end of the year. host a discussion on the political and human rights situation in the drc. live coverage begins at eleven a.m. eastern on c-span. you can follow both of events at c-span.org. or listen on the free radio app. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. now a conversation on women's voting rights. following ratification of the 19th amendment. in 1920. the discussion includes some of the challenges african american and native american women face. smithsonian associates hosted this event, with university of maryland history professor robyn

muncy. >> our speaker tonight is robyn lee muncy. the interim chair where she's a professor of history. i think several of you heard her speak about a year ago, about the suffer raj movement in the context of the dell mont paul national monument. and at the time she said that she was doing research on what happened after women got the vote. and i thought that sounds like an interesting program. and it's clear from your response that you do too. so give a warm welcome to robyn muncy. thanks for being here. >> thank you so much. for that introduction and the invitation to come back. that didn't go too badly. and thank you to everybody at the smithsonian associates who made this possible. people who worked on publicity and taken care of the logistics. okay let me make sure i have this. all right.

so the 19th amendment of course the woman's suffrage amendment to the u.s. constitution. finally made it through congress in june of 1919. and it was ratified by three quarters of the states in august of 1920. after that, no state could deny the vote on the basis of sex. we are tonight our job is to explore some of the meanings of the 19th amendment immediately in the after math of its passage. before we drill down on that, however, i want to sketch out very quickly no more than ten minutes. i'm trying to mold myself on this. sketch out the context in which the women's suffrage amendment passed and which its first fruits were tasted. i want to lay out that some of these contacts. because they'll help us understand the meaning. crystal clear the meanings of the 19th amendment. also they'll help us understand the par ram ters of the women's

voices political voices in ts 1920s and why we're not hearing some women's voices in the 1920s. because the context will shush some women and it's going to magnify the voices of some other women. so i'll try to really stay focussed here and not dillydally. i think this context is important. so you'll remember that the women's suffrage amendment passed through congress and was ratified in the middle of and immediately after world war i. which included a campaign against immigrants and against radical politics. the result of that antiimmigrant and antiradical campaign was deportation of hundreds of people per vooefed to be radicals who were immigrants and included women like emma goldman. who was a feminist whose voice was mightily loud in u.s. political culture in the 1910s. but deported in 1918 and wouldn't be a part of story in the 1920s.

and so she, did the deportation of radicals is part of explanation for the whacking off of the left. in political culture of the 1920s. even women who were not immigrants but who were on the political left were sometimes jailed and tried under an laws in the teens and early 20s. like whitny who was a patrician. a woman in california who was a member of the communist labor party and arrested and tried under laws in 1920. and kept fighting her case through the 1920s. that antiradical and antiimmigrant campaign was both fed by and benefitted from the popularity of the ku clux clan. the clan, the first clan died out in the late 19th century. a new clan organized in the

early 20th. it came into incredible prominence. and even electoral legitimacy in the 1920s. and women were both active in the clan and active in fighting the clan. and so we -- i'll talk about that a little bit later. this ain't immigrant antiradical climate 1/2 dominant during and after world war i. resulted in 1924 in a very restrictive immigration law the johnson reed act 1924. and the johnson reed act formalized the ban already existing informal ban on immigration from asia. and dramatically reduced immigration from europe. it was aimed especially at immigrants from eastern euro and southern europe. italians, greeks are the target of that antiimmigrant law in 1924. and where as in the decades

preefs to the 1920s, millions of immigrants had been flooding into american shores. immigration is just cut down to a trickle after 1924. the immigration from central america was not touched by johnson reed. and so there are several hundred thousand mexican immigrants to the united states in the 1920s. but nothing like the kind of numbers that you're seeing before the 1920s. the result of the antiimmigrant campaign and antiradical campaign was one of the result was that for radical immigrant women who stayed in the united states in the 1920s, the message to them was that if they were going to thrive in the united states, they needed to find their way to middle of the road politics. they needed to assimilate to much more conventional middle of

the road politics. i'm thinking of the silencing of the voices of italian immigrant women. and very important to labor actions like the strike in 1912. and the patterson strike too. immediately there after. these are massive numbers of women who were involved in politics of anarchist sort. and the labor movement. whose voices will be scienced in the 19020s. we won't hear from them in the 1920s. at the same time that the antiimmigrant and antiradical campaign was dominant in the early 1920s, the great migration of african americans out of the south and into cities in the north eventually into the west as well and out of rural areas in the south and into cities in the south, that great migration had become significant.

in the mid-1910s by the time we get to the period immediate le after the war. that great migration created vital and larger african american communities in cities like chicago and new york and philadelphia and cleveland and detroit. when white veterans came home from world war i, in 1919, in fact exactly the summer when the women suffrage amendment was passing through congress. summer of 1919. during that summer when the vote vets came back, they often found themselves competing for jobs and housing with new african american communities. and some of those vets and their allies lashed out and horrific violence. against those african american communities. one of the places that where the race riots were the worst was chicago. across the country hundreds of african americans lost their lives in just massacres. that occurred in that one summer. just that one summer. in fact james johnson referred

to the summer of 1919 as red summer. because of the numbers of death and the horrific conditions of those deaths. and of course many more injured in 1919. so, racial conflict racial violence was also a part of the climate. in to which the women suffrage amendment emerged. that great migration from the south into northern cities by african americans also laid the foundation for the harlem renaissance of the 1920s. another crucially important context for our thinking. women were deeply involved in important writers and artist in the harlem renaissance. a novelist. and the late 1920s. and redman faucet who was a prolific writer herself. also a promoter of other writers. because she was the editor of the literary editor of the

crisis. the newspaper of the naacp in. 1920s. and that migration of african americans to the north and especially then the racial violence that met that may grags in 1919. and there after. helped to lay the foundation for black nationalist politics that were so important in many cities in the north. in the 1920s. and the most well known of the organizations of that represented black nationalism in the 1920s was of course mar kus universal negro improvement institution. he was often in trouble with the law in the 1920s and the person who took his place as spokesman and organizer of the unia when he was in trouble, was his wife. and she was she's not only an important nationalist leader. she was an important black feminist leader in the 1920s.

