the banner was destroyed by the crowds, and this is a scrap that remained. it remained in alice paul's possession. and came to the museum with a collection of alice paul material in the 1980s. this is one of the banners that we can't find. this is from september. this is a banner discussing conscription. after a parade of recruits to the military, they pulled out this banner which asks, why women can have no vote in choosing war in this country when you will conscript their sons. it is unjust to deny women a voice in their government when the government is conscript

their sons. this is at the sewall belmont house. at this point women were being arrested on a daily basis. alice paul was told that she would be arrested if she came out with banners. alice paul came out. and i think one of the most amazing things is that the banner that she brought out with her said, is a quote of woodrow wilson's, "the time has come to conquer or submit. for us there can be but one choice. we have made it." the banner that accompanied her was "resistance to tyranny is obedience to god" which is a favorite quote of susan b. anthony's. i didn't put a picture of alice with the banner. it's a wonderful picture but it makes alice look the fact of the picture, she looks very small, which she was, very frail in body. very strong in spirit. and i think it's important to remember that alice paul is the person masterminding all of this. alice paul could get a job on any political campaign today.

[ laughter ] alice paul understands what she's doing. she understands how words are escalating she knows the response she's getting and she's doing it absolutely on purpose. and she went to jail. we've all heard the stories of the time in prison, the hunger strikes, the incredibly brutal treatment of the suffragists. respond a new wave of banners demanding treatment as political the same privileges that were given to russian political prisoners should be given to the suffragists. it did not happen. hunger strikes continued. but pressure brought by the banners in front of the white house, by the banners about the jailed prisoners, brought about their release. and they were released in late november. one of the things i find amazing, and i wanted to show you just some slides of

different -- these are not protests in particular. but it's the banners and the fact that they brought in a photographer to take pictures of their banners i think is amazing. it does tell you that they knew their value. they knew what they were doing and they wanted them recorded because you also know -- you might not have them after the day's protest. and they certainly didn't have these after the day's protests because they're in neither of our collections. this is one of the kaiser wilson banners. and a continuing part of these protests is to throw wilson's words at him. wilson has said he supports suffrage. where are you? why aren't you part of fighting with the tide that is rising to meet the moon? these are not -- these are quotes of susan b. anthony's. and they would reuse banners and mix them together, which i think is interesting. frequently there are three banners. so say "how long must women wait for liberty?"

demand for suffrage and an explanation that it is the most important thing to fight for right now. those two together, a little history with a mild question will be a very pointed question. "mr. president, you say liberty is a fundamental demand of the human spirit." it just begs for an answer. every day they bring a question out to woodrow wilson and beg him to come and answer it. in a way it's amazing that he never did. very few of us can resist responding when we're provoked or when we're challenged or when our credibility is called into account. the suffragists as kyle said they are of their period. so one of these banners, the one on the right, actually that's my right, your left. no, your right.

the banner on the right -- sorry about that -- discusses the fact that in the civil war women put aside suffrage. they were told that now was the time for the negro. and they accepted that. now they're asking as i said woodrow wilson had been talking about the jones act to give citizenship to puerto ricans. now they're asking if they would be put aside now for the puerto rican man. "when is the woman's time?" and contrasting wilson to lincoln. woodrow wilson finally endorsed a national suffrage amendment. but he didn't push for it very hard. and again, they escalated. this is lafayette park. and the colors came out. and they burned woodrow wilson's words.

they got up to speak, and every time someone got up to speak they were arrested and taken away. so they started the watch fires. every day in front of the white house, they were saying -- explaining that man who is deceiving the world because he is the prophet of democracy will not grant suffrage to women in the united states. when will this happen. and they keep the watch fires burning. at one point they burn woodrow wilson, a picture of woodrow wilson in effigy and are arrested again. this is alice paul protesting the 1920 election. the suffrage amendment finally clears the congress and it goes out to the states for ratification. now they're protesting the blockage by other parties.

