Of the 19th amendment. She shows how the movement intersected with the abolitionists and temperance movements. This is the first of a twopart program. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the National Portrait gallery as the smithsonian institution. Im Kate Clarke Lemay and im the curator of votes for women. For this exhibition, i worked about 3 1 2 years, researching, teaching myself this history and finding all the objects. In the exhibition, we had about 124 objects of which there are 63 portraits and in curating the exhibition, i was hoping to commemorate the 19th amendment and tell the history of the 19th amendment and how women lobbied to get this amendment passed and ratified. But also ask questions about it and ask what does it do and what does it not do . And why 1965 and the Voting Rights acts is considered another sort of part two of the 19th amendment . So if youll follow me, im going to take you through the exhibition and show you a few of the objects that tell this history. So lets go. Were in the first gallery of the exhibition. And i mentioned that we have portraits that drive the narrative but i also wanted to include in the exhibition pieces of art like the one were looking at which is titled the war spirit at home. And its by a female artist lily martin spencer. And she was active in 1860s and i wanted to include this painting because it portrays young children, youve got these four kids, one is a baby, but the three kids are celebrating. And mother, who is reading the New York Times and you have a servant or a helper who is cleaning the dishing. And what i liked about this painting is that its from 1866 and it depicts sort of the war, the civil war and the battle of vicksburg. Its kind of looking back. And spencer decided to portray this moment in time by looking at the lives of women and the women are very serious, but the children are very much engaged in the celebration because they dont understand how severe and difficult that battle of vicksburg was. And so vicksburg during the battle, the men on both sides, the Confederate Army and the union army, starved because the city was surrounded and embargoed. And so why am i talking about the civil war in a suffrage exhibition . Thats a good question. What i wanted to do was to demonstration the divide between the north and the south as well as between the races, africanamerican and white. Because this plays a big part in shaping the Suffrage Movement, especially when the 14th amendment was passed and ratified in 1869. It included the word male. This is the first time in the history of the constitution that gender was specified and it delivered a very severe below to the Suffrage Movement. Where women were trying to advocate for their right to vote, if they werent even considered citizens, which is what the 14th amendment does, then when the 15th amendment enfranchised american citizens, it only enfranchised half of the population. This was a huge divide. The Suffrage Movement disagreed on how to handle it and thats when they split between each other. So susan b. Anthony and Elizabeth Katy stanton wanted to advocate for suffrage by excluding black women whereas lucy stone was trying to advocate for universal suffrage. And africanamericans were suffragists. If you come with me now, were going to talk about one of the major africanamerican suffragists who was Francis Ellen Watkins harper. And gave a speech in which she said were all bound up together. She was trying to explain to people that shes also an africanamerican and a woman combined. Bound up together. Its intersectional. Black women couldnt sit around and let people take away their rights and not advocate for them. So they became active in Church Groups and they really worked on 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. And thats a that not a lot of have gone into or understand as much, so people do understand that the Suffrage Movement was divided, but they dont understand that africanamericans remained very active and so this exhibition endeavors to make sure we include africanamericans and their stories like sarah parker ramon whose portrait is on the far wall. She was an activist in Antislavery Society of massachusetts, and she took her activism abroad and thats another really interesting story is how american suffragists were not only focused in the United States but they were also active elsewhere in europe especially. And last, what were going to do is talk about seneca falls and what is being referred to as the myth of seneca falls. So this is a portrait of Elizabeth Katy stanton and susan b. Anthony. And he captured them together, you know, anthony is pointing to a book, and theyre very dignified, and this is what would be like a publicity shot today. They were using this portrait to represent them to a wider audience. They didnt even meet until 1851, and so seneca falls, as most of us probably recall from our history books in high school, was a gathering, the First National convention in 1848 in new york in seneca falls, and they Elizabeth Katy stanton and others penned the declaration of sentiments, which is really the beginning document, one of the first documents that put into writing that women were advocating for the vote. But what i hope that this exhibition explains by going back right back to 1832 is that women were getting together and talking and advocating for their rights, for their Citizenship Rights well before 1848 and so suffrage just didnt appear out of thin air. It actually has a long history that others would argue starts well before 1832. And so thats a great intellectual debate that i encourage you to look into. So i brought us up to 1869, and then now were going to move into the next gallery, which starts in 1870. So were in the second gallery, and i wanted to make sure to include representation of the Womens Christian Temperance Union because it helps us get into a lot of the different issues that american women were facing. Temperance was a Large Organization that