so these contexts the context of the antiimmigrant campaign and the antiradical campaign. racial violence against african americans in cities in the south as well as in the north, those contexts are porpt to understand in which voices were magnified among women in the 1920s and which voices are subdued or silenced altogether. in the case of the left in the 1920s. the range of voices that we'll hear about tonight will be much narrower than the range of voices we would have heard had the amendment passed in 1905 or 1910. it would have been a different context. and talking about many different sets of people. this wonderful quotation from 1925. leads us to another dimension of the context in to which the women suffrage amendment emerged. that the quotation i hope. i think you can see it. it says the doll baby type woman

is a thing of the past. the wide awake woman is forging ahead, prepared for all emergencies. and ready to answer any call. even if it be to face the cannons on the battlefield. that quo fact from amy in 1925 points to the fact that in the 1920s, a modern gender system crystallized in the united states. that is a gender system a system of ideas about men and women about what they are naturally. kind of relations they naturally have. in the victorian period in the mid-19th century. a set of ideas emerge the gender system held really men and women were the opposite of each other. the victorian system held that men were competitive and active. and women were by nature a passive and coop rative. nurturing and healing. these were men had nearly

uncontrollable sexual desire. women didn't have any sexual desire. there was just the opposites of each other. in a late 19th and through the early 20th centuries, that victorian gender system was very much in transition. and by the time we get to the mid-1920s, i think we would say it has been replaced by a modern gender system. the kind of key characteristic of the modern gender system was it held painted men and women as much more like each other. than the victorian gender system did. it didn't insist they were the same. or they were equal. by no means equal. they were much more alike. than the victorian gender system had imagined men and women to be. and one of the crucial changes in the from the victorian gender system to the modern gender system was that the modern gender system insisted that women indeed did have sexual desire. and that healthy happy woman had

to have her sexual desires fulfilled or she couldn't be a held the happy woman. the sexual desire to women and the sexual need to women was a crucial change in the gender system that emerged in the 1920s. and it meant and that if we just looked at that component of the system itself, you'd see that it's claiming that women are more like men. than the victorian gender system had imagined them to be. not that again the sexual desire to women also demoted -- since sex becomes a more important component or imagine to be more important component of women's lives in the 1920s and thereafter. mother hood gets demoted on the list of characteristics and values of women. so it's harder after the emergence of this system to be sure that when you claim that the because women are mothers,

and nurturing and care for life, dot dot dot. because not everybody is going to think that's the case. not everybody will think that's the most important thing. the kinds of appeals you can make in public life are going to change. because of this reimagine k of who women are. who they are by nature. by the late 1920s. lesbianism emerged as an accessible identity to many american women. because of the writing of the half. the author of the a very popular novel. and it was condemned in england and she was tried for obscenity. and that trial got a lot of press in the u.s. and in the course of that those conversations and that coverage of the trials, the whole notion of lez by annism.

that became accessful to woman. and that meant that was liberating and relieving to many women. but it also came with a stigma. and it meant that many women began to rethink the loving relations they had with other women. now that if sex could be a part of that. like who's going on in this relationship of mine. it also the emergence of lesbianism and as an identity. and stigmatized. also threw suspicion on women friendships. women organizations, women institutions, women colleges. a will the of foundations actually of women's advancement in the decades previous. so the changes in the ideas about womanhood and the centrality of sex to women's identities. all of that required negotiating

a whole new landscape in women in public life. requiring a whole new set of thinking and accommodating the new ideas. in addition in the 1920s i'm almost to the end of this. 1920s broadcast radio had emerges and it opened all kinds of opportunity for artists like smith. who is pictured here. people like phillips a writer. who many of you will i think++ .

same thing for mississippi. no sign that north carolina and georgia were going to enfranchise women in school board elections. mms of women were brought into a fuller democratic citizen. no question by the 19th amendment. another one of the meanings of the 19th amendment is brought into a change the meaning of womanhood in the states. it enfranchised woman's in

states that it's hard to imagine would have done so on their own. however, it is not the case that all american women voted after 1920. yes? >> oh, florida. yes. i'm sorry. florida granted some municipal suffrage. florida is green. the only green state. florida had not given women the vote in school board elections. it had given women the vote in the in certain cities. charter cities. so there was a partial vote in florida. yes, thank you for noticing. so the map is really working. the map is so working. okay after the ratification of the 19th amendment. still, millions of american women were barred from voting. we want to be sure we're clear on all of that as well. so one group of women citizens of the united states, women.

>> reporter: ma in 1917. the amendment said no state shall deny the vote on the basis of sex. is didn't say anything about territory. and hawaii were territories. when this over sight was understood. if it weren't so tragic it would be hilarious exchange on the floor of congress about this. wait a minute i thought we meant to infranchise women there. no it didn't happen. immediately in 1920, the hawaiien territorial legislature enfranchised women in hawaii. but the puertorico refused. who declared herself for women's suffrage in 1908. a major labor activist.

and she's an anarchist. why does she care about suffrage. she was a great proponent of suffrage in. several new organizations i merged to fight the battle for suffrage in pr. and in 1929, finally the territorial legislature granted the vote to literate women. that all adult women in pr were allowed the vote. it put women in a peculiar position. because if they were in so you're a woman in pr in 1925. you cannot vote. you're not a voter. if you move to new york, you become a voter. right? it depends on where you are. it's that you're in pr.

a territory that has not enfranchised women. also, native american women. native american women who lived on reservations were not in 1920 considered citizens of the united states. it was not until 1924 -- i should have put that on the slide. 1924 congress passed the snyder act. indian citizen ship act. which made indians living in ez vagus citizens of the united states. but even though indians living in reservations in the united states and 1924 become citizens, it didn't mean that all the states that had reservations extended the franchise to those citizens. many states continued to disfranchise indians who lived on reservations. including arizona, new mexico, maine. minnesota. and those states held out against the infranchisement of native americans through the 20s.

