Womens Voting Rights in the following years, especially africanamericans in the south and native americans. She also describes the fits that describes the difficulties faced by women running for office. Describes the difficulties faced by women running for office. Our speaker is the interim chair of the Women Studies Department at the university of maryland, and also a professor of history. I think several of you heard her speak a year ago about the Suffrage Movement in the context of the house. At the time she said she was doing research on how women got the vote. It was clear from your response you do too. Thank you so much for that introduction and the indentation. And the invitation. Thank you to everybody at the Smithsonian Associates who made this and taking care of the logistics. The 19th amendment, which was the womens suffrage amendment finally made it through congress in june of 1919 and ratified by three quarters of the state in august of 1920 and no stage could deny the vote on the basis of sex. Is to explore some of the meanings of the 19th amendment immediately in the aftermath of its passage. That, ie drill down on want to sketch out quickly no more than 10 minutes trying to sketch out some of the context in which the womens suffrage amendment passed in which its firstfruits were tasted. Im going to lay out some of these contact that some of this context. Understand theus kind of parameters of the political voices we are hearing in the 1920s and why we are not hearing some womans voices in contexts, because that is going to shush some women and magnify the voices of some other women. Im going to try to stay focused and not dillydally. Ishink this context important. The womens suffrage amendment passed through in the middle of and immediately after world war included a Vitriolic Campaign against immigrants and radical politics. The result of that antiimmigrant and antiradical campaign was the deportation of hundreds of people perceived to be radicals. Any included women like anarchist. In 1918. The deportation of radicals as part of the explanation. Thepolitical culture of 1920s. Womens who are not immigrants but on the political left were jailed and tried in the laws of the teens and early 20s. The cognitive labour party and arrested and tried under loss in the 1920s. And kept finding her case to the 1920s. The antiradical and antiimmigrant campaign was benefited from the popularity of the ku klux klan. The first klan had died out. Incredibleo prominence. Legitimacy in the 1920s. And women who are active in the clan and active in fighting the , and i will talk more about that a little bit later. This antiimmigrant antiradical climate that was dominant during and after world war i resulted in 1924 in a very restrictive immigration law. Act formalizeed the ban, and already existing informal ban from asia. And it dramatically reduced immigration from europe. Was aimed at immigrants from eastern and central europe. They are the target of that. Ntiimmigrant law millions of immigrants have been flooding into america shares. The immigration from Central America is not touched by johnson reed. Nothing like the kind of numbers youre seeing before the 1920s. The result of this antiimmigrant campaign. Wayhey needed to find their to middleoftheroad politics. Many of whom were anarchists in the teens. The patterson strike as well. Massive numbers of women who were involved in politics and anarchists to the Labor Movement. We are not going to hear from them in the 1920s. At the same time that the antiradical campaign was dominant in the early 1920s, the great migration into the cities and north and west as that great migration had become significant in the mid1910s. That migration had created vital and much larger africanamerican they. Ities they found themselves competing with jobs and housing. Out inllies last horrific violence against those africanamerican communities. Across the country hundreds of americans lost their lives in massacres. Just that one summer. Her if the conditions of those deaths and many more injured in 1919. Violins is a part of the climate in which the womens suffrage amendment emerged. The great migration into northern cities by African Americans also lead to a foundation of the 1920s, which is another crucially important context for our thinking. Think that people like a novelist, to really important novelists in the late 1920s. And a prolific writer herself, but also a promoter of other writers because she was the of the newspaper of the naacp in the 1920s. And the migration to the north and the migration of violence that met that in 1919 and thereafter helped to lay the foundation for politics, so important for many cities in the north. Of the most wellknown was of course the universal negro improvement association, the u. N. Ia. The person who took this place and spoke to an organizer when she is notble only an important nationalist leader but a very important leader in the 19 20s. The context of the antiimmigrant campaign antiradical campaign, racial violence and cities in the south as well as to the north. They are important in understanding which invoices have been magnified and which voices are subdued or silent altogether in the case of the left in the 1920s. The range of voices will be much narrower than the range of voices we heard. It would have been a very different context. This wonderful quotation from 1925 leads us to another dimension of the context through which the womens suffrage amendment emerged. I think you will probably all see it. Its a thing of the past. The wideawake woman is forging ahead, prepared for all emergencies. Call,ady to answer any even to save the cannons on the battlefield. In 1925 points to the fact that in the 1920s in modern gendered system crystallized in the United States. And what kind of relations they naturally have. A set of ideas emerged in the gender system, it helped that men and women were the opposite of each other. Men