>> watch on c-span and c-span.org. listen use the free c-span radio app. now a conversation on women's voting rights following the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. the discussion includes some of the challenges african-american and native american women faced. >> our speaker tonight is robert muncy. >> at the time she said that she was doing research on what happened after women got the vote. and i thought that sounds like a really interesting program.

it's clear from your response that you all do too. give a warm welcome to robin muncy. >> 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 got this. good. 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. tonight our job is to explore some of the meanings of the 19th amendment immediately in the aftermath 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 fruited were tasted. i want to lay out that some of these contexts, pause they'll help us understand the meanings. it will make crystal clear the meanings of the 19th amendment. they'll help us understand the parameters 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 focused 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 anti-immigrant and anti-radical campaign was the deportation of hundreds of people perceived to be radicals, including immigrants. they included women like emma goldman, who was a feminist who was voice was mighty loud in the 1910s, but was deported in 1918. the deportation of radicals is part of the explanation for the whacking off of people from the left in the 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. even like whitney, a patrician women in california who was a

member of the communist labor party and was arrested and tried under laws in the 1920s and kept fighting her case through the 1920s. 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 beism, that became accessible to women that it had not been accessible before. it was liberating and relieving to many women but it also came with a stigma and it went that many women began to rethink the loving relations that they had with other women, now that, hum, if sex can be a part of that, what's going on in that relationship of mine? and it also the emergence of

lesbianism also began to throw suspicion at times on women's friendships, women's organizations, institutions, colleges. a lot of foundations, actually, of women's advancement in the decades previous. so the changes in these ideas about womanhood and this neutrality of sex to women's identities, all of that required negotiating a whole new landscape for women in public life. it's going to require a whole new way of thinking and a way of accommodating these new ideas. in addition, in the 1920s, i'm almost to the end of this, 1920s broadcast radio emerges and it opened all kinds of opportunities for artists like betsy smith, people like earna phillips, who many of you think

will know her even though you think you don't, she began the late 1920s but she's going to become an incredibly unbelievably prolific and successful writer of radio soaps in the 1930s and '40s and she would make the transition to tv in the '50s and '60s. she was the creator of the guiding light. incredible. so i stray. i stray. i'm not supposed to do that. radio will become one of the important break thrus and new medium and women in politics are going to have to master in order to make their way in the politics of the 1920s and finally, i thought i would mention, this is the same moment when modernist painters are emerging and georgia o'keefe are coming into their own and

finding a following in american life. so the 19th amendment is a part of all of this change, a part of all of this upheaval and it was participating of course fully in the transformation of the dominant gender system in american life, because the 19th amendment was saying to americans that women were more like men in that they were now supposed to be participants in self-rule. they were supposed to be in polling places just like men. in the same way that the yip amputation of sexual desire to women suggested that women were more like men than the victorian system had imagined so did the 19th amendment but saying that women, like men, belonged in the polling place, belonged in politics, should practice self-rule. they're more like men than the victorian gender system had imagined. the 19th amendment is both an

indicator and a creator of the modern gender system, a change in the gender system. the first meaning that we want to ascribe to the 19th amendment is precisely that. one of the meanings of the 19th amendment was that a new gender system had arrived and it's going to help cement that system as the dominant system in american life in the 1920s. all right. we'll end there. we are back to the 19th amendment again. so another one of the crucial meanings of the 19th amendment, anybody who was here last year will have heard this part, i won't spend too long on this, i have to say it to make sure we're all on the same page. another thing that the 19th amendment represented was the existing political power of american women. that is one of the things that often gets lost in our discussions of the 19th

amendment and the way we shorthand ways that we talk about womens' voting, we lose track of the fact that before the 19th amendment ever passed, millions of american womens were already voting and, in fact, it is impossible to imagine that the 19th amendment could ever have passed the u.s. congress if millions of women had not already been voting, right? because it's -- you can just see that -- the first place that american women get to vote is in wyoming. it's a territory in 1869 and as it formed, it granted women full voting rights in wyoming and when it became a state it reiterated the political quality of men and women as voters in

wyoming. colorado fully enfranchised women to vote. women are already serving in the state legislature. the mormons and in idaho they franchised women by the type we get to the 1,900s we already have women voting in all the elections that there are. when with we get into the 1910s, we get -- by the time we get into the 1910s, millions and millions of women are exercising the vote. this i want to thank the center for american women and politics at rutgers university for this fantastic map. you can find it online. it's part of, teach a girl to lead campaign and this -- i love this map because it shows us when women got to vote in which states and what kind of vote