through the 30s into the 1940s. finally in 1948, the supreme court issued a decision that said that you had no more of the she nan. each state has to extend the vote to indians living on reservations. even after 1948 several of states, arizona, utah and new mexico took a long time, years. to exsponge from their laws these bars against voting by native americans. and then after, even after that though, native americans were kept from the polls often by poll taxes and unfairly administered literacy tests. the large etc. group of american women kept from voting after 1920. african american woman in the south. in the early 20th century in particular, southern states began to disfranchise african

american men who had been voting in the states and serving in congress and serving in state legislatures, and ruling cities. 1980s it begins with the mississippi constitution of 1890. southern states took the vote away from african american men who gained it after the civil war. and they were disfranchised by men means. one was the poll tax. of course. because african americans tended to be to have a much harder time in the labor market. and so they tended to be poorer and had trouble getting up the money for poll taxes. unfairly administered literacy tests. make sure everybody is clear on what those were. they were tests that didn't just ask you to read something. they had you you go in and the voter registrar who is white. say okay id i'd like you to read the section 3, paragraph two of the mississippi constitution. and you'd read that and

interpret that. what does that mean. and of course no matter what you said, the voter registrar has complete discretion to say maybe not. come back another time. or no problem, great. you couldn't read that, no problem. really i'm signing you up right hire. it's because of the unfairly administered literacy tests or understanding clauses that african americans many african americans were kept from voting. and many illiterate white people were allowed to vote. because of the registrar could say fine to anybody they wanted to admit as well as exclude people. of course there were also economical reprisals threatened against african americans who voted or tried vote or landowne would threaten to throw families off their land or employers to fire people and of course there was also brute violence. you may know that lynching increased dramatically in the 1890s and goes down in the 1920s

and through the same means and through poll taxes unfairly administered literacy tests, african-american women in the south were kept from vogt just as african-american men were. that struggle, the struggle to get rid of poll taxes and to overcome the literacy tests and to fight back against brute violence and economic reprisals, that struggle as many of you know and some of you have lived through, right? that struggle went on into the 1960s. i want to go back one second. some of the most important activists were women like fannie lou aimer who became an important player in the student nonviolent coordinating committee in the 1960s and a founder of the mississippi

freedom democratic party. she is pictured here. when she was representing the mississippi freedom democratic party and giving the evidence of racial discrimination on the party of the white democratic party in mississippi. and she becomes -- she's one of the great activists in the struggle against poll tax and againsting these literacy tests. and of course eventually, those two ways of barring people from the polls were overcome. in 1960 -- shoot. 1964, the amendment to the constitution was ratified by 3/4 of the states and that was an antipoll tax amendment. it made poll taxes inconstitutional in the united states. no longer could you require a tax for someone to vote. and then of course the voting rights act of 1965 outlawed

literacy tests for voting and since federal reasonably strars into the south to register voters in the south and the numbers of african-americans registered to vote skyrocketed within months which was an enormous help to native american voters as well. all right. in addition, in the -- going back to the 1920s now, asian immigrant women also were not eligible to vote and they were not eligible to vote because they were not eligible to citizenship. that is if you were an immigrant from china or japan in the early 20th century, in the 1920s and '30s you were not able to become a citizen. and this bars on citizenship and

voting changed piecemeal over the 1940s and 1950s. in the 1943, china is an ally of the u.s. in world war ii. and so, the chinese were made eligible to naturalize. 1946, asian, indians, and filipinos. it was not until 1952 with the walter mccarron act that the japan and other asian immigrants were made eligible for citizenship. asian immigrant women also were barred from the polls after 1920. those of you from the district of columbia will not want me to overlook the fact that the district was denied presidential participation -- participation

in presidential elections until 1964. that d.c. did not have an elected local government between 1874 and 1974. and of course d.c. still does not have voting rights in the u.s. congress now even though it has a larger population than some states and pays more taxes than some states. have a situation where that puerto rican woman in 1925 she moves to new york and becomes a voter. she comes to d.c., not a voter again. so whether or not you had voting rights depended on where you were, who you were and where you were in the 20th century. the struggle for voting rights has gone on and on and i would say, goes on still. some of the kinds of restrictions that have been put on voting in the last ten years have especially disadvantaged

and forced from the polls, young women, poor women, women of color, women who have been incarcerated, the kinds of restrictions that we're seeing now mean that the struggle for women's suffrage continues. this is not something that has ever -- never got over, never ended. it's still going on. so another problem with the way we often represent and talk about the 19th amendment. american women got the vote in 1920. i've said that as a teacher of u.s. history and it's so wrong. it misrepresents so much. millions of women had the vote befo beforehand but millions still don't have it and there are women who don't have it now. this is an ongoing struggle. it's a piecemeal struggle that has gone on for generations and goes on still. one of the things i want to make sure is clear here which might get lost in the shuffle is that

while african-american women in the south in the 1920s were not admitted to the polls, excluded by the same means that african-american men were excluded. african-american women in the north and west are voting at the same time that other women in their states voted. in fact one of the reasons for the victory of things like the amendment against the poll tax and the voting rights act is the increasing political power of african-americans in the north. and we're going to talk more about that in just a bit. another thing that might be confusing is that any asian descended woman born in the u.s. was eligible to the polls. it's only immigrant women not eligible to naturalization are kept from the polls. i want to make sure those distinctions are clear.

just because women -- because the constitution now said you couldn't deny women the vote on the basis of sex didn't mean that the full range of citizenship rights and responsibilities were extended to women automatically. no, no. and i just laugh when i come to jury service. who wants to serve on a jury? i mean, right? whenever that thing comes in the mail and it says to you, you have to appear this day you think -- i so don't want do that. but jury service is a crucial responsibility and duty of citizenship. an before the 1920s, women who were accused of crimes had to go before juries that were all male. right? a court was a very male space. there's a lot of spitting. there are spitoons and tobacco everywhere.

i don't want to be too prissy but whoa. they are very male spaces. do you think that matters. let's say you're accused of shoplifting. you're a woman. you're accused of shoplifting. you go into court and you've got all these men, the lawyers are men and the judge is a man. do you think that matters? if you think that matters, tell me why. someone raise your hand and say before our c-span cameras why. why does that matter? yeah. [ inaudible ] very intimidating. yes? [ inaudible ] . a patriarchal society that is going to work against you. anything else? yeah. [ inaudible ] >> a juriy of one's peers, yeah. a woman couldn't get a jury of her peers before the 1920s and for a long time thereafter. i'm going to get one more

answer. >> men and women had different gender roles. so they would not have the context to judge what happened. >> and one more all the way back. thank you for bringing out that mike. >> i was just going to say many of them would be business owners, i would assume. with a little bias toward what that meant when someone was stealing from them. >> that could very well be. not easy for a woman -- one more. i always say one more and i just -- i'm not trust worthy. but we have one more, just one more. >> some of the bias could have been if the man steals he is doing it to feed his family but a woman would only steal if they are a bad person. >> all kinds of things could enter into the thinking. a woman could not get a jury of her peers if you think gender has anything to do with a peer.