had about 150,000 women across the United States involved, and they would gather and meet in what was called chapters, and so in 1873, the Womens Christian Temperance Union actually endorsed the suffrage cause, so all of a sudden suffragists expanded their membership and their reach by 150,000 members, which is an incredible amount of people for that era. So at the top you see the womens holy war, and whats great about this very active, energetic print is that theres a woman on a horse, and shes like a joan of ark figure, and shes leaping over these really wellmarked barrels of alcohol, so you can see gin, whiskey, beer, rum, and behind her are all of her compatriots, women who are wielding axes and hatchets, and theyre part of the temperance league. And so in the name of god and humanity, that reads the banner that one of them is carrying. So the battle, of course, was against alcohol. And when women were married to alcoholics they became a very vulnerable population. So they were organizing amongst each other in ways that helped them not only get support but also understand their rights and what they could do to advocate for their rights. On the bottom you see the oratorical prize, and it says Womens Christian Temperance Union at the top. And this is i wanted to include this little medal because i was curious to know how women were teaching themselves how to speak in publ public. So if you think of like toast masters today, thats a good analogy of what they were doing in the Womens Christian Temperance Union because they were actually awarding prizes to women who were speaking and having little contests in order to award them for their good speeches, and of course they were talking about christianity and temperance. So thats an interesting object that i was able to find. And the reason why it was important for women to know how to speak in public was in part because the suffrage cause was the word about it was being spread through speeches. A lot of women were going on whats called the lecture circuit, and they were speaking in auditoriums that at the time were referred to as liceums, and they were being paid. She made more money than mark twain, so i think thats kind of an interesting comparison because whos name do we remember today, even though Ann Elizabeth dickinson was more famous than mark twain at the time. And so next were going to talk a little bit more about some of the scandals that the suffragists got involved in. Victoria woodhall was well ahead of her time. She started her own business as a wall street banker with her sister. She advocated for free love, which means sex outside of marriage, which was definitely outside of the norms for women in the 1870s, and she also ran for president on a thirdparty ticket, and she was the first woman to do so, and right here we have a really nice portrait of her attempting to vote or asserting her right to vote as she would see it. She voted when you werent supposed to vote as a woman. So here she is and you can see her, shes point her finger in the air, and shes asserting her right to vote, and shes just dropped her vote, the record of her vote into the ballot box, and lots of women at this time were doing what would be referred to today as illegal voting because it was illegal and explicitly illegal for women to vote, and so Victoria Woodhall was one of thousands across the country who sought to change the system by going out, voting, getting arrested, not paying the fine, then serving a sentence in jail so that then they can appeal through the court system, and they tried to change the laws that way. But they failed, and there was another severe blow that was dealt to the Suffrage Movement in 1873 when the Supreme Court ruled against a woman named virginia minor, who had tried to vote and had gone up through the court system but then the Supreme Court found that women should not vote legally in the United States. So we were discussing how Victoria Wood hall asserted her right to vote by placing a ballot in the ballot box. And here we have a different type of ballot box. This one is made out of metal whereas the one in the Victoria Woodhall portrait was most likely made out of wood, and what i like about this ballot box is it explicitly says womens ballots on it, so its very much in your face that women were voting separately and most likely not on equal terms for equal types of suffrage, so they could maybe vote for municipal suffrage or School Suffrage or in some states before 1920 about 15, i believe, were allowed women to vote in the president ial elections, and so this box is from ellwood, indiana chrks indiana, which is one of the states that allowed women before 1920 to vote in the president ial elections, and it was made by the barnard and company out of st. Louis, and they made these boxes with between 1860 and 1920, and i think its just a really interesting kind of piece of material culture that illuminates what womens rights were like and what it looked like and what it felt like. So were looking at a caricature of Victoria Woodhall done by thomas nast in 1872, and this exemplifies some of the struggles that women were going through at the time. So if you see this is a caricature, so Victoria Woodhall was known for wearing like on top of her head, but the cartoonist thomas nast turned them into devil horns and fitted them with devils wings so shes becoming a demon. Shes walking away from a woman whos looking over her shoulder as if, you know, maybe a little undecided that shes made her decision. Shes going up this mountain, and you can tell theres one, two, three children that shaes carrying as well as the alcoholic husband strapped to her back, and so this exemplifies the choices women had. Either you throw in your stock with somebody like Victoria Woodhall who was advocating for free love at the time, and that is a very, very soft term for sex outside of marriage. She was advocating that women should enjoy sex and have sex outside of marriage and why get married therefore, you