were competitive and active and women were by nature a passive operative, nurturing and healing. Had uncontrollable sexual desire, women didnt have any sexual desire. In through the early 20th century, the victorian gender system was much was very much in transition. Thehe time we get to mid1920s i would say its been replaced by a modern gendered system. The key characteristic was that as moreed men and women like each other than the victorian gender system did. It did not insist they were the same or they were equal, by no means equal, but they were much more alike than the victorian gender system had imagined men and women to be. Changesof the crucial from the from the victorian gender system to the modern system, women did indeed have sexual desire and a healthy happy woman had have her sexual desires filled or she couldnt be a healthy happy woman. The sexual need was a crucial thate in the gender system emerged in the mid1920s. It meant if we just look at that component of the system it self. More claiming women are like men than the victorian gender system had imagined them to be. Desireputation of sexual for women demoted so that sex becomes more important components or imagined to be more components of womens lives in the 1920s and thereafter. Motherhood gets demoted on the list of characteristics and values of women. It is harder to be sure that when you claim because women are mothers, nurturing and care for ise, because not everybody going to think thats going to be the case. The kind of appeal you can make in public life are going to change because of this reimagining of who women are, they are by nature. Also by the late 1920s. Anbianism had emerged as acceptable identity too Many American women. That is especially because of the writing. It wasular novel condemned in england and tried for a 70s. And in the course of those conversations and that coverage could be part of someones core unchanging identity. To womenme acceptable who had not the next of the bull before. It also came with a stigma. The loving relations they had with other women, to be a part of that, what is going on in this relationship . And a stigmatized identity also began to throw suspicion at friendships,ns womens organizations, womens institutions, womens colleges, a lot of foundations of womens advancement. The centrality of sex to womens identities, all of that required negotiating a whole new landscape for women and public life. Accommodating these new ideas. Im almost at the end of this, a broadcast radio emerges and opens all kinds of opportunities like betsy smith. Know phillips. L shes an incredibly unbelievably prolific writer in the 1930s and 40s. She was the creator of the guiding light. It is the longestrunning show in broadcast history. Ring until 2000some 2000something. Was one of the important breakthroughs and new medium that women in politics are going to have to master in order to make their way into the politics of the 1920s. This is a same moment when modernist paper modernist painters are coming into their own in finding a halloween in American Life. The 19th amendment is a part of all this change. A part of all this up evil. And of course it was participating fully in the transformation of the dominant gender system because the 19th amendment was saying to americans that women were more like men in that they were now supposed to be participants in selfrule. In the same way sexual desire to women suggested women were more like men than the victorian system had imagined, so did the 19th amendment. The politics should practice selfrule. Theyre more like men than the victorian system had imagined. It is both an indicator and create her of the modern gender system. Want toirst meeting we ascribe to the 19th amendment were precisely that. Arrivednder system had that would help cement a system as the dominant system in American Life in the 1920s. The crucialof meetings of the 19th amendment and anybody who was here last year would have heard this part. I just have to make sure we are all on the same page here. Power ofing political american women. It is one of the things that often gets lost in our waysssion in the shorthand we talk about womens voting. Before the 19 amendment ever passed, millions of american women were already voting. It is impossible to imagine that the 19th amendment could have ever passed the u. S. Congress if millions of women had not already been voting. The first place american women get to vote is in wyoming. A territory in 1869. It granted women for Voting Rights and wyoming became a state in nine in 1890. Colorado fully enfranchised 1894, there are women serving in the Colorado State legislature. Idahormons in utah and enfranchised fully. We have four states in which women are voting in every single election there is. Where we get into the 1910s, by the time we get into the 19th tense we have millions and millions of women exercising the vote. Fornt to thank the Center American women and politics for this fantastic map. Ou can find it online and i love this map. It shows us when women got to vote in which state. I will describe it just in case. Before the 19th amendment passed, before it was ratified all these peachy i love this so much. Rebecca said im too easily pleased. I think that is so great. It doesnt make any difference where it belongs. New york isor there, michigan, all the states have fully enfranchised women before the 19th amendment. Women are voting in every single election. Nebraska,tates and tennessee and vermont. All those had enfranchised women in president ial elections and local elections. But not statelevel elections. Really hilarious stories having to do with that. Its kind of her polish. Including massachusetts, connecticut, kentucky. Those states had granted women voting only in school board of elections. The great progressive state of massachusetts had a granted women schoolboard suffrage. The darker blue had granted and no suffrage at all. Millions