they got. i think you can see it pretty wide. i'll describe it just in case. what this shows us is who had to vote where before the 19th amendment passed, before it was ratified in 1920. so on all these peachy -- oh, wait. i love this so much. rebecca said i'm too easily pleased, but i just love that. i don't have one of these at school and i think that's so great. maybe i'll just be doing that now. over here this peachy colored states and new york is there, michigan, peachy but -- all those peachy colored states had fully enfranchised women before the 19th amendment. all of them. women are voting in every single election in those states. the gray states, the gray states like nebraska, illinois,

tennessee and vermont, i think it is, those gray states had enfranchised women in presidential elections and local elections, but not state level elections. we could talk about that later if you want to. i just love that. really hilarious stories having to do with that. the light blue had granted presidential sufferage to women before the 19th amendment and then -- these kind of purplish, not showing very well, the purplish states including massachusetts, connecticut, new jersey, mississippi, kentucky, those states had granted women voting only in school board elections. the great progressive state of massachusetts had granted women school board sufferage and then the darker blue, which also is

not showing too well, theds granted no sufferage at all, not even school board elections. millions of women are already voting before the 19th amendment and, in fact, if you look at -- the women's -- bless you -- women's sufferage amendment had been introduced into congress multiple times beginning in the 19th century and introduced constantly in the 20th century and we have the voting. we can tally the votes in congress for each of those introductions. and you just watch that as more women are enfranchised by their states, more and more men in congress are willing to vote for a federal amendment to the constitution that enfranchises women elsewhere. it is the political power of women -- existing political power of women that made possible and pushed the federal amendment that -- we -- this is so important because it helps us understand how political change

really happens, right? it's slow. it's piecemeal. it's grassroots. it's on the ground, in your neighborhood, in your state. the women sufferage campaign, the victorious campaign that brought us the amendment, did not happen in a few years in the 1910s here in washington. that's the way the story is often told but that doesn't begin to capture how that huge political change really happened, which is hard steady, patient work on the ground by grassroots activists across the country over generations. all right. so millions of women voted before the amendment. the amendment is the result of womens' existing political power. still millions of women -- i'm loving this -- millions of women were enfranchised by the 19th amendment. it didn't look like there was

any hope that massachusetts was going to enfranchise women beyond school board elections. they had to be pushed by the federal amendment. same thing for mississippi and of course no sign that north carolina and georgia were going to enfranchise women even in school board elections. millions of women were brought into a fuller democratic citizenship, no question by the 19th amendment. another one of the meanings of the 19th amendment was that it brought into a -- it changed the meaning of womanhood in those states. however, it is not the case that all american women voted after 1920 -- yes? >> [ inaudible ]. >> florida, i'm sorry. florida had granted some municipal sufferage, florida is green. florida is the only green state. florida had not giving women the vote in school board elections but it had given women the vote

in the in certain cities, chartered cities, is so there was partial vote in florida. 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 and we want to be sure that we're clear on all of that as well. so one group of women, citizens of the united states, puerto rican wip were made citizens in 1917 but the amendment said no state -- no state shall deny the vote on the basis of sex. it didn't say anything about territories and puerto rican and hawaii were territories and so when this oversight was understood and there is a very funny -- if it weren't so tragic it would be hilarious exchange on the floor of congress about this. i thought we meant to enfranchise women there, but no.

that didn't happen. immediately in 1920, the hawaiian legislature gave them the right to vote. women in puerto rican had to continue to fight for sufferage across the 1920s and even into the 1930s. my very favorite puerto rican sufferage was louisa cap ateo who declared herself a major labor activist and what i love the most is she's an anarchist. why does she care about sufferage? they hate the state. they want to get rid of the state. but while you got one, you want women voting in it. in 1920 was disappointed that that puerto rican women in puerto rico were not enfranchised and so several new organizations emerged to fight the battle for sufferage in puerto rico and in 1929, finally the territorial legislature

granted the vote to literate women. it was not until 1935 that all adult women in puerto rico were allowed to vote. to put them in this peculiar position -- so you're a puerto rican in puerto rico in 1925. you cannot vote. you're not a voter. if you move to new york you become a voter. it depends on where you are. it's not that your puerto rican that's the problem. it's that you're in puerto rico, a territory that has not franchised 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've put that on the slide, 1924, congress passed the snyder act, which made indians living in reservations citizens of the united states.