there are women activists who begin to open up jury service to women in the 1920s but this, too, was a really long struggle. by the time we get to world war ii, 1942, 28 states had opened jury service to women. 28 states. and even in those states you could say, i don't -- i exempt myself on the basis of gender. i'm a woman. i don't have time for this, right? it wasn't until 1973 that jury service was open to women in all states. so when you get that dreaded letter in the mail that says go -- you're called to jury service -- praise -- our ancestors because that is a really important service that we provide each other and women struggled hard to get -- to create the possibility of women having a jury of their peers.

and that has been a long, long struggle. another of course this is no surprise to anybody because it continues to be a struggle for us now. another aspect of democratic citizenship that women have had a hard time cracking is of course elect rall office. breaking into electoral office. even now something like 20% of the u.s. congress is female. 20%. pathetic. but women started you know, in fact women were running for office in the 19th century before they had the vote trying to run for office and certainly -- sorry. women who made it into office before the 19th amendment. the first to serve in the u.s. congress was jeanette rankin from montana. they franchised women in 1914.

she is elected in 1916 and begins to serve in 1917. she is against wilson's war resolution. she was a pacifist. she is back in congress in the early 1940s when roosevelt went -- after the bombing of pearl harbor, she's the only vote in the congress against the u.s. going to war against japan. i mean, she really meant she was a pacifist. and she is a really important player in getting the women's suffrage amendment through congress. she was a great suffrage activist in the west in the 1910s. she's the first woman to serve in congress. she is serving in the late teens and then there is some progress but it's so pitiful because four women served in 1921. in that session, 1921 to 1923, four women in the u.s. congress and they have inched up to nine

by 1929. it's a really slow go. there's not really a huge bump. there's an increase in the numbers but not a big bump until the 1990s. 1993 the year that gives a big bump to women's representation in congress. giving us a big bump up to 20% in 2017. women had better luck in state legislatures and local elections. you can see here, of course, these numbers are -- i should have put up i don't know the numbers of state legislators in the 1920s, but it's thousands. this is not very many compared to the thousands of seats there were. but there is substantial progress over the course of the 1920s and it levels off in the late 1920s. but by 1929 there are 38 states with at least one woman in their

state legislature. and yeah, we'll talk more about that in a second. i thought i would give you a couple examples of women who ran for or achieved national office in the 1920s to get a sense of who they might have been and who they were. one very well known at the time woman who ran for the u.s. congress from new mexico in 1922 was adelina otero-warren. she ran for the u.s. congress in 1922. she does not win. she is from a very prominent new mexico political family. and she -- she was a very avid suffragist. new mexico is the only western state that did not enfranchise women before the 19th amendment. she is a great advocate of women's suffrage. she was first appointed and

elected to the position of superintendent of schools in santa fe in the teens and continues in that position for a while. in 1922 she runs for u.s. congress and is having a fantastic run for that congressional seat when a relative of hers revealed that she was not the widow that she claimed to be but was divorced. and that just tanked her -- yeah, bum toons. should have come out with that right off the bat. so her campaign tanked thereafter. but she had had a very good run. she remained very prominent in new mexico politics and in the 1930s she was the state director of a civilian conservation corps and latinas in new mexico did very well. latinas elected to the new mexicoen state legislature. there are two in 1930.

some of the early latina success stories are in new mexico. in 1922, a latina is elected to secretary of state in new mexico. a successful bid for national office was made by ruth hanna mccormick. she was from two political families. she is marcus hanna's daughter. he was a campaign designer and activist as well as politician. and she grew up at her dad's knee. she learned politics as a child and was devoted to it. and she married into the mccormick family in chicago. she is married to mcdill mccormick. she was involved in sufficierag

chicago in the 20'20s. she went to the u.s. congress in 1929 and is there until '31. she only served one term because she was more ambitious than the u.s. congress. she wanted to be a governor or a senator. a senate seat was open so she ran from senator in 1930 and did not win the senate seat. she was the republican nominee in illinois for the u.s. senate. and there was a lot of excitement. you can imagine, among women, both black and white in illinois. she had a lot of support from the women's community but she didn't quite make it. again, she stays in politics for a long time but never back into the u.s. congress. very different story here. huge success. how many of you know mary teresa

norton? no. we're going to spread the world. when you leave here. when you are at the bus stop, say what about mary norton. let get the word out about mary teresa norton. her story is a fantastic story. mary norton did not go to college, unlike nina and ruth hanna mccormick. she go to new york and becomes a secretary and marries. she has a son around 1909-ish. he dies at one week. she's grief-stricken and the way she responds to her grief over this lost child is to begin to work at a day nursery in jersey city. and she's really good at it and she becomes secretary at the day nursery and then the president at the day nursery and a major

fundraiser for the day nursery. as the fundraiser she gets to know everybody in jersey city and the surrounding county and one of those people is the democratic political boss and mayor of jersey city, frank hague. when the 19th amendment was ratified. new jersey had not enfranchised women. frank hague goes to mary norton and says i want you to organize women for the democratic party and she said i wasn't a sufficie suffragist and i don't know about politics. he says no women do. so she goes to organize democratic women in the early 20s and thereafter and she is really good at it. so good at it that hague puts her up for the u.s. congress in 1924. an election in 1924. and she wins. she goes to congress. she runs again the next time and

landslide victory over 80% of the vote and she stays in the u.s. congress until 1951. she's a hugely important new dealer in the 1930s and in fact, i know this is theying a little bit. in 1938 she takes over the labor committee of the u.s. congress. and she is the person in the u.s. house who gets through the house the fair labor standards act which is the first time that the u.s. set a national mum minimum wage and anti-child labor law. she gets it through congress. she did not have a college degree. she was not an activist in a thousand organizations. she was not a suffragist. but she was a great politician. a really great politician. one of the things that you will see, these women involved in national politics, the ones who