of women are already voting. Womens suffrage amendments had in inches to the congress most of that commerce multiple times and introduced constantly in the 20th century. Votes for eache of those introductions. And you watch as more and more women are enfranchised by their states, more and more men in congress are willing to vote to a federal amendment of the constitution. An existing political power of women made possible and pushed the federal amendment. Because itimportant helps us understand how political change actually happens. Slow, piecemeal, grassroots, on the ground in your neighborhood and your state. The womens Suffrage Campaign that brought us the amendment could not happen in a few years in the 1910s here in washington. Thats the way the story is often told. That doesnt begin to capture when the huge political change actually happened. Hard steady patient work. Millions of women voted women were enfranchised. It doesnt look like there was any hope. Same thing for mississippi. Millions of women were brought into a full democratic citizenship. It brought into the meaning of womanhood. However it is not the case that all american women voted after 1920. Florida had granted municipal suffrage. Florida is green. Women had not been given the vote in schoolboard elections. But it had been given the vote in certain cities, charter cities, so there is a partial vote in florida. Thank you for noticing, though the map is working. After the ratification of the 19th amendment, millions of american women were barred from voting. We want to be sure we are clear for all of that. States, of the united puerto rican women were made to be citizens of the United States in 1917. The amendment said no states shall deny the vote on the basis of sex. Frederico and hawaii were territories. When this oversight was understood if it werent so tragic it would be hilarious. I thought we would enfranchised women there. That didnt happen. The Hawaiian Territorial legislature but the Puerto Rican Legislature refused. And women in puerto rico had to continue to fight across the 1920s and into the 1930s. My favorite putter he can suffer just is who declared herself for women suffrage in 1908. She was a major labor activist. She is an anarchist. While you got one, you want women voting in it. Proponent oft suffrage in puerto rico. In 1920 was disappointed that pretty recouping women that puerto rican women in 1929 finally the Territorial Legislature granted the vote and all adult women in puerto rico were allowed to vote. Its going to be the position of a lot of women there and after. If you are a puerto rican woman in puerto rico in 1925 you are not a voter. If you moved to new york you become a voter. Its that you are in puerto rico, a territory that has not enfranchised women. Lived american women who on reservations were not considered citizens of the United States. It wasnt until 1924 that Congress Passed the snyder act which made indians living in reservations citizens of the United States. Though living in reservations in the United States, it didnt mean that all the states extend the franchise to all those citizens. Many states continued his enfranchised indians who live on reservations even after 1924. Minnesota, maine, and those states held out against the enfranchisement of native americans through the 30s come into the 1940s. The Supreme Court issued a decision that said no more peace shenanigans. Even after 1940 eight several of the states, arizona, utah and new mexico, took a long time, years to expunge from their laws the bar voting by native americans wereve kept by poll taxes and unfairly administered literacy tests, which brings us to the Largest Group of american women. That inyou will know the earliest 20th century in particular, Southern States begin to disenfranchise africanamerican men who have been voting in their states and serving in congress and serving as state legislatures and ruling cities. Southern states began to disenfranchise and take votes away. They were disfranchised by many means. One was by the poll tax. They tend to be poor. They have trouble getting up the money for poll taxes. Make sure everybody is clear on what those literacy tests were. They go in and the voter registrar would say i would like you to read Section Three paragraph two of the mississippi constitution and you would read and now interpret that, what does that mean . Foot ofhat you said the registrar has discussions to say maybe not, you will have to come back another time. You couldnt read that to me no problem. White people were allowed to vote because of the discussion of the voter registrar that they anybody they want to admit to the franchise as well as exclude people. E are reprisals also brew violence. Lynching increased dramatically in the 1980 in 1890s. Another spike in the 1920s. Through those same means, they administered a literacy test. Africanamerican women in the h were that struggle, that struggle to get rid of poll taxes and overcome those tests and fight back against violence and economic reprisal, that struggle went on into the 1960s. Some of the most important women like are cropper who became an important 1960s andhe early the founder of the mississippi freedom democratic party. Testifying before the 1964 Democratic National convention. Mississippi the freedom democratic party. And given the evidence on Racial Discrimination on the part of the White Democratic Party in mississippi. She was one of the great activists in the struggle. Eventually those two ways of buying people from the polls were overcome. In 1964 the amendment to the constitution was ratified by three quarters of the state. It made poll taxes unconstitutional and the United States you can no longer ask, you could require someone a task to vote. Outlawed literacy tests for voting. And sends federal registrars to the south. And the number of africanamericans registered to vote skyrocketed within months of the passage of the