but even though indians living in reservations in the united states in 1924 became citizens, it didn't mean that all the states that had reservations extended the franchise to those citizens. so many states continued to disfranchise indians who lived on reservations even after 1924, and those states held out against the enfranchisement of native americans through the '20s, '30s and finally 1948 the supreme court issued a decision that no more of these sha nan begans, you each each state that extend the vote to indians living on reservations and even after 1948, several of the states, arizona, utah and new mexico took a long time, years, to expunk 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 administratored literalsy test which brings us to the largest group of american women, african-american in the south. many of you will know that in the early 20th century in particular, southern states began to dis franchise african-american men who had been voting in their states and serving in congress and serving in state legislatures and ruling ci cities begins with the mississippi constitution of 1890. southern states began to dis franchise, take the vote away from african-american men who had gained it after the civil war. and they were dis franchised by many means, one was the poll tax, of course because african-americans tended to

be -- to have a much harder time in the labor market so they tended to be poorer and had trouble getting up the money for poll taxes. they were unfairly administered literacy test, and make sure everybody's really clear on what they were. they were tests that didn't just ask you to read something, they had you -- you go in and the voter rej star who was white, i'd like you to read section 3, paragraph 2 of the mississippi constitution and you'd read that and now interpret that. what does that mean? and of course no matter what you said, the voter registrar has complete discretion to say maybe not. you'll have to come back another time or no problem, great, you couldn't read that to me, no problem. i'm signing you up right here. it's because of the unfairly administered literacy tests that african-american -- many african-americans were kept from voting and many illiterate white people were allowed to vote

because of the discretion of the voter registrar meant they could say fine, fine, fine to anyone they wanted to admit to the franchise as well as exclude people. of course, there were also economic reprisals threatened against african-american who tried to vote or who kept voting. land owners would threaten to throw families of off of their land or employers to fire people and of course there is also brute violence. lynching increased dramatically in the 1890s, goes down a little bit in the 20th century, has another spike in the 1920s and through those same means, poll taxes and fairly administered literacy test the threat of economic reprisal, african-american women were kept from voting just like african-american men were. that struggle, the struggle to get rid of poll taxes and to overcome those literacy test and to fight back, that struggle as

many of you know and some of you have lived through, right, that struggle went on into the 1960s, it was only in the 1960s -- i want to go back -- some of the most important activists in the struggle for voting rights in the south were women like fanny lieu who became an important player in the student on violent coordinating committee on 1960s and a founder of the mississippi democratic party. she's pictured here. when she was testifying before the 1964 democratic national convention, she was a -- representing the mississippi freedom democratic party and giving the evidence of racial discrimination on the part of the white democratic party in mississippi and she was one of the great activists in the struggle against the poll tax and literacy test and those --

those two ways of barring people from the polls were overcome. in 19 -- oh, shoot -- 1964, the amendment to the constitution was ratified by three quarters of the states and that it was an antipoll tax amendment so it made poll taxes unconstitutional in the united states, no longer could you ask -- could you require a tax for someone to vote and then of course the voting rights act of 1965 outlawed literacy test for voting and since federal registrars into the south to register voters in the south and the numbers of african-americans who were registered to vote sky rocketed within months of the passage of the voting rights act of 1965 which was also an enormous help to native american voters as well. all right. in addition, in the -- we're going back to the 1920s now,

asia 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, you were not eligible to naturalization. if you couldn't become a citizen, you couldn't vote. and so -- these bars on citizenship and by extension on voting changed piecemeal over the course of the 1940s and the 1950s. 1943 the chinese were -- became eligible for naturalization, 1943, china is a ally of the u.s. in world war ii and so the chinese were made eligible to naturalize. 1946, asian indians and filipinos were made eligible to naturalize. it was not until 1952 that the

japanese and other asian immigrants were made eligible for citizenship. until you were made eligible, of course, you were not eligible to vote either. asian immigrant women also were barred from the polls after 1920. those of you who are from the district of columbia will not want me to overlook the fact that the district was denied presidential participation in presidential politics elections until 1964. that d.c. did not have an elected local government between 1874 and 1974 and 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. so we have the situation in which, okay, that puerto rican woman in 1925, she's in puerto rico, she's not a voter, she moves to new york she becomes a voter. she comes to d.c., not a voter

again, right? 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 sufferage continues, right? this is not something that has ever -- it never got over and never ended. it's still going on. another problem with the way we often represent and talk about the 19th amendment, american women got to vote in 1920.

