they were warned in advance that they would be arrested. and alice paul's response was a question why picketing was illegal today if it wasn't illegal yesterday. what was it that suddenly made a difference? and we all know that difference was the tone of the banners. the difference was the rhetoric of the banners. obstructing traffic is a dodge. but it worked and they brought them in. now, the first people were released with no sentence, with light sentences. but the banners did escalate the sentences. and one judge did say he sentenced women to 30 days in prison and said he was giving them 30 days because the banner that they had was mild. if they had had an objectionable banner, it would have been a longer sentence. the party's response was, you have no right to edit what we say any more than an article -- than an editorial in the "washington post."

you can dislike our words, but you can't censor our words. the kaiser wilson banner points out in a stronger way that president is a hypocrite, he has sympathy for the germans, he is working for democracy in europe. 20 million american women are not self-governed. and pulling from the bible, "take the beam out of your own eye." do you see the hypocrisy that you are creating? this is scrap of the banner. 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. they had -- after a recruit of the mill dare, they pulled out this banner which asks, why women can have no vote in choosing war in this country when you will con script 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 prisoners. 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 support 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, y 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 reasonable 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 pret stay 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 to militant images? >> i've got a slide. >> why don't you put it up? >> 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 that 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. this 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 think that some also came away as treasured keepsakes. people come back from battles, people come back from traumatic events and they keep something to remember it by. that's why i'm in business. people keep things to remember by [ laughter ] >> 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 ii propaganda posters influence allender's cartoons. 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 pill who were

active in the sufficient frank 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 move forward in that chosen cause they're also going to have 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. >> yes. 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 over there 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

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 shirtwaist 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 rita 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 ri? they were in their positions because they were right. they wanted to do things the way they wanted to do them. when you have leadership who already believe they are right, you are going to have some arguments around the table. one of the things that i have been very enamored by, especially of late, is the way that they kept it private. they had their arguments and they had their disagreements, but they didn't air their dirty laundry for lack of a better way to say if. not everybody would agree with their -- they weren't all going to get along all of the time. they were living together. a lot of these women were living

together in the same space. i lived with people who get on my nerves sometimes. there was that and the thing i noticed especially with paul is that they did rise above their arguments and they always had the cause front and center. she knew she needed to resign. paul was not going to give in. >> it seems like con of the things that they were conscious to do because one of the arguments is women are unstable. women can't vote because they are unstable or they won't make a rational decision or have cliques and temperament quirks and they won't be good voters. i think they are consciously trying to fight back against that stereotype and say no, women are as deliberate and calm

and decisive as the rest of you. as men are. this is not a problem. they didn't want to give them an inch for some kind of stereotype. >> it's a diagnosis of hysteria. they didn't want to be labeled as hysterical women. >> to what extent as being against the war which at the time was unamerican and unpatriotic. to what extent did that delay the adoption of women's sufferage or did it? >> i don't know that it did. remember there two wings, if you will, of the sufferage movement. the national women's party was usually called the militant and concentrating on the federal amendment. they are working and the winning plan is moving state by state.

alice paul -- we were talking back stage and 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. they are into creating the war work and the notion it would make them look responsible and better and they were patriotic and trying to win support here. the women's party was more single-minded. like the split that happened in the civil war when susan b anthony did not want to put sufferage aside and it was called the less militant group and they were willing to put their needs for the greater good of the civil war and didn't want a repeat of them not being rewarded. they assumed they would win in the end and it passed them by. they weren't going to have it happen again.

>> many of the members of the national women's party were claimed. as a moral ideal for them, they were against the war. they also understood they were part of a much larger project. i find it interesting that the national women's party was called militant. they were pass vifts and i love how you pointed out, they stood there holding their banners. it was a legal setting and i think that's why i liked this so well. they did not agree with using violence in any way. i don't think that they really cared what they thought so much

about that. it was important to them. as pass vifts. >> thanks. the sufferagist treatment seems contrary to even at that time first amendment jurisprudence and i'm wonder figure antiwar were treated as badly or if not, why were the sufferages treated so badly. just for first amendment rights. >> i don't know enough about the treatment of antiwar protesters in this period to compare them. >> we are talking about the national women's party and lots of people were mistreated in the era. we have lynching going on in this country. we have the anti-chinese movement. we are talking about the women's

movement, but they were not the only one in brutality. they were taking their message out into the street was being subjected to violent action. it wasn't -- it happened to be by 1917 that wilson had enough. actually the district had had enough. they were trying to temperature down the sufferages. i wouldn't want you to think they were the only group being subjected to this sort of treatment. >> i think we have time for two final questions. >> i noticed you refer to them

as sufferagists and at point they were called sufferage ets. i was told that was meant as a put down. is that right or or is there a defense to the terminology? >> it comes from britain and it was used as an insult and derock tori term. the british embraced it. a memory and my experience in reading about the american sufferagists, that is the way they refer to themselves. >> i couldn't add to that.

>> i'm curious about something. from your research on a personal level, what kind of reaction did they get from the men in their life? their families and friends? i'm curious about that. if you have stories or any research. what was it like for them in their personal lives? >> a lot of them were single. >> just even friends or family. did they get much support? >> there was a story that a child was sliding down the bannister and said my mommy is going to jail. there people who have great support and people who don't.

it depends on your circumstances. there were men's groups who publicly endorsed women's sufferage and marched with them. the women's party 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 in the case they remained single and fighting for the causes was the ultimate goal. nothing was allowed to get in her way. all of the personal life was to be set aside while she worked for this. when she trained, they talked a great deal and there is