but don't let anybody be misled by that. you have given here in this hall a moving and dramatic proof of how americans who honestly differ close ranks and move forward with the nation's well, shoulder to shoulder. >> cspan.org/the concontenders. there's a new website where you can find our schedule, watch featured video, as well as access history tweets. history in the news and social media from facebook, youtube, twitter and four square. follow american history tv all weekend every weekend on c-span3 and online at c-spspan.orcspan.. coming up next, the national archives and the sewall-belmont house and museum host a panel of scholars as they look at

cartoons and banners that the national women's party used to grant women the right to vote. this is an hour and a half. coming up next, the national archives and the sewall-belmont house and museum host a panel of scholars as they look at cartoons and banners that the national women's party used to grant women the right to vote. this is an hour and a half. >> good evening. my name is tom and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the national archives for tonight's discussion, the national women's party and political rhetoric visual propaganda in the battle for the vote. the national archives is honored to host this program as we have in our holdings hundreds of

textural documents, petitions, photographs and posters related to women's suffrage including the document we celebrate today the joint resolution of congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, otherwise known as the 19th amendment to the constitution. certified by secretary of state bainbridge colby on august 26th, 1920, changing the face of the american electorate forever. before we get to tonight's program i would like to ask you to turn off your cell phones or other device and alert you there will be time for q and a after the discussion and we ask that you use the microphones we'll have set up in the aisles as we're recording this program. i also want to alert to you a couple of upcoming programs here at the national archives. on tuesday september 6th at noon michael beshallow and louisa thomas will discuss their book, a testament of faith in world war i. on thursday, september 8th at 7:00 p.m. we'll continue our series of programs in conjunction with our exhibit,

what's cooking uncle sam, with a screen that explores the legacy of the school lunch program. participating in the post-screening discussion is dan glickman and others. we are also honored to once again welcome our partner on this the second women's equality day program we've done together. the sewall-belmont house and museum director. page harrington has been executive director of the sewall-belmont house since 2008 executive director of the sewall-belmont house since 2008. she served as president of united states naval memorial working with senior u.s. navy leadership to facilitate the reorganization of the business programs.

she received her business degree at san diego state university and earned two masters degree from the university of san diego. her first in public history, historic preservation and teaching and second in nonprofit management and leadership. in addition to her work at the sewall-belmont house and museum she serves on the board of directors for national women's history sites. would you please welcome paige harrington? [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you tom. thank you so much. we're delighted to be here for the second year in a row to celebrate women's equality day.

i want to thank tom definitely, his extra help in making sure that everything runs smoothly is very well appreciated. the sewall-belmont house and museum is committed to preserving the legacy and sharing the untold stories of centuries worth of struggle for equal rights for women. the museum is a national historic landmark and houses an extensive collection of suffrage banners, papers and artifacts documents the continuing effort by women and men of all races, religions and background to win voting rights and equality for women under the law. after almost a year of construction, conservation, cataloging and exhibit design i'm thrilled to say that the museum has re-opened as of may of this last summer. when the national women's party notified to 2nd and constitution

in 1929, making it their fifth and final headquarters, it was considered to be an embassy for the women of the nation. a center of thought and activity and an advantage point for which they can keep congress under per period true all observation. nearly 70 years the nwp transitioned from a lobbying organization to an institute for education and preservation and we began the long journey of preserving and sharing this notable history. as a leader in the fight for women's suffrage and equal rights the nwp initiated tactics and strategies that were revolutionary even by today's standards. these women were the first to pickett the white house and we're now able to exhibit many banners from the original nwp collection that tells this compelling story along with images of the pickets showing their determination, sacrifice and commitment. meticulous records documents

their visit to members of ded r nwp's congressional card file once known by the press as the deadly political index. today this unique collection contains over 5,000 cards detailing members hobbies, educations, religious and economic background, views on women's suffrage and other related social issues and often very candid comments by the nwp women who interviewed them. visitors to sewall-belmont can read through this index and learn the challenges of securing suffrage and equal rights through congress and lobbying techniques created by nwp which are still in use by other organizations today. over 100 women were ultimately imprisoned at occoquan work house. thanks to the cataloging work of the collection staff as well as dedicated interns we uncovered objects from natalee's gray