the blockage by republican parties in the states. so we've escalated again. now we're not against the democrats, we're going to be against the republicans until you bring this home to us we will oppose whoever is in opposition to us. and counting it down to the final passage of the amendment ratification of the amendment by the states, this is the holy grail of banners. this is the missing banner. this is the ratification banner. alice paul sewed a star onto this banner for every state as it ratified the suffrage amendment. later in her life, interestingly, she made a charm bracelet and added a charm in the shape of every state as it ratified for the e.r.a. but here she's sewing stars on a suffrage banner. and in the end, unfurled it from the balcony of their headquarters house the day that

suffrage was passed and was finally passed by the states. this is the missing banner. and one of the biggest questions we get, and i'm willing to bet paige gets is, do you have this and do you know where it is? if anybody actually knows and it's in their grandmother's attic, we would all be -- [ laughter ] we would all be thrilled to know. it was -- it's an interesting story. it's a cascading story. and it's one that retains a material culture that is very rich and reasonably fugitive. so it is something we keep looking for and are hoping very much to save. but it is an interesting story of how you can take something so simple as cloth and paint and some thread and turn it into a constantly-emerging tactic. and one that brought a president more or less to -- a president and a congress more or less to

their knees through the power of stoic women and cloth and paint. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you very much to both dr. kyle ciani and lisa graddy. we're probably going to run into our time boundary petty pretty soon. if we have members of the audience who would like to ask questions to please take one side or the other and form a line. i'd like to start with a couple of questions specific to our speakers tonight and then turn it over to the questions from the audience. let me start with dr. ciani. what reasons have you found for allender's shift from largely maternalist? and then to militant? >> i've got a slide. i think that this is a good time to have sort of a show and tell for just the sailor slide. >> there it is. >> one of the things that i

noticed when i was looking at her work was that when she first began to draw, 1914, 1915, the images were very much invested in social work, social issues in terms of women and children. and by the time that the pickets began, certainly with the russian envoy and by 1917 her work becomes far more dramatic. and i think -- i mean, you can challenge me on this, but i think the arrests of the pickets and certainly the escalation of the jail sentences was something that turned her work. she didn't turn aback to the mother images, but she certainly started -- we see far more of these kinds of images. i think this is such -- this is such a violent cartoon.

i mean, the imagery in it of a sailor. i mean, this man just beating up on this woman with the policeman with his hands behind his back. that's violent. and i thought that that was such a powerful image. and i think it has everything to do with the women being jailed, starting three months earlier to that. >> ms. graddy, let me switch to you. so you've talked a little bit about the original banners and what we know we have in all of the different collections. we do know, however, what we have in the sewall-belmont collection that we don't have a complete catalog unfortunately of all of the banners. could you offer any thoughts as to what specific content you think might be missing? obviously you've talked earlier about the fact that it was

probably the pushier statements, because obviously those were insightful. as we see here in this slide, obviously there was violence against the women. but also of course they tore the banners. but perhaps you could speak a little bit about what you think content might be specifically missing as far as the strategies and tactics were concerned. >> i think we know from memoirs like inez irwin's memoir, because she'll tell you, god bless her, she'll tell you on this day this person's banner said this and this person's banner said. so we know that some of the more aggressive banners are missing. we know that there were many more as well of the -- if you want to think of them as mild banners or the inspirational banners. i suspect that some of those simply went home with people. some things just don't stand the test of time and they're thrown away by accident or something spills on them. the thing that happens to all material culture. but i thinat

away as treasured keepsakes. people come back from battles, people comck events and they keep something to remember it by. that's why i'm in business. people keep things to remember by. and i think that people saved some of these. we know that our great demand banner came from a family whose mother, the suffragist, had saved it all these years and it had been in a cedar chest. so i suspect that as time goes on, like with jailed for freedom pins, we will hopefully find banners that will come home. >> definitely. i'll post this question to both of you. and i know again we'll run short on our time. but i think this is too important not to mention. social movements do not happen in a vacuum. we know that world war i propaganda posters influence allender's cartoons.