know, why have this burden of the ill husband and all these children without any support. So Victoria Woodhall was trying to promote sort of choices that women had. But of course at the time women definitely werent supposed to be having sex, and degrfinitely werent supposed to be enjoying it, so this was very much a taboo subject. And thomas nast characterizes her as this demon lady. Were looking at a portrait of velva ann lockwood, and she was the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court in 1880, and she was arguing for cherokee land rights. She became an Expert Witness for native americans in subsequent trials and what i like about this portrait is how dignified she looks. She has her hairs bound up in this beautiful kind of quaff, she has her lace kind of collar on, and it really represents her as this respectable woman because she was a suffragist, and they were constantly being accuse of being outside the bounds of femininity. She was actually the first woman to campaign for a presidency. And i had mentioned Victoria Woodhull who was the first woman to actually name herself as a candidate for presidency, but she couldnt campaign because she was serving a sentence. And yet she had founded what was called the equal rights party. So this is like a Democrat Party and like the republican party, but its a thirdparty ticket, and so these suffragists were running for president on whats called a thirdparty ticket. And its really thanks to Victoria Woodhull that Belva Lockwood was able to run in 1844 and again in 1848. So shes a really good example of sort of what women could do. She was a lawyer. She was advocating for rights in the Supreme Court, and she was also running for president. Over here we have a lovely portrait of Abigail Scott dunaway who was an oregon suffragist who was active trying to persuade male legislators to change the laws of these western states, and she was based in oregon, and she founded the new northwest, which was a newspaper in 1871 that advocated for womens rights, and so a lot of people think that suffrage was only based in the northeast, but, in fact, it was very, very active across the United States. There were lots of mormon women advocating for suffrage in utah and wyoming famously became the first state to endorse suffrage for women in 1869 and then utah later in 1870. So theres a nationwide approach to this reform movement, so it was probably one of the longest reform movements in the United States and American History and also one of the most widespread. Were in the third gallery now, and this is entitled the new woman, and it begins in 1892 and goes right up to 1912. And the new woman was educated, she was out on her bicycle. She was out and about not in the home, you know, physically active, and this puzzled a lot of people. As you can see and this depiction of the farmer, his wife and possibly probably his daughter, so the new woman in her riding habit, shes wearing what looks like bloomers or pants. Shes asked them for a glass of water, and so they, of course, oblige. But as shes drinking the glass of water, theyre thinking to themselves what is this person . Is she a woman . Is she you know, what is she doing . Whey why is she outside of the home. And you can really kind of tell the confusion a lot of americans had when women started to advocate for their rights, but then also enact their rights, enact their freedom to move around in society and to go to school and to get educated. And so magazines were picking up on this. Leslies was owned by Miriam Leslie who had married frank leslie who then had died, and so she changed her name to become mrs. Frank leslie in order to assume the authority that it took to publish a magazine like this, and so you can see the use of the colorin, and this is wom riding in open aired carriages in a parade, and so shes obviously carrying this banner that says votes for women. It speaks to some of the privilege behind the movement. So a lot of wealthy white women were the ones that were actually out there advocating in parades like this in part because the parades excluded africanamericans. But they were doing they were doing well in getting the word out, and so Miriam Leslie changed her magazine to make sure that it included illustrations like this, and if you study leslies after she took over, you can see a clear sort of trajectory into the feminist causes of the era ch, s which is kind of interesting. And finally, were going to look at an example of antisuffrage. This is from puck, this is from 1894 and new york had tried to change its state referendum to include women as right to vote. But it failed. Despite having a petition of 600,000 signatures in support of changing the states legislation, the referendum failed, so this sort of exemplifies what was happening in this area where they, the suffragists had taken on a state by state approach. They were no longer going for this sort of amendment change that had been proposed in the 1870s or the judiciary changes. They were actually trying to do like a full court press, but it wasnt going very well, and it was very frustrating and puck is not supporting the womens cause here because you can see it says a swell cher from womens suffrage, how can she vote when the fashions are so wide and the voting booths are so narrow. Its depicting this woman as a sort of fanciful not serious sort of ditz if you will. She cant even figure out how to dress herself much less fit into a voting booth, so how could women even see themselves in this role of having a political voice. Theres a lot of antisuffrage that accompanies the whole movement, and in the exhibition, i chose to high lalight some of those examples, but really not focus on it, too, too much because i was more interested in how africanamericans were really involved and what the strategies were in the movement. So were looking at two examples that speak to the history of colorado and womens Voting Rights in colorado, and i wanted to highlight colorado because its the fist