The National Archives hosted the event in conjunction with their centennial exhibit, rightfully hers. American women and the vote. Tonights discussion is part of a series of programs related to our recently opened exhibit, rightfully herself. American women and the vote. Rightfully hers commemorates the anniversary and tells of womens struggles for Voting Rights towards equal citizenship, explores how women across the spectrum of race, ethnicity and class advanced the cause of suffrage and follows struggles for Voting Rights beyond 1920. The decadeslong fight for the vote in the 19th and early 20th century engaged large numbers of women in the political process. A critical part of that campaign was getting their message out to the nation and shifting Public Opinion to support their cause. Tonight well learn about the Suffrage Movement the communication machine and how it contributed to the movements success. To introduce our panelists id like to welcome nancy tate to the stage. Since 2015 she has served as the cochair of the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative and also is on the board of the turning point suffrages memorial. From 2000 to 2015 she served as executive director of the legal league of womens voters. Previously she was chief operating officer of the National Academy of Public Administration and also served under the department of energy, department of education and the office of economic opportunity. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome nancy tate. [ applause ] well, thank you. Its so wonderful to be here at the National Archives especially in light of their new exhibit that hes just mentioned. Rightfully hers. Ive just seen it and encourage any of you who have not seen it yet to be sure to make a point of doing so. Well, as he mentioned, i am nancy tate. I am the cochair of the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative and i am 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, which is an information sharing collaboration of womens organizations and scholars around the country. Our goal, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment in 2020, and to shed light on the powerful but little known history of the 72year struggle to win that constitutional right to vote. The league was founded in 1920 by Carrie Chapman kat, leader of the largest suffrage organization. The National American womens suffrage association. So 2020 is also the 100th anniversary of the league and we will be celebrating that across the country in our nearly 800 state and local leagues. But just a little bit more about wvci, which is our acronym, we do two main sets of things. One is working to establish a network around the country of interested organizations and individuals who would like to know more about the centennial, because we want to promote efforts to learn about this important aspect of American History, and to commemorate it and commemorate the full story of that struggle. Here in the d. C. Area, we sponsor educational events like this one, and we coordinate with exhibits, starting to be held as this one is at the various museums and libraries around the city. So tonight this program is part of our women and the vote symposium series. This is the third one that we have done in collaboration with the National Archives and aim to have several more here in 2019 and 2020. Each of these will focus on different and probably not wellknown aspects of the overall Suffrage Movement and its struggle and will highlight points of relevance to contemporary issues. The 72year fight for womens suffrage is a powerful historical story. It can be used to enhance our understanding of our own world and how to navigate it. You can learn more about wvci and the resources we are making available by following us on facebook, twitter and instagram using the at2020centennial. But now im pleased to introduce tonights panel. We have tamara keith our moderator and who is a White House Correspondent and part of our Politics Team of the pbs newshour. Shes going to lead a conversation with betsy griffith, author of in her own right a book about suffrages with Elizabeth Cady stanton. Linda lumsden author of the book rampant women suffrages and right of assembly and rebecca roberts, suffrages in washington, d. C. , the 1913 pap raid and the fight for the vote. So, panel, and tamara, i turn it over to you. [ applause ] thank you, everyone, for being here, and thank you for the panel for being here. I am going to let you carry all of the heavy weight on this. But you know, we know how the story ends. This story ends with the 19th amendment to the constitution being ratified and we all get to vote. So the question that im hoping we can cover tonight is, how we got here. And how we got to the end of that story in 1920, starting, though, in the 1900s, because its a long story. So linda, i think that you have, at least a bit of an overview you can give us and maybe also you can start at the very beginning, or the early part of the century. Okay, yeah. And ill condense it, because it is a long story, but basically i would saythank you so much for having me. When talking about the Suffrage Movement so much is about communication and targeting, and very simply, what really was an impetus for women to vote in the 72year struggle was in the 20th century when women took to the streets and basically emergence of public women in the united states, and i know in the washington, washington, everybodys familiar with the famous 1913 parade down pennsylvania avenue, mobbed by a bunch of men, but actually you know, women had first started assembling in the 19th century. A big deal, threatening for women to even get together in conventions to share ideas and get a sense of community. From that, they moved on in the 20th century to soap boxing. This is a big deal, because women would claim a little bit of the public turf. Traditionally, male territory had been the public sphere. Women had been relegated to the domestic sphere basically cut them out of the political process. I would say women taking to that first soap box was really a big deal. Also, too, women started to petition going back to the abolition movement, mid1800s. A big deal for a woman who was supposed to be happy to just be in her house to go outside that house and down the street and knock on somebodys door and ask them to sign a petition. And that was a political act not only for that solicitor, but also, too, for that woman who signed that petition. Also started raising consciousness about their own oh oppression in their lives. So by if time we get to 1910, women take one more step and start to parade. The first real suffrage i know of in new york 1908 where a woman named maude malone, influenced by the british suffrages organized a group of i think six women to march down the street, but 1,000 people follow them. Because its a big deal. Its so unusual for women to take to the streets and think of all the negative association that goes, that go with that. Again, women are going to get bolder. The annual fifth avenue parade in new york city a huge event. First National Suffrage parade, quite the spectacle. Rest interesting, and suffrages creates this their own press with main street media. Thats an impetus for, really helped women were emerge in the public sphere, and thats going to change them both. Change womens roles and change our concept of what the public sphere is. Betsy . The petitions that linda is referring to are actually here in the archives among the many other treasures here. No one would have known Elizabeth Cady stanton and lecresha motte and others had the meeting middle of july 1848 in seneca falls if the telegraph wire wasnt recently strung along the erie canal. Words got out women and men voted on 171 11 resolutions women voted people were outraged. Were it not for the telegraph line no one would have known but the seneca falls newspaper. They were corresponding. Elizabeth constantly righting to her chum susan b. Anthony, come stir the pudding, i need to convene a convention by correspondents. Then fortunately typewriters invested. Mimeograph machines invented and relationships with the newspaper or creating your own. Elizabeth Katie Stanton and susan b. Anthony created a newspaper called the revolution in 1870, failed almost immediately refusing to take advertisements from quack medicines. Thought they murdered women and refused advertising revenue and they failed. In contrast, lucy stone with her womens journal publishing it. Another faction of the suffrage its, publishes it until 1935. But i want to start by actually challenging the premise of the panel. Perfect. Power, media and the movement. I think media made the movement, but power, the power of women voting, made the amendment, and they are two, they are used in two different ways in the Suffrage Movement. Media is represented by alice paul, third youngest generation of suffrages and power represented by Carrie Chapman kat who could count votes and lobby and influence the president. I also think that lindas point about marching in the streets taking this little, little bits of the public sphere and then bigger bits of the public sphere women counted on. Outrage worked for them and why it was newsworthy. Why they all wore white to look great in pictures. Why one of the pictures just went by the pageant on the treasury steps during the 1913 march. This one. Isnt that a great picture . So the treasury then as now a big, broad marble plaza in front and a whole vaguely tortured allegory. Columbia summoning the virtues, but boy, does it look great on the cover of the newspaper. I know it does on mine. Still the cover of my book 100 years later. All of those considerations about, you know, what theyre doing is a little bit transgressive and a little shocking. That makes it newsworthy. They knew that the public sphere was not theirs to own. One thing that was remarkable in reading about this period, at some point they decided to picket or protest outside of the white house. Yet this was, like, really controversial. Uhhuh. That go there right now. There will be pictures. Right. Nuclear people basically live there. They do. Feel free to remind them. So the idea that this was controversial and yet this was a way that they got attention. Yeah. Virtually two levels. Excuse me. Alice paul, expert in public tis. Really, really was. Beginning, expert in Public Relations before the term was found. These women helped create the whole field pnd also, too, first started picketing the white house, werent quite at war and they were tolerated and they were not silenced. But once we declared war four months later, that is when it enraged the public, and they were considered traitors, scum of the earth. Sailors roaming around in washington, d. C. , get drunk and they attacked them. Who do you think got in trouble . The women did. They were sent off to jail. That created a whole other level they leaned in. Right . I mean, there was to borrow a phrase. That whole debate. Do we keep picketing the white house during war time . Criticizing your president during wartime, people think its treasonous. Right . Suddenly it becomes a much bolder statement. Not only keep the pickets up, got much more pointed. You guys cant read this, but this is, first of all what would these women do with social media . Right . This is a tweet. Its two tweets but its this very directly critical message, directed to the russian envoys about, tell the president that hes the biggest challenge to american liberty. One i dont know if we have a picture. The Kaiser Wilson banner . There we go. Kaiser wilson. Take the beam out of your own eye. Right . These women were not backing down from the idea the that wartime was a time which they might lose sympathy. Yes. But they were not in fact breaking laws when arrested arrested for something completely made up. Something called obstructing the traffic on the sidewalk, which is not a thing. I want you to talk about how they made the most out of being arrested. Well, first of all, just for women to picket they chose women volunteered in droves until the arrests began. And then black women like mary trish b. Terrell and her daughter and working women and mothers stopped picketing when the arrests got serious, because they couldnt interrupt their lives in that with. But from january until april, really january until inauguration, the first batch of picketing. 1917. March was inauguration at that time. It was just so shocking that women would hold picket signs no matter how well dressed and put together and matronly, college delegations, whatever it was. That ay loan was shocking to people. President walk out of the white house, tip his hat, offer coffee. They ignored him. Then when they start ramping up, deciding they will protest during the war, they actually get pushed off the headlines. Theyre out of the news until june, when the russian picket goes up. And then they decide they cant picket every day. The tensions have gotten too great. So they wait until the fourth of july and carry not only their picket signs but an American Flag. Thinking, whos going to attack the American Flag . Then they, alice actually in the hospital at Johns Hopkins and lucy burns, she met in a jail in london, both arrested for picketing, takes over and shes even bolder. Shes the one who comes up with the Kaiser Wilson picket. But they are shrewd enough to begin to quote the president s words. So the judge cannot charge them with sedition. They can only be charged with obstructing traffic, and for that, because they are not caving, the judge hass to keep adding to the sentence. Original sentence threeday jail term or 25 fine. And the women in a pattern that civil rights marchers would follow said, well fill the jails. So these women are going to jail and people are shocked, that the government would put women in jail. And then the government ends up putting women in jails for one month and two months and alice for seven months. Alice paul and rose winslow, the only two to be force fed because alice they go on hunger strikes. Hunger strike but because theyre protesting they are political prisoners. Ought not to be there and protest a hunger strike. First americans to ask for prisoner status. Amazing. They had to sneak the news out to their friends through the jail bars, throwing rocks out the window, because nobody knew what was happening inside the jail. Part of the communication strategy was getting the news out, and alice got kind of hunger striking, because she probably would not have preferred to having been made so ill previously, but once it got out, she couldnt stop because the newspapers knew about it. The only thing she had to read oxford book english verse and somehow scribbled a note on there to announce her compatriots outside, make sure you use this. Makes excellent ammunition. Somehow smuggled that out. They did. They did. Not sure thats true. I heard all five daily newspapers delivered to the jail and had her stenographer come once a week to take her correspondence. Not sure before put in writes her mother thats its plan. Maybe just trying to reassure her mother. So was declaring themselves political prisoners, did that help the movement, or no . Just did going to jail help the movement . It was take be entirely from the quaker citizens. Emily pinker sent her daughters, more radical wing of the british Suffrage Movement and ultimately alice paul called radical and they had nothing on the radical british movement. Tried to set fire to the prime ministers house, smack policemen in the face, i mean, yeah. And the american women standing outside the standing on a corner with a sign. Always peaceful. Yeah, that was the strategy if you get arrested, demand political prisoner status. If they refuse go on a hunger strike. Thats borrowed from her. I think alice paul, agree she was a brilliant strategist and pr person and managed to turn amazing situations to her advantage, but i think she had a little bit of a blind spot there where she would follow pankhearst examples and not think through whether or not they translated to an american system. For instance, 1915 and 1916, tried power and party strategy, campaigned even against prosuffrage parties, worked better in parliamentary not a representative democracy. The political prisoner thing was a little bit similar. That she, a tactic worked elsewhere and didnt think it through. And rebeccas put her finger on the major weakness of alice paul. Political naive in an american system. She imported the outdoor tactics but a parliamentary plan beginning as early as immediately after the march when the democrats took over or the senate. Wants to hold democrats in power. Wilson won the presidency, democrats taken over the house and senate, but there was bipartisan opposition. Mostly southern democrats, and bipartisan support. Carrie chapman kat refers to pauls strategy stew stupendously stupid. They wouldnt have had to dream each other up if they didnt have each other. Kat unbelievable lobbyist, organizer. This state needed a referendum and that passed by two legislatures had all that done but never bold enough to picket the white house. You know . Didnt want to picket the white house, trying to woo wilson. Right. Wanted to be considered, oh, that night unthreatening mrs. Kat. Ill meet with her. Shes not crazy like alice paul. An inside and outside game . You need an extreme to make the moderate look more moderate. Perfect Good Cop Bad Cop relationship. Easier for wilson to deal with kat because she looked so much better, much larger more conservative organization, looked more patriotic than alice pauls radicals. Three generations of suffrages. Stanton, lucy stone, Carrie Chapman