And native americans. She also describes the difficulties faced by women running for political office. The Smithsonian Associates hosted this one hour, 45 minute program. Our speaker tonight is robin chairnsey, the interim and a professor womens history. You heard her speak about one the ago in the context of belmont house. At the time, she said she was doing research on what happened after women got the vote. I thought that was a really interesting program, and it is clear from your response that you will do as well. So please give a warm welcome to robin munsey. Thank you. Robin munsey thank you so much, rebecca, for that introduction, and for the imitation to come back. Is always so nice to be invited back. It is like it did not go too badly. And thank you to everyone at the Smithsonian Associates who have made this possible, taking care of all the publicity and logistics. Let me make sure i have this all right. The 19th amendment, the woman suffrage amendment to the u. S. Constitution, finally made it through congress in june 1919 and was ratified by three quarters of the states in august 1920. After that, no state could deny the vote on the basis of sex. Is to exploreob some of the meanings of the 19th in thent, immediately aftermath of its passage. Before we drill down on that, however, i want to no more than 10 minutes, i want to sketch out some of the context in which the womens suffrage amendment passed and widgets firstfruits were tasted. I will lay out some of these win its first when its first fruits were tasted. I will lay out some of these parameters that led to these political voices we were hearing in the 1920s, and why we are not hearing some womens voices in the 1920s, because that context will shush some women and magnify the voices of other women. Staygoing to try to really focused here, and not dillydally, but i think this context is really important. Thewill remember that womens suffrage amendment passed through congress and was ratified in the middle of and immediately after world war i. This included a Vitriolic Campaign against immigrants and radical politics. The result of that antiimmigrant and antiroll campaign and you radical campaign was the deportation of hundreds of people perceived to be radicals that were immigrants, and they included women like emma goldman, an anarchist and feminist twos voice was mighty loud in u. S. Political culture in 1910, but was deported in 1918 so would not be a story part of the story in the 1920s. So the deportation of radicals is kind of the explanation for the slacking off of the left in the political culture of the 1920s. Even women who are not immigrants but on the political left were jailed and tried up on antisyndicalism laws. California,women in who was a member of the communist later party and rested and tried communist labor andy and arrested and tried was fighting through her case in the 1920s. That, and he radical and antiimmigrant campaign that antiradical and antiimmigrant and benefiteded by the popularity of the ku klux klan in the 1920s. The first klan had died out in the late 19th century, but the late new klan had organized in the 20th century, and it came into incredible prominence, and even electoral legitimacy, really, in the 1920s. Women were both active in the clam clan and active in fighting the ku klux klan. We will talk about that a little bit later. This antiimmigrant, antiradical climate that was dominant during and after world in a verylted in 1924 restrictive Immigration Law that was known as the johnson read acts, in 1924. That normalized formalized the already existing ban on immigration from asia, and it dramatically introduced reduced immigration from europe. It was a bit immigrants from Eastern Europe and southern europe, italians, slobs, greeks slavs, greeks are the targets of that law in 1924. Previous, millions of immigrants have been flooding to american shores. American immigration is cut down to a trickle after 1920 four. Immigration from Central America was not touched by johnson read, so there are several hundred thousand of mexican immigrants, but nothing like what you were seeing before the 1920s. The result of this antiimmigrant campaign and antiradical campaign, one of the results, was that for radical immigrant women who stayed in the 1920s and 1910s, the message to them was if they would thrive in the United States, they needed to find middleoftheroad politics. They needed to assimilate to much more conventional middleoftheroad politics. I am thinking here, especially at this time, we are thinking of the voices of italian immigrant women, many of them who were teens, andin the 19 were instrumental in multiple strikes. These were numbers of women who ane involved in politics, anarchist element to the Labor Movement, but their voices will be completely silent in the 1920s. We will not hear from them at all in the 1920s. At the same time that the antiimmigration, antiradical theaign was dominant, in early 1920s, the great migration of africanamericans out of the south it into cities intoe north, eventually cities in the west, out of rural areas of the south and into cities in the south of that great migration had become significant in the mid1910s. To the timewe get immediately after the war, that had created vital and much larger africanamerican communities and cities like chicago and new york, philadelphia, cleveland, and to try when light veterans came and from world war i detroit. When whites veterans came home summer,ld war i, that they found themselves competing for jobs and housing with new africanamerican communities. Some of those vets and their allies lashed out in horrified violence against those africanamerican communities. One of the places where race ints were the worst was chicago, but across the country hundred of africanamericans lost their lives in these massive riots that occurred in just that one summer. The summer of 1919 is known as the red summer because of the numbers of death and horrific conditions of those deaths, and there are many more injured in 1919. Conflicts, racial violence was also a part of the climate into which the womens suffrage amendment emerged. That great migration from the south into the northern cities by africanamericans also laid the foundation for the harlem renaissance of the 1920s, another crucially important context for our thinking. Women were deeply involved with important writers, artists, including people like this novelist from the late and a prolific writer herself, but also a promoter of other writers because she was the literary editor of the newspaper of the naacp in the 1920s. And the migration to the north and especially the racial violence that met that in 1919 and thereafter helped to lay the foundation for black nationalist politics, so important for many cities in the north. And the most wellknown of the organizations was of course the universal negro improvement association, the unia. The person who took this place and spoke to an organizer when he was in trouble she is not only an important nationalist leader but a very important leader in the 1920s. The context of the antiimmigrant campaign and 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. Im ready to answer any call, even to face the cannons on the battlefield. That quotation in 1925 points to the fact that in the 1920s in modern gendered system crystallized in the United States. 