state where suffragists were able to lobby and convince the male legislators to change their state constitution to make sure that women could vote. So if that makes sense because when wyoming was a territory, they sort of grandfathered in the right to vote when it became a state, but women didnt have to lobby wyoming legislators after it became a state to get the right to vote. It was already kind of written into their constitution. So the colorado example is pretty interesting. If you come this close, you can see the three party tickets, and then at the very bottom in the ballot, this would be what they voted with in 1893, you could see equal suffrage approved or equal suffrage not approved. Once colorado women achieved the right to vote, they then, of course, elected female legislators, and so this is a portrait of three of the four female legislators from the era, from the 1893, 18 94, and its louise kerwin, louise jones and agnes riddle. So you have two democrats and one republican. And in the back weve got three portraits of africanamericans. Theres ida gibbs hunt on the left, Anna Julia Cooper in the middle, and Mary Church Terrell on the right, and these are studio portraits that were made of these women while they were students at overland college, which was founded by abolitionists and which was one of the first liberal arts schools, if not the first in the United States to accept africanamerican students. And what i love about these portraits is how young they are. And you know that each went on to lead great lives as activists, as women that were advocating for Citizenship Rights for all people of the United States, but particularly for africanamericans especially Anna Julia Cooper was a teacher at the M Street Colored School in washington, d. C. , which is now the Dunbar High School, and she was living the life of someone who truly believed in giving liberal Arts Education to africanamericans. As did Mary Church Terrell who in 1893 founded the National Colored womens association, but she was also teaching at the M Street Colored School, which is, of course, the Dunbar High School in washington, d. C. And what i like about these two women is that they were especially taking on sort of the responsibility to assimilate africanamericans in the post civil war reconstruction era in a way that would give them a white collar access. So they became once they went to the Dunbar High School, then they went to college and then they were business people, leaders other teachers or nurses. And so they embodied that argument of w. E. B. Dubois and booker t. Washington that these two men had about how to best assimilate africanamericans during the reconstruction. Booker t. Washington advocated for Technical Training whereas these women were walking the walk, but theyre 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. And so 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 this single issue focus. Africanamerican women were doing lots and lots of activism, even though they were still excluded from the National American womens Suffragist Association which the whtwo fractions that we were talking about in the beginning, which in 1870 the Suffrage Movement divided, they had actually come back together in 1892. So they then move forward with great force and good strategies. Theyre doing still the state by state strategy, but theyre also excluding africanamericans the whole time. So my point is these women were not just sitting around, you know, waiting on the sidelines. They were being very, very active in and of themselves within their own groups and their own societies and their own local communities. Whereas standing in front of a banner that was carried in 1911, and the writing is actually an excerpt of scripture called the glorious light. It was written in 1871 by the british dean of canter bubury a what i liked about this banner is how it has that sense of spirituality that i think was so important to the suffragists during the first up through sort of the 19 teens and it also has that sense of emerging and onward and making progress forward, so i wanted to make sure to include a couple of banners that we borrowed from the National Women as party because they really speak to a r lot of the thinking thats behind the movement and also point to the activism. And so this actually concludes the first half of the exhibition. We have covered the movement up through 1912, and weve covered the first generation of suffragists, and from this point on, were going to discover that suffragists still havent achieved the right to vote, that women still dont have the right to vote in the United States, but well trace how they switched tactics and really achieved progress in a very comparatively small amount of time up through 1920 and then talk about the changes and the ongoing battle through 1965 in the second part. This was the first of a twopart tour of the National Portrait gallerys votes for women exhibit marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. You can watch this and other american artifacts programs by visiting our website at cspan. Org history. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3 go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights, and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch professors transfer teaching to a virtual setting to engage with their students. Gor baa chof did most of the work to change the soviet union, but reagan met him halfway, reagan encouraged him, reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which well get to later, madison called it freedom of the use of the press, and it is indeed freedom to print things and publish things, it is not a freedom for what we now refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in American History on cspan3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3, 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 in 2008 republican sarah palin who ran with john mccain. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend