument. This is the states issue to avoid we still hear that these days. That is still heard. That avoided the question of the south for him. But this gave him a way to come forward and actually help change the minds and make this happen. So fast forwarding to ratification in the state of tennessee, harry t. Burn, who wants to tell us that story, the great story. We volunteered her. Go ahead. Harry was a young legislature in the tennessee senate. The setup for this is, of course, to get an amendment, a constitutional amendment through Congress Took the vote of twothirds of the house and twothirds of the senate. To ratify. No, to get it through congress. That was the congress role. And that happened in 1919. But to get it ratified by the states took threefourths. So suffrage leaders spent about a year and a half going from legislature to legislature trying to get ratification. And at first it was going along swimmingly, you know. A drum roll of approval. Some five i think three states rushed to be the first to ratify and they now stand in history together because nobody made it in ahead of the others. Same thick thing happened with the e. R. A. And they parade through the states. And by then there is a groundswell of what we call the antis. The suffrage forces see this as the big battle of their lifetime and they martial for it and none more powerful, of course, than the liquor lobby that fears that the prohibition, the temperance movement, which was fueled really by women, that women have other things up their sleeves and that is just the opening wedge and theyre going to come with social legislation that so that is going to be costly to everybodys business. So everyone is marshalling and descending on the State Capitol and they get to 35. But they need 36. And everyone understands that tennessee is going to be the last state. They either make it in tennessee or they dont. And everyone goes there. Many of the key players take rooms at the Hermitage Hotel in nashville. The liquor lobby i think it takes the eighth floor and they call it the jack daniels suite where theyre offering if not bribes, at least a lot of liquor. And the vote is extremely close. Harry is one of those who was down as an anti, this is signified by the wearing of colored roses for the antis and i think the pros wore yellow. And all of a sudden, on many procedural votes he changes his mind and he votes yes and tips the thing. And he pulls out a letter from his pocket that basically says, my mother asked me to vote. He was sympathetic to the cause but he was going to vote no because that is how his constituents had made very clear to him they wanted him to vote. But he got this letter from his mother and it touched his heart and he voted the way he did. He was then hounded, he was accused of taking bribes. You know, the antis were very powerful and they filed a lawsuit, and this is a little known story, too, i hope somebody is looking at it more closely, but they filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 19th amendment. And that was finally ran through the courts and it was rejected. 1922. So, but harry said it tickled him to contribute to history and to make his party look good. So we all have the right to vote because a young man listened to his mom. That is a great story. Susan or brooke, do either of you have another man to highlight who you thought is really one of the most important people that we maybe dont know about . I do. I think laidlaw was the National President of the mens league. He could count his lineage back to colonial days through 50 different lines. He was on the board of what became standard and poors. He was a real player. His wife was a very important new york suffrage. If i could read the Mission Statement of the league, let me see if it is here, and i could see it which could be a trick. While brooke is looking for that, i just i could add that laidlaw, when he led men at the 1912 parade, he was asked why they were marching and he said we are here to give moral support to the women and courage to the men. And i always thought that was quite poignant. So here is the statement in full. He goes there are many member who inwardly feel the justice of equal suffrage. This is written in around 1913. But who are not ready to acknowledge it publicly unless their backed by numbers. There are other men who are not even ready to give the subject consideration until they see a large number of men are willing to be counted in favor of it. The man who is so prejudice that he will not consider it at all will pass away with this generation if not sooner. The usefulness of the mens leagues politically to women constitutes one of the unanswerable arguments for womens suffrage. Legislators are mainly responsible to voters and to voters only. In the majority of states in this country, earnest, determined women are besieging the legislatures, endeavoring to bring about the submission of a womens suffrage amendment to the people. How long and how burdensome is this effort on the part of nonvoters everyone knows. But, if a wellorganized minority of men voters demand equal suffrage legislation from the legislatures, they will get it. After that, it is only a question of propaganda and the mens leagues come in again on the first proposition of moral support. It is pretty great. Its pretty great. Susan, does anyone come to mind to you . I would give a shout out to a man named fred nathan. Oh, yeah. And i think it is partly because hes married to one of the characters in my book. Mod nathan, who is a prominent suffragist and shes in my book because i use her relationship with her