period in prison which indicates how they spent their time and how they used that story to garner public support and further suffrage. these objects are now on display for the very first time. i invite to you visit the museum during our public hours wednesday through sunday from noon until 5:00 where you will learn even more about our upcoming programs in particular on september 21st we continue the tradition of honoring women for breaking barriers with our annual alice award. this year we will honor senator snow and senator feinstein. on october 4th we host a day long seminar examining the role of women in american democracy featuring keynote speaker ambassador carol moseley braun. we also today debuted online our newest exhibit in honor of the past and pledge to the future

which delves into the 1933 parade commemorating many women throughout history who have broken these barriers. in the slides behind me you're now seeing just a glimpse of the beautiful banners. today we're here to examine the use of nonverbal communication through cartoons and banners. all strategically used in the battle for the right to vote. the women of the nwp armed themselves with these working class textiles and cartoons and used thoughtful and commanding written words to communicate their message, which often turned the very words of the administration back on the president. as we're focusing on the cartoons tonight i would like to mention our ongoing conservation needs. we have a wonderful adopt allender campaign that's up and running. it helps us to ensure the continued care and preservation of this significant political cartoon collection.

tonight you'll hear panelists dr. ciani and lisa graddy of the national museum of american history discuss the ways in which the national women's party utilized these largely silent forms of rhetoric to support the women's right to vote. miss graddy will continue the conversation and examine the banners carried in the suffrage parades and during nwp's pickets in front. white house. she will share her thoughts on tactics employed by the nwp during the campaign and the escalation of the messaging when the united states entered world war i. professor ciani specializes in the history of women and gender across the americas with a focus

on social justice issues. as affiliated faculty in women and gender studies, she helps to mentor flame, feminist led activist moments to empower. ciani's publications focus on how the changing culture of work direct survival strategies especially in regard to child care. education. and labor. she's interested in women's activities in these areas during the 19th and 20th century. her current research project is a study of cultural interactions in the 20th century on american indian reservations to understand the development of intercultural exchange. ciani's interest in women's labor and activism derived from her former position as associate director of the child abuse program foundation in san diego county. an experience that prompted her to enter graduate school as a way to educate others to the importance of understanding the long term effects on domestic

violence and sexual abuse. prior to joining the illinois state university faculty in 2001, ciani taught women's history at her alumni institutions, the university of san diego and michigan state university where she was the first person to earn a ph.d. in the history of women and gender. lisa graddy has worked at the smithsonian national museum of american history since 1989 and she's currently the deputy chair of the division of political history where she serves as curator as women's political history and first lady's collection. her work includes the first lady's at the smithsonian. a first lady's debut. and exhibiting george washington. she co-curatored an exhibition of george washington and also first lady's public role and public image. she co-authored the exhibition's

come pan book first lady's political role and public image. she's part of the collections team including abraham lincoln an extraordinary life. vote the machinery of democracy. the permanent and traveling versions of the american presidency, a glorious burden. between a rock and a hard place, a history of america's sweat shops. 1820 to present. and we the people winning the vote. graddy is currently working on political history exhibits that will be part of the museum's renovated west wing and continuing her research on the women's suffrage movement and women in american political life. she holds a b.a. in history from the university of maryland and an m.a. from texas tech university. following the presentations tonight we'll move to a moderated discussion format with a few prepared questions and then hopefully additional questions from the audience. please help me welcome dr. kyle ciani. [ applause ]

good evening. it's so nice to be here to get here on a plane ride that was a little bit treacherous, to survive earthquakes, to be here on the eve of reverend martin luther king, jr.'s statue to be dedicated is an honor and i thank paige and elizabeth and jennifer and all the friends at sewall-belmont for inviting me and thank you for coming out on this wet evening to enjoy some photographs of really important women who dealt with some really important issues. when i accepted paige's invitation, i had no idea this would also be the dedication week for the king tribute