i've said that. as a teacher of u.s. history, i've said that. and it's so wrong. it misrepresents so much because millions of women the vote before hand, millions of women got it from the 19th amendment, but millions of women still didn't have it and there are women who don't have it now. this is an ongoing struggle. it is a piecemeal struggle that's gone on for generations and 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 aech men were excluded, african-american women in the north and in the 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

increasingly political power of african-american in the north and we'll talk more about that in just a bit. another thing that might be confusing is that any asian descendant woman whose born in the u.s. was eligible to the polls. it's only immigrant women who are not eligible to naturalization who were kept from the polls. i want to make sure that all of those distinctions are clear. all right. just because women -- because the constitution now said that you couldn't deny women to 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 one of those and i just laugh when i come to jury service because who wants to serve on a jury? right? whenever that thing comes in the mail and it says to you, you've got to appear this day, oh.

jury service is a crucial responsibility and privilege of citizenship and before the 1920s, women who were accused of crimes had to go before a juries that were all male. a court was a very male space. there's a lot of spitting. there's tobacco everywhere and spittoons. i don't want to be too prisy but yuck. they're very male spaces, so do you think that matters. let's just 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 there and all the lawyers are men, the judge is a man, does that matter? do you think that matters? if you think that matters, tell me wide. raise your hand and be brave say before our cspan cameras why? why does that matter?

>> it would be very intimidating for one thing. >> be very intimidating. fantastic. >> it's a patriarchal society that's going to work against you. >> fantastic. >> it's not a jury of one's peers. >> yeah. if you think that gender has something to do with creating a peer that means a woman couldn't get a jury of her peers before the 1920s and for a long time thereafter. i'll get one more answer. >> men and women still had fairly different gender roles, in many cases they wouldn't have the context to judge what happened. >> fantastic. and there's one more -- all the way back, thank you for bringing out that. >> i was just going to say that many of them would have been business owners, i would assume, with a little bias toward what that meant when someone was stealing from them. >> yeah. that could very well be. not easy for a woman to get --

one more. i always say one more and i just -- i'm not trust worthy. can we have one more? >> some of that bias could have been that if a man steals he's doing it to feed his family but why would a woman steal unless she's a bad person. >> there you go. there's all kinds of things that could enter into the thinking of those men. it doesn't seem that actually a woman could get a jury of her peers if you think gender has anything to do with getting her peers. but this too was a really long struggle. by the time we get to world war ii, something like 28 states had finally opened jury service to women, 28 states. and even in those states, you could say, i don't exempt myself solely on the basis of gender, i'm a woman. i don't have time for this.

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, you're called to jury service, praise our anses torz that is a really important service 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. all right. another this will be no surprise to anybody because this continues to be such a struggle for us now. another aspect of democratic citizenship that women have had a hard time cracking is, of course, electoral office, breaking into electoral office. even now as you will know, something like 20% of the u.s. congress is female.

20%. pathetic. but women started -- women were running for office or trying to run for office in the 19th century. women before they had to vote were trying to run for office and -- sorry -- women who made it into office before the 19th amendment, the first woman to serve in the u.s. congress was jeanette rankin, elected from montana, one of those western states that had enfranchised women early in 1914. she is electsed in 1916 and begins to serve in 1917. she is one of the votes against actually wilson's war resolution because she was a passivist. she's back in congress in 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. she really meant it when she said she was a pass ifist. she's a really important player

in getting the women sufferage amendment through the congress. she was a great sufferage activist in the west in the 1910s. she's the first woman to serve in congress. she's serving in the 19 -- late teens. there is some progress. it's like so pitiful because four women served in the u.s. congress in 1921. so in that session, 1921 to 1923, four women in congress, they have inched up to nine by 1929. it was a slow go. there's not a huge bump. it's an increase in the numbers but not a big bump in the 1990s. 1993, that year that gives a big bump to women's representation in congress. giving us a great big bump up to eventually 20% in 2017.

women had better luck in local legislatures. these numbers -- i should've put up i don't even know the numbers of state legislatures in the 1920s, so this is not very many compared to the thousands of seats that there were but you can see there is substantial progress over the course of the 1920s and it levels off and we get to the late 1920s but by 1929 there are 38 states that have at least one woman in their state legislature and -- we'll talk more about that in a second. i thought i would give you a couple of examples of women who ran for or achieved national office in the 1920s to get a sense of who they might have been. one very well-known at the time woman who ran for the u.s. congress from new mexico in 1922 was ad lynna warren.

she's the first latina to run for office. she does not win. she's from a very prominent new mexico political family and she was a very avid sufferagist, new mexico is the only western state that didn't enfranchise them before the 19th amendment. she's a great advocate of women sufferage. she was first appointed and then elected to the position of superintendent of schools in san santa fe and she continues and in 1922 she runs for congress. she 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 -- bummer. so her -- her campaign tanked thereafter but she had had a very good run. she remained very prominent in politics and in the 1930s she was the state director of civilian conservation corp. latinas elected to the new mexican state legislature, two women in 1930. so some of the early latina success stories are in new mexico. in 1922 there's a latina is elected the secretary of state in new mexico. a successful bid was made by ruth hannah mccormick. she was from two very prominent political families, one marcus hannah's daughter.

a very important republican campaign designer an activist as well as politician and she z-bru up at her dad's knee. she learned politics as a child. she married into the mckormic family in chicago. he's also a politician and she had a lot of money behind her. again, very active sufferagist. involved in progressive campaigns of all kinds in chicago in the 1910s, in the 20/20 '20s and she runs for u.s. congress in chicago and she wins. 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 a u.s. congress. she wanted to be governor. she ran for senator in 1930 and did not win the senate seat. she did win the primary. 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. a lot of support from the womens' community but she didn't quite make it and so she's then -- she stays in politics for a long time but is never back in to the u.s. congress. very different story here, huge success. how many you have know mary theresa norton? nobody. so we're going to spread the word. when you leave here, you're at the bus stop, what about old mary norton. let's get the word out about our mary norton. her story is just a fantastic story. mary norton did not go to college unlike nina and ruth. she's from a working class

family in jersey city. she goes to new york. she becomes a secretary. eventually marries. has a son around 1909ish let's say. he dies at one week. she's grief stricken and the way that 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 the secretary and then she becomes the president of the day nursery and she becomes the major fund raiser for the day nursery and as the fund raiser she gets to know pretty much 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 was also one of those states that 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

sufferagist, i don't know anything about politics. he said no women do. you just go get them, girl. so she goes and organizes democratic women in the early 1920s, and especially thereafter and she's really good at it. so good at it that hague puts her up for the u.s. congress in 1924, and she wins. she goes to congress, she runs again the next time, landslide victory. she has over 80% of the vote and she stays in the u.s. congress until 1951. 1951. she's a hugely important new dealer in the 1930s and, in fact, i know this is straying a little bit but 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 minimum wage, maximum hours and antichild labor laws. she's the one that gets it through congress, mary theresa norton. she did not have a college degree, she was not an activist in a thousand womens organizations she was not a sufferagist but she was a great politician. a really great politician. all right. one of the things that you will see these women involved in national politics, especially the ones who are successful, one of the things that they do have in common is that they're white, women who are successful at the national level are white. women of color have much more luck in state and local elections but not so much in national elections. black women are very, very active in national politics nonetheless. they become very important players still in the 1920s are republicans through and through.

it's the party of lincoln and democrats in the south or the people who have been involved in creating jim crow laws, and so black voters in the north are solidly in the republican camp and so after the sufferage amendment passes, the national republican committee asked certain black women leaders to organize black women from the national perspective in upcoming elections so there are black women involved in elections in 1920 from the national level in 1922, '24, '26. one of the first woman with called on by the national republican committee was halley quinn brown who had been an activist for decades by this point. she had been the president of the national association of colored women which was probably the most important and visible

national organization of african-american women in the 1910s and '20s. she worked really hard for the republicans in the early 1920s and particularly and she turned the nacw into a republican club, a republican committee itself. she used the publications of the nacw on behalf of republican candidates across the country and was a great organizer on behalf of the republican party and then, eventually the republican party created a black womens' organization at the national level and they nanny hillenboro took over that organization in the mid-1920s. many of you will know her. she's a d.c. iconic d.c. leader. she had been active in the nacw, she was very prominent in the womens' convention of the black baptist church. she had created here 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 soldout the race by not voting or voting the wrong way. so nanny becomes a major activist in the republican party especially in the 1920s, even though, of course, women in d.c. did not have voting rights. she's traveling across the country on behalf of the republican party. an outlier here is alice dunbar nelson who was a poet who was born in louisiana, raised in brooklyn. she wound up in delaware, actually, in the early 1920s and 1920 she's a major republican activist. fact 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 1920. she served, she worked hard for republicans but in 1922 and we'll talk more about this in just a bit, in 1922, the republicans had a chance as african-american women saw it, they had a chance to pass an antilynching 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 that she went over to the democrats. if the republicans can't do better than that 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 than across the 1920s, african-americans in cities in the north began to reconsider, because they claim