sister annie nathan myers and the founder of Bernard College so it introduces this interesting sibling rivalry, but also reminds us that not all women were supportive and wanted to support women getting the vote. But maude and frederick had another one of those suffrage marriages. And they did things like a Cross Country automobile trip in like 1912, at a time when there were no Cross Country roads. I remember he turns up at one of the International Mens leagues he went to both of them. All three of them. The International Dimension of the Suffrage Movement is very important. And when we finally get to this critical turning point that weve all talked about of the 1917 November November 1917 referendum in the United States and he is quite ill pushed in a wheelchair or something equivalent so he could cast his vote for the suffrage amendment. So i think he belongs in there. Definitely. He was one of the original figures also. Important. Brooke, as you alluded to earlier there is not a lot known about some of the folks. As you were writing your book, how did you go about finding a lot of the information, a lot of stories that you have in there about the men. Because you mention they didnt boast about it. It wasnt in their obits. And interestingly historians have not picked up on this. When i started there were a page or a paragraph or academic papers that did much more than mention it in passing. And i went into fulton history. Com, the incredible sources of buried small town newspapers to find and trace where there were speeches and what they were doing. I almost did a full chronology of the ten years to figure out it was a movement and there was more to it than celebrity endorsement which is what they set out to do. But then clearly became deeply engaged. But quietly. Quietly. And then i think also we have to say that, as i got the idea to write this and put out a proposal, most of the response was who cares what the men did. It was a very typical response. And what was your response to that . What was there to say. Unprintable. It took a while. It took a while. Johanna. When you were talking about the men that should be included in this conversation, my mind went to teddy roosevelt. Why . Because he was the disciple of manliness, vigor, you know, some would argue that we went to war in 1898 because he thought it was going to help the vigor of the male population amid a period of feminism of politics. And of course at the beginning hes not very interested in womens suffrage, when hes first asked about it around the turn of the century. He says this women will get the vote when they ask for it and until then the whole thing bores me. Lets move on to something interesting. Only in 1912 when hes running to recapture the presidency and needs the votes of women as he embraced the cause. But what i love about him and i end my book with it, is that after women get the vote in new york in 1917, in 1918 Theodore Roosevelt is setting off for the polls and he gets in the car and he finds his wife is already there. And he said in that wonderful tezy roosevelt accent, edie, what are you doing here . And she said, im going to vote. And the enormity i mean it was one thing for this man to embrace suffrage as a political endorsement, but for him to understand the enormity of the social change that he had reluctantly and belatedly endorsed, to me it was like witnessing the human toll of social change. And it was a generation of men who had to decide. And i dont think the suffragettes, the suffergents were ever a majority. But they were the activists among them. I think they also understood as laidlaw once said that they could make it easier, happy or work. Things that were very difficult for women to accomplish, they could just do. Take something as simple as a meeting at the letus club where women reporters were coming to report and couldnt get in the door and laidlaw could immediately open his offices and his cafeteria so that the meetings could be held. I mean, there just was an ease of being able to fix things. Well, i also think that the role at the end of the day was to normalize the idea. To make it a natural part of everyday life. So make what . Voting. Yeah. Women voting. I think what always endeared me to the mens leagues and this comes out of my training as a womens historian, where you see all of these organizations founded in the 19th century, religious organizations and political organizations. Theyre mens organizations and womens auxiliary which observe do all of the work and raise all of the money and are absolutely central but they dont get the credit. And what has always tickled me about the mens leagues is that they really were the auxillaries. And they embraced that role. And so it is a model of role reversal. They actually took direction. They used the term when they get thanked at the 1907 victory and laidlaw comes up and he said we have learned to be auxillaries. It doesnt happen all that often. So lets give them some credit. If fact, the governor of new york, whitman at the time, was asked after the 1917 vote, who won womens suffrage and he said, well i thought that the men of new york had a lot to do with that. There were all of these newspaper and magazine articles at the time saying that this faction or that faction of women had actually won the thing. And whitman is reminding us that the voters were men. So we have some time for questions an we have two microphones on each side here. So if anyone has a question, please make your way to the microphones. I see a gentleman here with a question. That happens to be my husband. An auxiliary. Thanks for taking