statue. and i've been reminded all week of my duty to live up to the promises fought by vote rights activists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. i was luck enough to know my maternal great-grandmothers and they always stressed to me the importance of voting. they came from different background and class stations. there was absolutely no love lost between them. and they had as little to do with one another as possible. but they agreed on two things. they adored their granddaughter, my mother and her children. and they celebrated their hard fought right to cast their vote by doing so in every election that came their way. they were not wealthy or educated women. in fact, one had a third grade knowledge of reading and writing and supported her children as a domestic.

but they understood the tremendous potential that voting rights could offer their children. tonight i'll present one element of how women like my great-grandmothers learned about that potential through the political cartoons of nina allender. she back cartooning in 1914 and continued to create provocative images through its run in 1920. my presentation will cover four areas in a brief fashion. first, i put the active cartooning in its historical context of the progressive era and note how the nwp embraced the medium as one of its nonviolent strategies to cure the vote. i explain the maternalist overtone driving the cartoons. progressive era female reformers embrace what jane adams referred

to as public motherhood by using society's understanding of women as guardians of the home to improve their communities. allender adopted this maternal imagery to describe the issues driving the sufficient fact campaigns. third, i note how she incorporated a sarcasm into her work especially in regard to protests and pickett cartoons. fourth, i conclude with recognition that allender's images do not depict people subjected to racial inequity. rather she was a white woman of her time and whiteness prevails in the cartoon images. to understand that time, let me turn to november 15th, 1913, when federal amendment activists published first issue of the suffragist.

they made clear their commitment, quote, until women vote, every piece of legislation undertaken by the administration is an act of injustice to them. all laws affect the interest of women and should not be enacted and put into execution without the cooperation and consent of women, i mean, you just can see them doing this while they are writing that paper. some success toward female suffrage had been engaged in a committee work believed a federal amendment was pair mount to women experiencing rights of full citizenship. in that issue, alice paul declared, success can be ours if suffragists stand shoulder to shoulder behind the amendment. some critics of the movement

identified them as propaganda and allender as a propagandist. by 1913 it was infinitely more familiar to voters and reached the political stage, thus their existed no need for propaganda. suffragist was designed to inform the survivors about campaigns and provide them with facts involving the positions of women, such as maternal workforce statistics. invited readers to look beyond political rhetoric and explore these facts. the people in her cartoons seldom morphed into figures of fantasy with animal like features and mannerisms popular then and now among cartoonists.

she drew reality. december constitute mother picketers, and suffragists campaigning for change. allender had not experienced poverty, but she had lived through her husband leaving her. abandoned but not alone, allender threw herself into the suffrage movement through local clubs in washington, d.c. and met influential leaders like alice paul. no matter her identity, when allender's cartoons began gracing the covers of "the suffragist" in 1914 she had entered a journalistic world dominated by male writers, editors and artists. political cartooning has a long history. and i've noted a couple issues on this slide that commentators in the progressive era used to elicit debate.

artists used machine politics, gender shifts, especially as more women engaged in activities connected with the male sphere of public policy like sitting on educational school boards. imperial designs and racist agendas to draw readers to their newspapers and forums. centerfolds from the political news magazine "puck" illustrates some of the ways in which men envisioned how suffrage would influence change in society from these cross dressers of the 1880s to the mothers chained to their domestic labor and dependent upon graft politics. in response to the limited success of state suffrage campaigns in the 1910s, members of the national american women suffrage association who were dedicated to the federal

amendment like alice paul and nina allender shown in this photo launched a movement separate from the nawsa. through nawsa's congressional union and then their separation into the national women's party, members always promoted a non-violent stance as a way to advocate for and to women of the right to full citizenry. led by passivists like alice paul, the ultimate goal was to achieve full suffrage by means of a federal amendment. they used "the suffragist" to educate members about critical social issues that could be altered with the female vote and to communicate how women could change their self-image and status in society. the suffragist differed from other magazines in club forums in that it emphasized political