that democrats in the north were not the same as democrats in the south and maybe it was worth giving the disappointment that republicans had been for decades, maybe it made sense to go over to the democrats, but boy hardly anybody 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 african-american americans he moved into the democratic party. i thought it might be good since you're getting sick of hearing me talk at this point, i thought it might be good if we read together one of her poems. she was married to paul dunbar whose a famous poet but she was herself an important poet. i thought you might want to stand up. this can be our halftime break. stand up and jiggle around. get your blood going. and you might even want to switch seats or something. and i just thought we could read

together this poem that she published in 1920. you'll see it's set in wartime. she has in mind world war i. it's called, i sit and sew. together. i sit and sew a useless task it seems. my hands grow tired, my head weighed down with dreams. the of war, the marshal tread of men, grim faced, stern eyed, gazing beyond the ken of lesser souls whose eyes have not seen death nor learn to hold their lives but as a breath, but i'm sit and sew. i sit and sew. my heart aches with desire, that pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire on wasted fields and wriejing grow technical

things. my soul flings appealing cries yearning only to go there in that holocaust of hell, those fields of whoa, but i must sit and sew. the little useless seam, the idle patch, why dream i hear beneath my homely that much? when there they lie in sod and mud and rain, pitfully calling me the quick ones and the sling. you need me, christ, it is no rosy dream that beckens me. this pretty futile seam, it stifles me, god, must i sit and sew. thank you! that was incredible. you can see there -- having just seen the wonder woman" movie this weekend, there's a continuity here that's very

powerful, the longing to be on the battlefield. one of the things we see in that alice nelson poem is such a representation of such an -- the change in the gender system. in the earlier 20th century, what so many women activist were doing was saying because i sew, because of my domestic commitments, i ought to be in public life, it's precisely because i have care of children and i'm nurt you aring and healing that i ought to be in public life. alice dunbar nelson is rejecting domesticity here. 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 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 some organizational changes that occurred right around 1920, around the time of the amendment. first, the national american woman sufferage association which had been the largest of the sufferage organizations transformed itself into the league of women voters in 1920. an organization with which you are very family and the league of women voters and a slue of other national womens organizations joined together to form the women's joint congressional committee. it was an umbrella organization that was the will be bying arm of progressive women's organization. and one of the first things that they went after was women's --

the lack of independence citizenship for married women, that is before 1922, before 1922, if an american woman married a nonamerican man, a ma citizenship elsewhere, she lost her american citizenship. so if you married a brit, you lost your american citizenship. and married women could not on their own naturalize. so the cable -- so that was an offense of course to many. to many american women. and they succeeded in getting the cable act passed in 1922. and what the cable act 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 hordes 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, the president, to appoint a woman head of the children's bureau. he appointed julia lathrop who was by 1912 a long htime activi in progressive causes. she had lived at hull house in chicago who 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 whole 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 of course it still does. and she crafted a whole range of different responses to that. one of which became the sheppard-towner maternal and infancy act. what the maternal and infancy act did was that 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 either 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 a clinic and publicize through churches and synagogues, they would be set up on saturday morning in this particular place. and pregnant women could come and bring their children and be examine and get 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. i don't even believe in spending money on such things. but every woman in my state was riding me and i would be voted out of office on my butt. if i didn't vote for this thing. so they're all saying "i didn't mean to vote for it, but i just felt like i had to." so it passes under 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 maternal and infancy act was implemented, maternal and infancy mortality rates declined. we can't know if it's because of the legislation but it certainly seems possible that the legislation meant the world. after the 1924 election it was clear that women were voting pretty much the way the men in their families voted and that women were divided. there were progressive women. there were women who wanted public health nurses coming into their homes. there were people who didn't want public health nurses coming into their homes. congress got wise to the divisions among women voters and by 1929 they had exed out this money for the act. even though it was fully doing a lot of good. 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. and sure enough, in 1924, she gets an amendment through congress that then does not, is never ratified by the the states. never did find the three quarters of the states necessary to amendment the constitution. but the fact that 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-american women were involved in getting the maternity and infancy act funds

across the hunt can. across the country. they are active on behalf of anti-child labor laws, in fact in their states. protective labor legislation for women in their statings. so they did a lot -- 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, of course, with racial justice. and those two came to the national scene in the early 1920s. lynching was one of the major concerns of african-americans in the early 20th century and the most important most visible, most energetic anti-lynching crusader was ida wells. who became ida wells barnett. beginning when she was a young journalist in memphis, ida wells then 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 justify lynching which is usually that there had been a rape, a black man had raped a white woman, right, that was the excuse given so often by lynchers. and she showed by a study of white newspapers -- so she's using the white press. she shows that these hundreds of lynchings she is documenting, that if you look at the local paper, rape is not even the excuse there. that is a cover. that is strictly a cover. so she is run out of memphis on a rail. under threat against her life. and she becomes an international activist against lynching. she wound up eventually in chicago in the mid-1890s. she marries ferdinand barnett, a lawyer in chicago, and continues

her anti-lynching crusade for the rest of her life actually. 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 herself in the late 1920s. she is just everywhere on behalf of racial justice 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 under woodrow wilson in the 1910s and african-americans are pushing back against that. another hugely important issue for them. 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 reduced by the proportion they were reducing the electorate. right. but of course it had never been enforced. and so there is this huge push to enforce the 14th amendment by african-american women and other activists. 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 in the early 1920s. mary talbert organized a group called the anti-lynching crusaders in the 1920s. the anti-lynching bill gets through the house of representatives. it gets into the senate. there's 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 anti-lynching 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 powerful and visible in the 1920s. there were huge parades in d.c. and around 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. right. so that the women who are active in the klan in the 1920s are often working women. not a majority of them are working women but a very solid minority were. there are women who are physicians. they're stenographers.

small business owners. they just cover the whole range of women workers. they are very important in organizing boycotts against businesses owned by jews or businesses owned by catholics. they are trying to destroy those businesses in their communities. they start whispering campaigns against candidates for office against parties they don't from parties that 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. she's like one of the most important leaders in the klan in the 1920s. so it's not -- this group is not what one expects. and so, there's an enormous racial conflict in the 1920s. and women are on both sides of that conflict. the klan is going to tank in the late -- especially because of

corruption. tank in the late 1920s. but of course 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. so the equal rights amendment was supposed to achieve that goal. make it impossible for laws to treat men and women differently. now, of course, that still would have allowed employers and everybody else to have treated 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 workers had to work. that gave minimum wages to women workers who had such a hard time organizing. 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 they were on their feet. some workers in some industries 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 had decided that most protective labor legislation could not be extended to men because it was a violation of contract law, freedom of contract, but because women were so much more vulnerable than men according to the supreme court, these kinds of laws could be extended to women and they were. 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. right. here's one of the places where you see that so clearly. so a legislative move, a legal move, that probably most people in this room think is a progressive move, right, 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. and it would have, right. it would have hurt more women than it would have helped. in evidence, further evidence, of the fact that the e.r.a., when it was originated and for decades thereafter, in evidence of it's being more conservative than progressive. the republican party in the 1940s is the first party to support the e.r.a. it's because they consider it pro business. it would have allowed business owners to exploit women as much as they exploited men. right. equal exploitation. right, great. so the republican, not the democrat, 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 because 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 i think the e.r.a. is a fantastic 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 was interpreted in the ways that it was interpreted that it began to make sense that the e.r.a. looked like a good strategy for wage earning women and of course wage earning women then came to support the e.r.a. the labor movement comes to support it in the early 1970s. 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. is unimaginable without those voters out in the states, especially in the west. 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 had imagined them to be. it did admit millions of women to fuller democratic citizenship because they wouldn't have been enfranchised without it. 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's one of the reasons that the guys in congress were so reluctant to pass it. 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 voting 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, it helped introduce into american political culture the equal rights amendment, which would continue to be a controversial issue 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. and i think you can probably find it by saying -- 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. yes, i would say he was. he really wanted it to be left up to the states. he did not want to have -- take responsibility for it. he didn't think it should be a federal issue and he said that for ages. but he finally got backed into a

corner during world war i and finally urged congress to pass the amendment. >> suffragette leaders in a federal prison in d.c.? >> yes, that's alice paul. so i think i mentioned earlier that one of the things i don't like about the way that suffrage history is often taught is that it makes it seem like the whole suffrage movement was in the 1910s and all about alice paul and the national women's party 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, by the way, out at alqapon, there's a new museum that's going to open fairly soon 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 had only been the national women's party here in d.c. yes, thank you. all right, yes.