the questions and thanks for the great presentation. The question i have and the moderator wasnt bad by the way. The question i have is you touched on this at the outset of this, but why west . Why is it do you think that this first came out of wyoming and then obviously california and colorado, was it the pioneer spirit, the fact that genders were more equal in the west, whereas more strat fied in the traditional east or what was it that sort of really took fire, perry fire if you will in the west. Well. We need to look at specific states and theyre very often are stories within those states that have to do with political alignments and whether they are third parties and whether someone believes that having giving women the right to vote is going to help them. Having said that, if you one of the things that is the most instructive if youre trying to get a handle on suffrage history is to look at a map of the United States and see this west where you have these victories and then there is some black hole of the south where there are no victories. And the industrial northeast where there are very few until new york. So the geography is really important. As a historian, i find it im a little uncomfortable using phrases like pioneering spirit, but something is going on out there and i just think thank goodness for that because once you had all of the women voting in the west, number one, the world hasnt come to an end, so that is important to show people. Because you really didnt know that. But it also gets people used to the idea of women voting. And you also have increasing numbers of women would actually vote. And then they could be a Political Force both in their own states but also in this national movement. So without the west, we might women might still be i just want to add that there were i think there were some political motives by men who saw adding women to the roles in the west as an opportunity to double their influence, to get more representatives in congress. But i also think they needed women to come populate very sparsely populated states. That makes sense. They also say that the strategies in the west were stronger, that they were very good at giving arguments, that both appealed to the converted and could still appeal to those who hadnt made the change. There were several papers that try to deal with why that was possible. [ inaudible question ]. Not until 1917. It took a while. But again it is a Western State that elects the first woman to congress. Correct. And that is not a fluke. I had also wanted to you ask something about the west. Like, when you were talking, you were talking about wealthy men in new york. But things happened out west. I mean, do you have anything comparable to places out like in San Francisco or yes, so in california sorry. But the other thing i wanted to ask you is you were talking about the fact that these men did things behind the scenes and yet you also said that this became more popular because you had celebrities and people of influence endorsing it and that helped and i didnt understand. It sounds kind of contradictory. Im saying there were people in the news already. So that became a vehicle for more attention to the Suffrage Movement in a way that was palatable. I see. That is the point. But california had a Important League run by a man named john braylee. He founded it. It was coeducational but felt it was the most important work of his life. And in massachusetts they had an Important League, chicago had an Important League. There were 35 states that had mens leagues. And as i said, through the womens journal vehicles, this was heavily promoted, that women were asked to encourage men in their lives to become very much a part of this. Hi. Hi. I was going to ask how do you think that the man in an average American Household would have reacted to the idea of women voting . Not well. What do you think . Im not really sure. I would have hoped it wouldnt have been oh, no that is a terrible idea. But i also dont think everybody would have been like oh, yeah, lets do that right now. I think if you want to take a broader look at the question of why this bias exists, you could in my new book i go back to the american revolution. Because i dont think suffrage begins in 1848 at seneca falls. I think it begins in that revolutionary moment when some women are agitating for the vote, where new jersey gives women and free blacks the vote if they have the same amount of property that men voters have. And there is this what one historian has called a revolutionary backlash where all of that gets taken off the table and women are asked to become the guardians of patriotism, to teach the new generation of patriots about this new republic. And many of them do this willingly. Many of them use it as a wedge to suggest that they get a better education. They stick their toe back into the politics slowly. They are instrumental in the drive to oppose Andrew Jacksons indian removal policy. Theyre instrumental in the abolitionist cause to end slavery. But i think by the time you get to this period were talking about, the 1910s, there is this gender construction, this paradigm of gender roles where women arent to be the moral influence, and men are the ones that are supposed to get down into the dirty, smokefilled cigar rooms where politics takes place. And there is, as i mentioned earlier, this fear about what will happen if women go into that room. And i think it just takes a public reassurance that weve been talking about to convince the public. Again, if you look at movements for social change in our lifetimes, if you look at how gay marital equality happens, it starts at the grassroots. It starts at the states. And people have to be the public has to be convinced. And there are campaigns, there are they are losing campaign after losing campaign softens public opposition. And thats, i think, what happened here with the men. I think i would add to that that i think we need to remember that even though the vote doesnt seem like that scary of a thing, how could you go to the polls once a year. But it was kind of seen as an opening wedge. And if that is going to change, all kinds of other things about womens roles could change. And for many people that would be seen as a positive thing. But for many others, that would be seen as not a positive thing. And we see that playing out through the rest of the 20th century. And we see similar ideas on both sides of the equal rights battle. So i think we need to always remember that something that seems like a fairly minor reform, like giving the women the vote, although it is not minor, as we all know, please go vote in 2020, it often stands for something much bigger and in this case it is really womens equality in the modern world. Yes, sir. One of you mentioned there was a constitutional challenge to the amendment but in general i thought once an amendment is approved it is basically instant. What surprised me as i was Googling Harry during your talk and barely survived his reelection campaign. And i would have thought he would have been a shooin with say 50 of the voters in tennessee. So why did he barely pass . Well, he is in tennessee. You need to look at the political situation there and see why it would have been hard for him to not breeze to election. In terms of the constitutional challenges, it is possible to challenge. There were two that were filed very quickly, besides the one that was in tennessee that almost held it up, where luckily within two years the Supreme Court ruled that the 19th amendment was valid and there could not be any challenges to it. Because that would have been a very poor start to womens political emancipation and equality if it happened under the shadow of being knocked down by the Supreme Court. So they moved very quickly. I know i have read those two court cases. Theyre going to be in the library of america and an tholg on womens suffrage that will be out next summer that i edited but i cant for the life of me remember the details of those cases. One other thing, and thank you for having read them, ive not done that, but it is a sad note and i dont know if this is partly why harry burn had trouble subsequently, but the 1920 election is the first one where women nationally, black and white, in the north are eligible to vote. And the showing is not good. Very few of them percentage wise comes to the polls. And there is a lot of reasons for that that we could talk about. But the magazine of the day, there is headlines about apathy, and the apathy of women and so forth an it is possible that played a role in tennessee as well. There are unfortunately, there is a perception that once women got the vote, it didnt matter. There are articles with names like womens suffrage is a failure. One of the ones i found most interesting was in 1924 by ida probo who was a prominent antisuffragist and they sent her around the world to see what women were doing with the vote and she came back quite impressed with what women were doing with the vote. They arent voting at the same levels of men. This is something most women have not done. It takes a while to learn how to be a voter, which is why the league of women voters is so important. But i think one of the things that i hope that the centennial celebrations can help us see is this continuum of womens political activism that starts well before the passage of the 19th amendment and doesnt end in 1920. Women just dont go home and go to sleep and not do anything. You see it continuing through groups like the league of women voters, you see it in the new deal with women likelor roosevelt, you see it in the 1950s with the civil rights movement. It is an ongoing continuum. And what i try and remind myself sometimes is to think, could they have done that without the vote . Or try to imagine the 20th century without the vote. It is been less than a hundred years that women have it had. And so what i try and do is take the long view. Think of it as the long 19th amendment stretching beyond 1920 and starting, like you do, before 1848. Because i think the roots of it are much brought broader than that. So no one should feel bad about the e. R. A. Not being passed becauses it only just begun. 100 years. Do you think men are becoming interested in the role they played in womens suffrage. We could take a poll. What do you think . I didnt really hear. Why are men more interested . In learning what they did . I dont know. When you give lectures do people the audience would be like this, a good selection of men who seem to be interested. Ive had maybe one or two hostile comments but not miaany and usually from women and not men. And people sometimes find that offensive. And the suggestion is never to say this was a mens victory. It is simply to recognize that social change requires everyone. And i think what is interesting about thisment as opposed to some other movements for social change is that it is a oneissue thing. It is not a complicated question. It was single. It is not like bringing up abortion, or bringing up birth control. Birth control and other issues that become complicated on numerous grounds. This is simple and straightforward and a moral wrong. How could a citizen who has to pay