action and education over fashion or travel items. according to rhetoric scholars, kathryn adams and michael keene, alice paul wanted a vehicle to "espouse her own opinions, lavish attention on successful events, feature positive press coverage and stress her large membership and financially solvency." in december of 1913 there were 1,200 paid subscribers to the suffragist. paul asked rheta childe dorr for the first editor, a seasoned journalist who had cut her teeth at the new york evening post writing about women's clubs and a special series on women's work in factories, dorr was highly invested in women's rights. especially in suffrage. of her work with the suffragist, dorr wrote i published in the paper every scrap of news.

and there was always news. accounts of the deputations we sent to the president and aggressive editorials. she and paul worked long hours and did not always see eye to eye. i think that's an understatement. they fought. and they realized after a year that the professional relationship would simply not work. dorr resigned as editor but stayed immensely committed to the fight for a federal amendment. a unique quality of the suffragist was its attention to middle and working class women as readers. and the traumas endured by working poor women and their children. it is here that allender's work can be best highlighted. allender drew for women about women. fellow suffragist inez haynes irwin described allender as having "a keen political sense." i'm going to quote at length

from here because it really sums up the unique quality allender brought to her political cartoons. she wrote allender's translated this aspect in the terms of the women alone can best appreciate. her work is full of the intimate, everyday details of the woman's life from her little girlhood to her old age. and she translates that existence with a women's vivacity and a women's sense of humor. a humor which plays keenly and gracefully innocence and ability. it would be -- a humor unbitter as that of jane austen. it would have been impossible for any man to have done mrs. allender's work. "woman speaking to women about women in the language of women." she adopted the maternalist overtones popular among many female social reformers of this

era, and embraced the visual language of sentimental maternalism. that no protection or protectors existed for poor women and their children but they could find it in the vote. essentially allender argued that all women, but especially poor, single mothers, needed the protection of the vote. this june 13th, 1914 issue shows the mother in an obviously tired state with the caption "the inspiration of the suffrage workers." she also contrasted the worlds of the upper and middle class suffrage workers with those of the poor, as evidenced by the mother of five children looking longingly at the luxurious furs in a shop window. women who lived in desperate situations needed the vote to help them clean up their neighborhoods, the factories in which they worked, to bring

clean milk to their children, to lift them from poverty. children, especially girl children, were also important subjects of the cartoons. in the june 25th, 1914 cover, note the integration of the female reformers alongside the mothers and child workers lined outside the factories. that caption reads "child saving is women's work, votes for women." indicating that women have both the right and a duty to nurture children and improve the community in which these children live. social reformers had been focused on improving workplace conditions for several decades, and had been particularly concerned about wage-earning mothers who had little access to safe childcare. gaining the vote in 1920 certainly did not change these women's situations overnight,

but it energized some women to rethink their positions in their home as caregivers. this allender cartoon is from the journal "equal rights" from december 15, 1923. and allender continued to work for the suffrage movement and women's rights movement in this journal. it shows allender's sarcasm. the notice on the door reads, "protection, motherhood is the noblest profession in the world. therefore you must be given inferior jobs, the lowest pay, and your hours for work shall be limited except in the home." the settlement house movement and labor activism by organizations such as the international ladies garment workers union established some changes that recognized eight-hour workdays, proper sanitation facilities, rest periods, and access to childcare. this political cartoon from leon

israel from 1910 shows the factory owner and garment worker cuddling but each with a knife to the other's back. indicating the distrust pervasive between owners and workers. the tragic fire at the triangle shirt waist factory in 1911 that killed 146 workers reminded reformers and the public at large of the many work sites that had escaped scrutiny. this editorial cartoon begs the question, who is responsible? allender emphasized the realities of wage-earning mothers and children left orphaned by work accidents. the cartoon of a man casting a vote for a household that included eight dependents highlighted how adult, educated women were being ignored. a father wholly representing the