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 cooperative, nurturing and healing. Men had uncontrollable sexual desire, women didnt have any sexual desire. In through the early 20th century, the victorian gender system was very much in transition. By the time we get to the mid1920s i would say its been replaced by a modern gendered system. The key characteristic was that it painted men and women as more 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. And one of the crucial changes 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 change in the gender system that emerged in the mid1920s. It meant if we just look at that component of the system itself. It is claiming women are more like men than the victorian gender system had imagined them to be. That amputation of sexual desire for women demoted so that sex becomes more important component 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 life, because not everybody is 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, who they are by nature. Also by the late 1920s. Lesbianism had emerged as an acceptable identity too Many American women. That is especially because of the writing. A very popular novel it was condemned in england and tried or obscenity. And in the course of those conversations and that coverage of the trials could be part of someones core unchanging identity. That became acceptable to women it had not been accessible to the floor. It also came with a stigma. Think the began to loving relations they had with other women, to be a part of that, what is going on in this relationship . It also and a stigmatized identity also began to throw suspicion at times on womens friendships, 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 for artists like betsy smith. Many of you will know phillips. 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. It went until 2000some ring 2000something. Incredible. The radio 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 painters are coming into their own in finding a following in American Life. The 19th amendment is a part of all this change. A part of all of this up people heaval. Eople up 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 creator of the modern gender system. The first meaning we want to ascribe to the 19th amendment is precisely that. A new gender system had arrived that would help cement a system as the dominant system in American Life in the 1920s. Another one of the crucial meanings 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. Another thing that represented was the existing political power of american women. It is one of the things that often gets lost in our discussion of the 19th amendment and the shorthand ways we talk about womens voting. We lose track of the fact that before the 19th 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 all Voting Rights and wyoming became a state in 1890. Colorado fully enfranchised 1893. In high 1894, there are women serving in the Colorado State legislature. The mormons in utah and idaho enfranchised fully. We have four states in which women are voting in every single election there is. When we get into the 1910s, by the time we get into the 19th we have millions and millions of women exercising the vote. I want to thank the center for american women and politics for this fantastic map. You 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. It shows us about the who had the 19thwhere before amendment passed, before it was ratified in the 1920s, all these peachy i love this so much. Rebecca said im too easily pleased. I love that. I think that is so great. It doesnt make any difference where it belongs. This peachy color new york is there, michigan, all the states have fully enfranchised women before the 19th amendment. Women are voting in every single election. The gray states and nebraska, illinois, 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. The light blue had granted president ial suffrage to women. It is kind of purple. Including massachusetts, connecticut, kentucky. Those states had granted women voting only in school board of elections. Yes. The great progressive state of massachusetts had granted women schoolboard suffrage. The darker blue had granted and no suffrage at all. Look at that. Millions of women are already voting. Womens suffrage amendments had been introduced to congress multiple times and introduced constantly in the 20th century. We can tally the votes for each 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. It is the existing political power of women made possible and pushed the federal amendment. This is so important because it helps us understand how political change actually happens. It is slow, piecemeal, grassroots, on the ground in your neighborhood and your state. The womens Suffrage Campaign that brought us the amendment did 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 how that huge political change really happened. Hard, steady, patient work. On the ground over generations. Millions of women voted before the amendment. Millions of women were enfranchised. It doesnt look like there was any help or massachusetts. Any hope four massachusetts, same thing for mississippi. Millions of women were brought into a full democratic citizenship. It changed the meaning of womanhood. Its enfranchised women in states it was hard to imagine would have done so on their own. 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 on all of that. Citizens of the United States, puerto rican women were made to citizens of the United States in 1917. The amendment said no state shall deny the vote on the basis of sex. It did not say anything about territories. Puerto rico 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 enfranchised women in white. 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 puerto rican suffragist was this woman. Who declared herself for women suffrage in 1908. She was a major labor activist. She is an anarchist. What does an anarchist care about suffrage . They want to get rid of the state. While you got one, you want women voting in it. She was a great proponent of suffrage in puerto rico. In 1920 was disappointed that puerto rican women were not in franchise. In 1929 finally the Territorial Legislature granted the vote and all adult women in puerto rico were allowed to vote in 1935. 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 not that you are in puerto rico, a territory that has not enfranchised women. Native american women who lived 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. Even 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 not to enfranchised indians who live on reservations even after 1924. New mexico, maine, minnesota, and those states held out against the enfranchisement of native americans through the 1930s, into the 1940s. The Supreme Court issued a decision that said no mo