taxes, who has to go to jail for wrongs, who has to abide by contracts, who has to do every single thing any other citizen has to do and has no say in determining what happens. It is just a moral wrong. It is interesting. So that is easy to get on board for in a way. Or those who didnt agree would have to pass away because it is just wrong. But then it took so long. You know, it was really susan b. Anthony who narrowed Elizabeth Cady stanton wanted a broad reform, she wanted divorce reform and the bible was under attack. She had a broad agenda, property rights, Educational Opportunities and it was susan b. Anthony who said, no, were just going to focus on the vote. And to your point and she was probably right. Because there were so many horrific things going on that womens issues tend to get subordinated even by women. It is like this is horrible, but this is not as horrible as fill in the blank. And that seems to happen over and over again. Still. But i do think that one of the things that ive noticed as i go out on the hefting for the suffrage centennial, i think maybe 10 years ago if we were doing this, you would think about voting or the women getting the vote. It is kind of unimportant, it wasnt such a big deal. Well, i think recent events have opened all of our eyes to the importance of voting and Voting Rights. And voting suppression in a way that make what could have been a quaint centennial celebration much more relevant and much more timely. Herehere. Than i think we would have expected. Good point. Yep. I think we have time for one more question. I was wondering if you know when did women get the right to or to keep their salaries if they were working . Was that part of the movement before the right, was that something i mean at some point we got the right to own property and to keep your salary if you worked and when was that . Well, one important new york is a very important state in a lot of these legal reforms. And in 1848 they passed a married womens property act which meant that married women could hold property. In 1860 they passed a law, the Legislature Passed a law, that said that women to control their own earnings. And this is new york . This is new york. And what about federal . Is there ever a federal law that said that women had the right without their husbands permission to earn money and keep their own money . This is to me it is incredibly important thing and i cant believe that it got subordinated to being able to vote. I just it goes with it or before it, doesnt it . To not have a right to keep your own money . I think most states, by the time womens suffrage passed in 1920, that in most states women have had been able to control their own earning. There were many other but you dont if you worked with your husband in new york, your husband got everything. You had no entitlement. We could do one more quick question here. So we are so fortunate to have six wonderful exhibits going on in d. C. About womens suffrage and womens accomplishments. And were just we could feel the momentum that is going on here. Is that happening in other places across the country . Oh, god, yes. Good. It is. Absolutely. Do you have a favorite exhibit that youve seen somewhere . Any favorites . To me the most exciting thing is that theyre happening in all of the states. And i just have to give a shoutout to the league of women voters who are playing such a central role in this. But also the state many of the states have set up commissions and that this is just it is a wonderful networking opportunity for people to find each other and also doing what we all try to do as historians which is to take a very inspiring but complicated historical story to a broader public who really doesnt know very much about suffrage history. And i think its a story that needs to be more widely known. And i think a lot of the state efforts going on are going to get the word out there. And i hope that it will just encourage all kinds of interest in learning more about it and the place they could start is by reading all of our books, right. The one that ive heard about that charmed me the most was on new years day at the rose parade, there is going to be a float about womens suffrage. How nice. And they have invited people to dress as suffragists and walk behind the float and sort of recreate the moment that weve been talking about here tonight. And i just think its a wonderful coming together of our history with a cultural icon of our present. We run a cite called suffrage in the media. Org at nyu, with anything with a media aspect to it. Which is everything. Which is everything. That sort of rises to the surface we put up and we change it almost weekly. So there is always new material and it has one of the best search elements ever you could knotted academic, movies, et cetera. Its all like that. Its all free. Please join me in thanking our terrific panel. And thank you all for coming. Tonight, a look at women in politics. On the night that democratic Vice President ial candidate Kamala Harris addresses the Democratic National convention, we show two past Convention Speeches from women Vice President ial nominees. In 1984, democrat geraldine ferraro, who ran with Walter Mondale and sarah palin, who ran with john mccain. Join American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. Announcer next, we visit the National Archives in washington, d. C. To tour the exhibit rightfully hers, american women and the vote, with museum cur e tcht curator corrine porter. Hi, im corrine porter. Im the curator here at the National Archives museum. Before we head into the gallery, i wanted