and in turn suffragist was influenced by other movements. could you talk about the intersection between women worker groups, temperance groups and suffragist movement whether they were to compliment or react against each other. >> i think that we know that people -- a lot of women who were active in the suffrage movement were active in a lot of movements. a lot of women cut their tooth in women's clubs and in progressive -- a lot of the organizations, the progressive era, be they settlement houses or charity organizations or your city's society or church or local society for the betterment of any number of causes. you find a lot of women become frustrated. they're happy in what they're doing but they're frustrated in those movements because they reach a point where they can't make any more progress. and many come to believe that it's not because women aren't

willing and women aren't working but because women don't lack a certain kind of power. it's power of the vote. they can't change the things that they need to change to make their organization progress. be it temperance or settlement houses or clean milk. and so the next -- for them to e to move forward in suffrage. so women do both and some become whole-heartedly only suffragists. alice paul is someone who is only a suffragist. although she started in settlement houses. >> yeah. just to add to that, i think that the settlement house movement is something that was so critical to the suffrage movement that a lot of for instance jane adams learned about the settlement house movement when she went across the ocean to england. alice paul learned about the settlement house as well and became involved with the suffrage movement in england.

so i think there are a lot of individual who were connected in many ways, robin munsey, a historian of women has termed it the female reform network of the progressive era. and i think that they absolutely were networked in terms of the settlement house movement settlement house movement, in terms of education, they went to same-sex schools. they were at vassar and bryn mawr. they lived together. they worked together. but the thing that i think is really important about the national women's party is that they also invited working-class women into the conversation. they were women who were involved with the women's trade union league were very much a part of the suffrage movement. the original banners that you showed with their categories? i loved the dentist.

but was there one that had shirt waist -- like a shirt waist worker or like a factory name? so check the cedar chests. because i would love to see if there was like a settlement house banner and seamstresses -- or the union. well, it wouldn't be iron workers. but what would it be? the textile workers? the ladies garment union. if there was that sort of a banner. so the party was very much connected to working women. and they understood that working women needed the vote. as much as they wanted the vote, they needed the vote. >> wonderful. let's do this. let's go ahead and turn to the audience. if we could start on this side and then we'll go right over here. ma'am? >> yes. well, thank you very much for this very informative, interesting conversation. i really appreciate it. my quick question is, you

alluded to dissensions, disagreements amongst the key suffragists. i'm wondering if you could speak to that. >> that's a really large question. i think you're referring to rheta childe dorr and alice paul. and they had a lot of -- how do i say this nicely? we're talking about women who were control freaks, right? i mean, they were in their positions because they were right. and they wanted to do things the way that they wanted to do them. and so when you have leadership who all believe that they're right, you're going to have some arguments around the table. one of the things that i've been very enamored by especially of late is the way that they kept it private. i mean, they had their

arguments. they had their disagreements. but they didn't air their dirty laundry for lack of a better way of saying it. they knew that not everybody was going to agree with their -- that they weren't all going to get along all of the time. but they were living together. a lot of these women were living together in same spaces. so you kind of get on -- i don't know. i live with people. he gets on my nerves sometimes. [ laughter ] so i think that there was that as well. but the thing that i noticed, especially with dorr and paul, is that they did rise above their arguments. and they always had the cause front and center so that they knew -- i mean, dorr knew that she needed to resign. because paul wasn't going to give in. >> one of the things that we're

conscious to do one of the arguments is that women are unstable. women can't vote because they're unstable. and women can't vote because they won't make a rational trying to fight that stereotype. women are deliberate and calm and decisive as men are. they didn't want to give them an inch for a stereotype. >> the diagnosis of hiss taker yash -- hysteria, right? >> yes. they didn't want to be labelled as hysterical women. >> to what extent did they perceive being against the war which was unamerican, unpatriotic. to what extent did that delay

the adoption of women sufferage? or did it? >> i don't know that it did. remember, there are two wings, if you will, of the sufferage movement. the national woman's party is uche lit more militant wing and are concentrating on the federal amendment. they're moving state by state. all women in the national women's party are free to do and encouraged to do war work. but the party will concentrate on sufferage. nausa through the energies into creating. they're doing war work in the notion it would make them look responsible and better and pa to win -- win some support here. the woman's party was more single minded.