are successful, one of the things they have in common is they are white. women who are successful at the national level are white. women of color have more luck in state and not so much in national elections. black women become important players in the early '20s in the republican party. the overwhelming majority of black political activists in the 1920s are republicans through and through. it's the party of lincoln. and democrats of course in the south are people who have been involved in creating jim crow laws and disfranchising african-american men. so black voters in the north are pretty solidly in the republican camp. and so after the suffrage amendment passes the national republican committee asked certain black women leaders to organize black women from the

national perspective in the upcoming elections. so there are black women involved in the elections from 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926. and one of the first women called on by the national republican committee was hailey quinn brown who had been an activist for over a decade by this point. she was the president of the national association of colored women which is the most important visible national organization of women in the 1910s and 20s. she worked hard for the republicans in the 1920s in particular. and she turned the nacw into a republican committee itself. she used the publications of the nacw on behalf of republican candidates across the country

and was a great organizer. and eventually the republican party created black women's organization at the national level. and nanny helen boroughs ago over that. she had been active in the nacw and prominent in the women's convention of the black baptist church. she had created in d.c. a social settlement. she had founded a school to professionalize domestic service and she was a great feminist, very critical of any man who seemed to have sold out the race by not voting or voting the wrong way. so she becomes an activist in the republican party especially in the 1920s even though of course women in d.c. did not have -- did not have voting rights. but she is traveling across the

country on behalf of the republican party. an outlier here is alice dunbar nelson who was a poet born in louisiana and raised in brooklyn. she wound up in delaware in the early 1920s and in 1920 she is a major republican activist. she was a member of the delaware republican committee, the state committee, very few african-american women were on those state committees. but she was appointed to the delaware state republican committee in 1920s. she served and worked hard for republicans. in 1922, the republicans had a chance as african-american women saw it, they had a chance to pass an anti-lynching bill in the u.s. congress and they blew it. they blew it according to the view of many african-americans

especially african-american women. and alice dunbar nelson was so mad about that she went over to the democrats. she said the republicans can't do better than that then we're leaving them be and she left and became the organizer of african-american women for the democratic party which had its headquarters in new york. and more and more across the 1920s, african-americans in cities in the north began to reconsider. they claimed that democrats in the north were not the same as democrats in the south. and given the disappointment that republicans had been, maybe it made sense to go to the democrats. hardly anyone went with her in the 1920s themselves in the decade of the 1920s itself. it's not until the second election of franklin roosevelt that massive numbers of african-americans moved to the democratic party.

she a harbinger of things to come. i thought it would be good if we read together one of her poems. she was married to paul dunbar. but she was, herself, an important poet. i thought you might want to stand up. this is our halftime break. you might want to stand up and jiggle around and get your blood going and you might want to switch seats or something. and i just thought we could read together this poem she published in 1920. it is set in wartime. so it's called "i sit and sew." i sit and sew, a useless task it seems. my hands grow tired. my head weighed down with dreams. the pan polyof war the martial

tread of men gazing beyond the ken offess lesser souls whose eyes have not seen death nor learned to hold their lives as but a breath but i must sit and sew. i sit and sew. my heart aches with desire. that pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire on wasted fields and writhing grotesque things one men. my soul in pity flings a peeling cries, yearning only to go there in that holocaust of hell those fields of woe but i must sit and sew. the little useless seam, the idle patch. why dream i here beneath my homely thatch when there they lie inned soen mud and rain pitfully calling me the quick ones and the slain. you need me, christ, it is no

rosie dream that gets me this pretty feudal seam it sfiefls me. god must i sit and sew. that is awesome. thank you. 1920s published. you can see there, having just seen the wonder woman movie this weekend there is a continuity here that is very powerful. the longing to be on the battlefield. but one of the things that we see in that alice dunbar nelson poem is again it's a representation of such an emblematic representation of the change in the gender system. right? in the earlier 20th century what so many women were doing because isoand my domestic commitments i ought to be in public life. it's because i have care of

children and i'm nurturing and healing i thought to be in public life i have something to bring there that men don't have. but she is trivializing it. she says this does not count and she would rather be on the battlefield than in her home. this is a very different kind of claim from political women than we have seen in the main before the 1920s and there it is. all right. i want to shift gears very -- a little bit. to talk about some of the most important legislation and sort of causes that women fought for in the 1920s. but first i want to say a word about organizational changes that occurred around 1920 around the time of the amendment. first the national american women's suffrage association which had been the largest of the suffrage organizations

transformed into the league of women voters in 1920. an organization with which you are familiar. and the league of women voters and a slew of other national women's organizations joined together to form the women's joint congressional committee in 1920 and that was an umbrella organization that was the lobbying arm of progressive women's organizations. and one of the first things that they went after was women's independence -- the lack of independence citizenship for married women. that is before 1922, before 1922, if an american woman married a nonamerican man, she lost her american citizenship. so if you married a brit, you lost your american citizenship because you had married out of it. and married women could not on their own naturalize.

so that was an offense, of course to many american women. and they succeeded in getting the cable act passed in 1922. and what that allowed was that any married woman who came to the u.s. could naturalize herself whether her husband naturalized or not. and any american woman who married a foreigner did not automatically lose her american citizenship. with one exception. if an american woman married a man who was not eligible to naturalization, then she also lost her citizenship. which meant that any american woman who married an asian immigrant man lost her citizenship still even after 1922. and that would not change until the early 1930s. that's going to be a long struggle. one of the first things that progressive women went for was the assurance of independent citizenship for married women.

another one, even more popular kind of legislation that this group went for, going to flip through all my notes here. was a legislation that was aimed at diminishing maternal and infant mortality. this was the sheppard towner maternity and infancy act of 1921. i'm going over here to point. i can't used to having this wonderful thing. this legislation was drafted by julia lathrop who was the chief of the children's bureau created in 1912 at the urging of jane adams and florence kelly and the hoards of women who followed them. and so 1912 the children's bureau is created in the federal department of labor and the

activists convinced william howard taft, to appoint a woman the head. he appointed julia lathrop who had lived at hull house in chicago. many of you know about that settlement. a friend of jane adams and involved in progressive campaigns in illinois. she came to washington in 1912 and headed up the children's bureau and had many interests but one was maternal and infant mortality. she had a slew of studies down and discovered that the u.s. had some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. which it still does and she crafted a range of responses to that, one of which became the

sheppard-towner maternal and infancy act. they could hire public health nurses and go door to door and find pregnant women and women who had infants and examine them and teach them to take good care of themselves or their children. and sometimes they had clinics so at a county seat in a church or in a community building or in a school the public health nurses would set up clinic and publicize through churches and synagogues, they would be set up on saturday morning and pregnant women could come and bring their children and be examined and get a health education with the help of the public health nurse. so this comes before congress right after the suffrage amendment. the suffrage amendment is ratified in august of 1920.

there's a presidential election in the fall. most of the guys in congress believed there hadn't been time between august and november for all women to get registered to vote. and so they couldn't tell what the '20 election meant. so even after that election they claimed that they feared that women would vote as a bloc that like all women had the same political commitment and ideas and vote as a bloc. and lathrop played on that. she had the women's joint congressional committee. she was a great organizer. she had women all over the country hounding their representatives. and saying, please pass this, please pass this, the health of the country depends on this. and sure enough it passes with a lot of guys saying, you know i never would have voted for that thing. but, every woman in my state was

riding me and i would be voted out of office on my butt. they're all saying i didn't mean to vote for it but i felt like i had to. it passes under the threat of this women's voting bloc. and what that suggested very briefly the power of progressive women to get legislation through congress because of the fears of this women's bloc created by the passage of the 19th amendment. in the 1920s where the act was implemented, maternal and infancy mortality rates declined. it seems possible that the legislation meant the world. after the 1924 election it was clear that women were voting the way the men in their families voted and that women were divided. there were women who wanted public health nurses and people who didn't want them and congress got wise to the

divisions among women voters and by 1929, they had exed out this money for the act. but a version of it is revived in the social security act of 1935. and certainly the act employed enormous numbers of women as public health nurses and aides and administrators in the states. another indicator of the fear of congress, of this women's bloc was passage of the child labor amendment to the constitution in 1924. it's before the '24 election. lathrop was just sick about the favorable of national anti-child labor laws they had been ruled unconstitutional. then she said we're going to have to amend the constitution to say that congress can legislate in this area. in 1924 she gets the -- an

amendment through congress that then does not -- is never ratified by the states. never did find the 3/4 of the states necessary to amend the constitution but the fact she got it through congress is another indicator of the fears created in congressional hearts by this women's bloc that didn't, of course, exist, that didn't in the end exist. african northe african-american women were involved in getting the maternity and infancy act funds across the hunt can. they are active on behalf of child labor laws in their states. they had a lot of legislative goals in common with white women. but they also had goals that were peculiar to african-american women that had to do with racial justice and those two came to the national

scene in the early 1920s. limpbling was one of the major concerns of african-americans in the early 20th century and the most important anti-lynching crusader was ida wells. beginning when she was a young journalist in memphis, ida wells began publishing pamphlets that tallied the numbers of lynchings each year across the united states mostly in the south but not exclusively in the south for sure. and she exposed the lie that white southerners told to justi justify lynching which is usually a black man had raped a white woman. that was the excuse given by white lynchers. and she showed by a study of white numbers. using the white press she shows

hundreds of lynchings she is documenting if you look at the local paper, rape is not even the excuse there. that is a cover. that is instructly a cover. so she is run out of memphis on a rail. and she becomes an international activist against lynching. she wound up in chicago in the mid 1890s and married ferdinand barnett, a lawyer in chicago and continues her anti-lynching crusade for the rest of her life. but she also became a founder of a social settlement in chicago. she was a very avid suffragist. she is important to winning of suffrage in 1913 in illinois and became an activist in the republican party and going to run for office in the late 1920s. she is just everywhere on behalf of racial and social justice from the 1890s on.

and it looked like -- as i said, the republican party is the party of most african-americans in the early 1920s. in 1920 the presidential election returned a republican president and a much more republican congress. it looked like to african-american voters this is our moment. they started agitating for the dire anti-lynching bill. they lobbied so hard against the segregation of the federal government. you may know in washington, the federal government was more segregated in the 1910s and african-americans are pushing back against that. also, many african-americans are pushing congress please to implement the 14th amendment. the 14 amendment, as you know said that any state that disfranchised adult men for any reason other than rebellion or a

crime should have its representation in congress by the proportion they were reducing the electorate. that had never been enforced. so there is a push to enforce the 14th amendment. in the early '20s it looks like the anti-lynching act is going to pass. so often local law enforcement officers were part of lynching crowds. and so, ida wells barnett is an important leader in this -- on behalf of the anti-lynching bill. mary ta ma mary talbert organized a group. the anti-lynching bill gets into the senate. there is lobbying until you

can't see straight. the democrats threaten to filibuster and the republicans drop it. it's at that point that alice dunbar nelson says i'm going to become a democrat. but few followed her at that moment. it was a crushing defeat for african-american women and men who worked so hard and had so much hope in the early 1920s that maybe the bill would finally pass. it is perhaps not a surprise, given everything else that we have been talking about that the ku klux klan was visible in the 1920s. there were parades in d.c. and around the country. they had chapters in virtually every state and was powerful in indiana and colorado. had people elected to local offices from the klan. women were active in the klan in the 1920s. and one of the interesting things about the activism of women in the klan in the 1920s

is that although they are pressing an anticatholic, anti-semitic, anti-black racist agenda, they are all for the equality of white women and white men. so that the women who are active in the 1920s are working women. very solid minority were and there are women who are physicians, stenographers, small business owners. they cover the range of women workers. they are very important in organizing boycotts against businesses owned by jews or catholics. they are trying to destroy those businesses in their communities. they start whispering campaigns against candidates for office against parties they don't prefer. often we have a picture of what anybody male or female in the

klan is like. but one of the big important leaders, daisy barr. daisy douglas barr was a quaker preacher. one of the most important leaders in the klan in the 1920s. this group is not what one expects. and so, there's an enormous racial conflict in the 1920s. the klan is going to tank because of corruption in the late 1920s but it will rise again later. i think i'm going to do pretty well with my time here. the final issue i want to talk about. bless your hearts. is the equal rights amendment. i think many of us in this room associate it with the late 1960s and 1970s. it did pass through the congress in 1972. so it's a good reason to

associate that amendment that suggested amendment to the constitution with the 1960s and '70s but in fact it was penned in 1923 by alice paul who was the founder and -- oh, look. doing it again. this is alice paul the founder and leader of the national women's party, who after the suffrage amendment was won, wanted to guarantee that in the law -- that laws could not treat men and women differently. it was supposed to achieve that goal and make it impossible for laws to treat men and women differently. it would have not permitted law to treat men and women differently. the overwhelming majority of women activists in the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s and early '60s

adamantly opposed the e.r.a. most of the women we would consider feminists today opposed the e.r.a. and for extremely good reason. they thought and they were right, that it would undermine protective labor legislation for women workers. in the late 19th century and early 20th century, activists in the labor movement and their middle class and elite allies worked like demons to set limits on the hours that women had to work. that gave minimum wages to women. so it's hard for them to gain power through collective bargaining. law was more important to women workers than to many men because the labor movement was so reluctant to organize women workers. so a whole generation of

working-class women and their middle class and elite allies had worked to get state laws that set minimum wages and maximum hours and required employers to give women a ten-minute break every four or five hours. some got an actual lunch break because of protective labor legislation. those laws had come hard. they were not extended to men. many of you will know that the supreme court decided that most could not be extended to men because it was a violation of the freedom of contract law but because women were so much more vulnerable than men they could be extended to women and they were. loads of -- wage earning women benefitted from those laws. and if the equal rights amendment had been passed it would have hurt many more women than it would have helped in the

1920s, '30s, and '40s. that seems really clear. the e.r.a. when it was context confers meaning. this is one of the places you see that so clearly. so -- legislative move, a legal move that probably most people in this room think is a progressive move was not a progressive move in the 1920s. it was considered class-based legislation that would benefit privileged women at the expense of wage earning women and it would have. it would have. it would have hurt more women than it would have helped. and further evidence that the e.r.a. was more conservative than progressive. the republican party is the first to support the e.r.a. because is it pro-business. it would have allowed business

owners to exploit women as much as they exploited men. equal exploitation. great. the republicans, not the democrats are the first. the pro working class party by the 1930s. the democrats see it as an attack on the working class. the republicans say let's go for it. it frees businessmen. so context is everything. you know, nothing is meaningful in itself. what confers meaning is the context in which something exists. and the e.r.a. is an example of that claim. in 1938, of course, we're in the midst of roosevelt's second term. most new deal legislation has passed. in 1938, francis perkins who was the secretary of labor with the help of mary norton who you will

be talking to everybody about at the bus stop after we finish. they get through the fair labor standards act which set a maximum hours law for men and women and the supreme court okayed it. you may think once you have protective labor legislation going to men and women why would you not support the e.r.a. at that point? and that is because no women were helped by the fair labor standards act. it went to under half of women wage earners. many men were covered than women by the fair labor standards act. in loads of states, women workers needed those protective labor laws they had gotten in previous decades. it wasn't until the 1960s and title 7 of the civil rights act

that it began to make sense that the e.r.a. looked like a good strategy for wage earning women and then they came to support the e.r.a. so huge changes there. topics for further lectures, i would say. i would say there. so in sum, we are -- we are at in sum. the 19th amendment represented the existing political power of women. millions of women had the vote before the 19th amendment. it was an important step in the creation of the modern gender system which claimed that men and women were more alike than the victorian system believed them to be. it did not enfranchise all american women. still millions of women were excluded from the polls even

after 1920. it left many aspects of citizenship untouched as for instance, jury service, election to office and many other aspects of citizenship we have not had time to go into. it helped to expand the scope of the federal government itself. that is when -- one thing i do not think i said when i mentioned the maternity and infancy act. it was the first piece of federal social welfare legislation. it expanded the purview of the federal government. it just didn't seem like this is where the federal government ought to be involved. there was not a precedent for that. and so, women's vote and the fear of women volting as a bloc helped to expand the scope of the federal government and i don't think i put this on there. oh, yeah. but i think we would also want to say it laid the ground work, the passage of the 19th

amendment introduced the equal rights amendment which would continue to be controversial for women and men well into the 1980s. the end. [ applause ] the end. [ applause ] great. so if you're not too exhausted we do have time for questions and answers. i was supposed to get through by 8:15. that really worked. okay. [ inaudible question ] chart that showed of the united states, where did you get that from? >> the map? absolutely. that map is online at the center for american women and politics. rutger's university. i think you can find it by typing in teach a girl to lead.

teach a girl to lead. and that is a fantastic website for all kinds of information about women in politics. you bet. >> [ inaudible question ]. >> the question was woodrow wilson conflicted on the issue of women's suffrage. he was. he really wanted it to be left up to the states. he didn't think it should be a federal issue and he said that for ages. but he finally got backed into a corner and finally urged congress to pass the amendment. >> suffragette leaders in a federal prison in d.c.? >> i think i mentioned earlier that one of the things i don't like about the way that suffrage history is often taught it makes it seem like the suffrage movement was in the 1910s and all about alice paul and the women who chained themselves to the white house fence and went

after wilson and who were horrifically force fed at the prison. and out at the prison, there is a new museum that's going to open fairly soon, i think, and it will feature some of the history of the suffragettes who were force fed there. it's horrific. but that is not the whole story and there would not have been an amendment if it was only the national women's party in d.c. yes? >> historians don't work on the relationship between frontier america and the women's vote. the map is so dramatic. >> the question has to do with why the west? why the west enfranchises women so early and so many places in the east do not? there are enormous and numerous studies trying to explain that. and there are lots of explanations out there. i think the most compelling is

that the political structure, the infrastructure of politics in the east is so well established that it can withstand any challenge to it. in the west, those -- that infrastructure is still new, right? look at wyoming, it had none. and it is getting smashed with these demands. in the west, the political structures were less firm and controlled. you don't have generations of families who had always been in control of these institutions. you didn't have loads of money behind the institutions in the way way you have the money in the institutions in the east. they are permeable and weaker. and the weaker institutions can be challenged and defeated. i would say that's the most important -- the most compelling explanation in my view. but there are plenty of others we can talk about after if you'd