>> historians don't work on the relationship between frontier america and the women's vote. the map is so dramatic. >> yes, there's a lot. the question is, why the west? right. why is it the west that 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. >> 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 the funding from $11 million to $2 million. >> that's $2. >> two point some million dollars. >> okay, yeah. >> 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. >> not massachusetts, for instance?

>> no, no literacy test there. good. one more over here, then we'll move to this side. >> okay, on the more 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 get a few more. let's offer them suffrage. it wasn't clear that was a winning strategy though. i mean, because one of the

things we want to keep in mind is that, you know, suffrage, women's suffrage, that campaign, was not a campaign of women against women. it's women and men who support women's suffrage against women and men who oppose it. it's not women versus men. that is not the history. it's not the history of this. 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 a couple of things that 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 overseas, 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 sexually pure. they ought to have public power, right. that is a very powerful argument. that women are more nurturing than men.

they are cooperative by nat under. that they know a thing or two 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 filthy. 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, many people argued, women need public power because they need to be able to say we need pure food and drug laws and we need better sanitation. we need cleaner air. it's because we are responsible for our families. we do have different obligations from men's obligations that we have got to have public power in this new context.

that's probably the most powerful, the most widespread kind of argument that was made. but of course there were loads of other ones. 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 same rights. but there are people who argue especially in the labor movement, 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.

if they get some kind of political power. so there are a whole slew of arguments. probably the most common and probably the most effective in the early 20th century are ones based on women's difference from men. >> did julia lath rope and the others who advocated for children, did they bring in birth control issues into that argument and for that matter abortion? >> yes, great question. no, though avoided -- julia lathrop in the children's bureau publicly avoided issues of birth control like the plague because there was so much division over the issue. in the population. the population of women and of men. and certainly not a lot of support in congress. so she believed, and i'm sure she's right that it would have been difficult for the children's bureau to continue to get appropriations if it had come out on behalf of -- in favor of birth control publicly. but privately, she did write --

women flooded the children's bureau with letters. all kinds of very, very personal stories told in that, in those letter, incredibly moving to read through some of those letters. women will ask, how do i stop having all these babies? sometimes she would send information about how to get a hold of a particular nurse or particular doctor or what would become eventually planned parenthood to try to get help with that. she was strictly under the radar. too dangerous, too hot to touch, yeah. too hot to touch. yes. >> you're talking about women not getting full citizenship just because they got the right to vote. this one might be a little esoter esoteric. but i was really surprised to find out that the uk for example only started passing citizenship of children through mothers ten years ago.

so i'm curious when that would have happened for the u.s. if women weren't considered full citizens. could their children become mesh citizens by being born to an american mother? >> as long as you're born in the u.s., you're an american citizen. that was true regardless of the citizen shch your pare citizenship of your parents. if you were an american woman and you married a foreigner and you were living abroad when your child was born, then your child was not a citizen. if there is any child born in the u.s., we have birth right citizenship in the u.s. so it is still the case and it was then that if you're born in the u.s., you have citizenship. and that was true then and it's true now. >> okay. >> yes, thank you. yes, a question up here. >> when did it become necessary for people coming to the united

states to become naturalized citizens? >> there's been quite a long shifting process there. there's always been a process by which you became a citizen. sometimes it was very, very informal. very -- >> if you just got off boat, you were a u.s. citizen. >> right. >> so when did that change? >> some time in the late 19th century. >> okay. it's still very informal. it's different in different places, too. it's really codified in the 20th. it's a series of steps along the way in the early 20th century that begin to codify that nationally.

great question. have we done it? have we exhausted ourselves completely? thank you. tonight, american history tv on the salem witch trials. this year marks the 325th anniversary of those trials. salem state university took an in depth look into the history of salem and how those 1692 events continue to impact that massachusetts town today. you can see that tonight on american history tv. >> president trump travels to nevada later today. he'll address the national legions national convention in reno. president trump will return to the white house later today. >> that was so wonderful to have

the call-ins. that people can participate. if everybody can't make it to physically in washington, d.c., but to be able to view and participate with authors live while it's happening, i think that adds so much and it gives everybody that experience and they feel part of it. >> join book tv for the national book festival live from washington, d.c. saturday september 2nd on c-span 2. born in west africa, phillis wheatley was an 18th century boston slave. and the first african-american to have their poetry published. next, english professor barbara lewis of the university of massachusetts boston explores the life and work of phillis wheatley. the boston public library and boston literary district co-hosted this event.