it is like when susan b. anthony certainly didn't want to put sufferage aside and what would then have been called the less militant group was willing to put their needs under for the greater good of the civil war. they didn't want to repeat of not being rewarded. they assumed they would win in the end. and it passed them by. they weren't going to have that happen again. >> i think the issue, too, is that they really -- they passed us. and many of the members of the national women's party were claimed passivism. i think as a moral ideal for them, they were against the war. but they also understood that they were part of a much larger project. i find national women's party was called militant because they were passivists. i love how you pointed out that

they stood there holding their banners. it was a very regal setting and they did not, i think that's why i like this cartoon image so well. they did not agree with using violence in any way. i don't think that wilson really cared what they thought so much about that. but it was important to them as passivists. >> thanks. the sufferage treatment seems contrary even at that time jurisprudence. i wonder if other movements like andy w yi wa y y yy anti-war tr? >> i don't know enough about treatment of anti-war protesters in this period to compare them.

>> we're talking about the national women's party tonight. but there were lots of people who were mistreated in this era. we have lynching going on in this country. and many -- you know, we have -- we have the anti-chinese movement. so, you know, we're talking about the national women's party tonight. but that doesn't mean they were the only ones who were being subjected to brutality. any group in that era taking their message out into the street was being subjected to violent action. so it wasn't -- it happened to be by 1917 the wilson had enough. actually, the district police had enough. and they were trying, to i think, temper down the public

spectacle of the sufferages. and it got out of hand. i wouldn't want you to think that they were the only group being subjected to this sort treatment. >> i think we have time for two final questions. >> i noticed you always refer to them as sufferagists. at some point they came to be known as sufferage-ettes. is there any significance to the difference in terminology. >> sufferage-ettes comes from britain. it was used an an insult, a drag torre term -- derogatory term in britain. they embraced it as sufferage-ettes. we all have mary poppins and

mrs. banks in our memory. i couldn't add to that. what kind of reaction do they get from the men in their lives? families? friends? i'm curious about that. if you have any anecdotal stories or any research. what was it look for them in their personal lives? >> a lot of them were single.

>> there is a story that an attorney went into a headquarters and a girl was sliding down the banister and said my mommy is going to jail. very prevalently. there are people with great support behind them and people who don't. it depends on your own personal circumstances. but there were members groups who publicly endorsed women sufferage. and marched with them. the woman's party, though, wanted leadership to stay with women and made a decision that only women -- and men volunteered for the picket line, but only women would appear on the picket line. it was important that that image of the dignified, brave woman who could hold her own would be the dominant image. >> important to note that in the

case -- [ inaudible ] -- remained single. nothing was allowed to get in the way, period. all personal life could be set aside while she worked for this. and when she trained the young women that came to work with her, they talked a great deal. and there is -- there are a lot of stories about the fact that they were not to set their beliefs aside and then work for their personal life. it was come in, be committed and let's get this done. it was a very roll up your sleeves, we're going to get this done straight forward action. and alice would have no part of anything else. definitely. >> good to know. >> i think we're just about at our time limit. let me say on behalf of our board of directors and our staff, thank you all very much for being here. again, thank you to tom nastic

for hosting us tonight and lisa, kathleen and dr. kyle for joining us tonight and sharing this wonderful information on the eve of women's ee quality day. thank you all very much. . they would wear garments with homespun cloth. it would be much less fine than the kinds of goods that they could import from great britain. but by wearing this homespun cloth, women were visibly and