like. you first and then the woman behind you. >> in the handout on important organizations agencies, i'm curious why you didn't mention the women's bureau which i just retired from in january after -- >> thank you so much. >> serving there since 1974 and the first publication i was responsible for finishing there was a publication on the impact of title 7 of the civil rights act which showed, you know, some states repealed them. and some states extended those that conferred benefits such as meal periods, rest periods to men. but of course not every state had meal period and rest period laws. >> right. the reason i didn't mention the women's bureau is because i didn't have a place to put it into the story of the 1920s so

clearly. although if i had more time and could have talked longer about the e.r.a. i would have talked about the e.r.a. it's crucial from the beginning. the women's bureau was also in the federal department of labor and created during the war. it's called the women and -- the women in industry service and in 1920 it becomes a permanent bureau in the federal department of labor and continues to be an important advocate of wage-earning women. it is crucial in the fight against the e.r.a., actually in the early going. in i should add that the huffington post just posted something about what the proposal is in the president's budget in the women's bureau which is to reduce it from $11 million to $2 million.

>> that's $2. >> to do away with ten regional offices and to leave only 15 people in the national office. >> wow. wow. >> and the huffington post has a link to a letter that's being drafted and signed on to, to raise you know -- this as an issue. >> thank you for that. really appreciate that. and thank you for your service too. and the woman right behind her? >> my question, were there the equivalent of literacy tests for white women after the 19th amendment? jim crow type of laws directed towards white women? >> in the south, white women were subject to the same literacy laws. white women had to go in and face those tests. it's just that they had white registrars who were on their

side on the other side of the counter. and so, they were more likely to be enfranchised than african-american women not because they had a higher literacy rate but because they had an advocate on the other side of the counter. and there are women in puerto rico who in 1929 it's only literal women get to vote and that's the kate until 1935. >> in other states? >> no literacy tests there. one more over here. >> on the liberality of the western states i would suggest to check the census records. you may find many of the western states had a predominance of single men who needed single woman and if you had suffrage, that you were more likely to attract the single women that the single men needed.

it was very practical. just as something called the harvey girls and many families in the west between chicago and l.a. have a harvey girl as one of their ancestors. >> i should have mentioned this, the guys in wyoming are famous for saying we have two women in wyoming in 1869. let's offer them suffrage. it's not clear that was a winning strategy, though. one of the things we want to keep in mind is that suffrage, women's suffrage, that campaign was not a campaign of women against women. it's those who support it versus those who opposed. it's not women versus men. so whether or not that was a winning strategy i'm not so sure but i know there were guys who had it in mind. absolutely. >> i have a question about the child labor laws.

you said they were declared unconstitutional. >> the federal one. >> and the ratification of -- it was never ratified. so how is it that it eventually passed? >> that fair labor standards act in 1938 not only set a minimum wage for workers in various occupations and made the 40-hour workweek the workweek for those who were not going to be paid overtime but it also abolished child labor in most industries. that was the first federal law that survived the supreme court. when the fair labor standards act, a lot of people thought there was no way it would survive the supreme court because other laws had not in each of those categories but the supreme court changed enough by the time the fair labor standards act came before it that it was permitted.

the constitution was never amounted to make that possible. it was a change in the supreme court itself. great question. and i just couple of things i wanted to encourage everybody to see and listen to the hello girls speaker. she is magnificent. and it's a discussion of women suffragette movement, the first world war, thousands of young american women going over, serving as nurses on the front during the spanish flu. and then, her talk is on the hundreds of women who i think -- a few hundred women who went over and served as telephone operators, connecting the lines between the french and the -- they were bilingual. they were connecting the french and american lines and they helped -- it's a -- she's a very good speaker. but my question is of course, knowing there are tens of thousands of women offering to

go overseas and going over seas, all the nurses going overseas, people working in the soup kitchens and such and such. what -- what -- how much of an um pact do you think that had on the nation in giving -- in our government in giving women the right to vote? >> there is a lot of contention over that. it's a fantastic question. it seems possible that moved some in congress to vote for the amendment but i don't think we have the work to show us that. what we definitely do have is this pattern of men in congress who have women in their states who are voting in presidential elections, shifting to vote for the amendment. that we've got. we know -- we know that women voting out in the states having been enfranchised with you know that makes a huge difference. we don't have the careful work it would take to see if men in

congress changed their votes on the suffrage amendment once women started doing that work in the war. it looks like maybe that could have had an impact but we don't have the work to show us that yet. i think that's a live question. a fantastic live question. yes? >> in the suffrage movement, among those who wanted suffrage to equalize the relations or more equalize the relationship between men and women and those who wanted to protect women? that they saw it as a means -- they didn't care whether it equalized the relationship, but it helped, for example, the laws that gave women breaks, it didn't apply to men, things like that. >> that's a fantastic question. in the early 20th century there

are loads of arguments for women's suffrage. the majority and the most powerful were arguments based on the difference between women and men. those were arguments that said because women are morally superior to men, because they don't -- they're sukse sexually. they are more neuroturing. they know about housekeeping and more and more because of the emergence of corporate capitalism the things that had been done in homes before and women had control over like the purity of the food and the milk they gave their kids. they had some control over that out on the farm you get into chicago and you got no control over any of that. your house is fillthy.

you can't get clean water and you have to buy milk and food from people you don't trust and whose products are contaminated and poisoning your family. and because of that, women need public power because they need to be able to say we need pure food and drug laws and better sanitation and cleaner air. it's because we have different obligations that we have got to have public power in this new context. that's the most powerful argument that was made. but there were loads of people who are arguing that women ought to be -- because women are rights bearing individuals like men they ought to have the power of the vote. they have to participate in self rule and that is an argue for women's equality, right? women are full human beings and ought to have the psalm rights. but there are people who argue wage earning women who argue

because the labor movement is not supporting us, the only way to get protection in the workplace, improve our wages and work conditions the only way is through legislation with the power of the vote. there is a very practical set of arguments there. and so those -- it's a whole range of arguments. african-american women argue on the basis of justice alone and maybe they can stop the disenfranchisement of african-american men and jim crow. probably the most common and most effective are based on women's difference from men. >> did julia lathrop and others --

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