books "bush world," and michael lewis will talk about his books including the latest. he has also written "the big short" and "the new new thing." join us at noon eastern on book tv on c-span 2. 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 faced. smithsonian associates hosted this event. >> our speaker tonight is robert muncy. she's also a professor of history. i think several of you heard her

speak about a year ago. 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. thanks for being here. [ applause ] >> 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 fruits 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. 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 klux klan. the klan, the first klan died out in the late 19th century. a new klan organized in the early 20th. it came into incredible prominence. and even electoral legitimacy in the 1920s. and women were both active in the klan and active in fighting the klan. and so we -- i'll talk about

that a little bit later. this ain't immigrant antiradical climate that was 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 thereafter. these are massive numbers of women who were involved in politics of anarchist sort. and the labor movement. whose voices will be silenced 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 white 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 in 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 migration 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 marcus 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 important 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 cooperative. 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. motherhood 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 reimagining 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 lesbianism, 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. it was the longest running show. incredible. so i stray. i stray. i'm not supposed to do that. radio will become one of the important break throughs 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 imputation of sexual desire to women suggested that women were more like men than the victorian system had imagined so did the

nineteenth amendment by 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth amendment is precisely that. one of the meanings of the nineteenth 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 nineteenth amendment again. so another one of the crucial meanings of the nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 equality 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 suffrage to women before the nineteenth 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 suffrage and then the darker blue, which also is not showing too well, they had granted no suffrage at all, not even school board elections. but look at that. i mean, millions of women are already voting before the nineteenth amendment and, in fact, if you look at -- the women's -- bless you -- women's suffrage 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 suffrage 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth amendment. another one of the meanings of the nineteenth 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 suffrage, florida is green. florida is the only green state. florida had not given women the vote in school board elections but it had given women the vote in the in certain cities, chartered cities, 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 nineteenth 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 women 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 suffrage across the 1920s and even into the 1930s. my very favorite puerto rican suffrage was louisa capateo who declared herself a major labor activist and what i love the most is she's an anarchist. why does she care about suffrage? 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 suffrage 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 shenanigans, 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 expunge 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 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 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 registrar 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 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 suffrage 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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth 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 african-american 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 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 prissy 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 ancestors 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 nineteenth 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 elected 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 passivist. she's a really important player in getting the women suffrage amendment through the congress. she was a great suffrage 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 adlina 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 suffragist, new mexico is the only western state that didn't enfranchise them before the nineteenth amendment. she's a great advocate of women suffrage. she was first appointed and then elected to the position of superintendent of schools in 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. should have come up with that right off the bat. 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. under fravg lynn roosevelt's new deal. 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 grew up at her dad's knee. she learned politics as a child. she married into the mccormick family in chicago. he's also a politician and she had a lot of money behind her. again, very active suffragist. involved in progressive campaigns of all kinds in chicago in the 1910s, in the '20s and she runs for u.s. congress in chicago and she wins.

she only served one term because she wanted to be governor or to be a senator. 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 even son around 1909 issue, he dies at one week. she's grief stricken and the way that she respond to her grief over this lost child is to began to work at a day nursery in jersey city, and she's really good at it. she becomes a secretary of the day nursery, then she becomes the president and a major fundraiser for the day nursery. and she begins to know everybody around the county. one of though people is the democratic political boss and major of jersey city, frank

hait. when the 19th century of ratified, new jersey was also one of the states that didn't ratify women. frank go goes and said i want you to organize women. she says i'm not in politics. she goes and organize women in the 1920s and thereafter and she's really good at it. so good at it that hague puts her up for u.s. congress in 1924, an election in 1924. and she wins, she goes to congress, runs again the next time, land slide victory. she gets over 80% of the vote and she stayings in the u.s. congress until 1951. she's a hugely important new dealer in the 1930s, in fact, 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 naj middle age, maximum hour and child labor laws right. she's the one that gets it through congress. mary teresa nor ton. she did not have a college degree or suffragist but she was a really great politician. all right. one of the thing that you'll see, these women involved in national politics, especially the ones worth successful, one of the things they do have in common is that their white, women who are successful at the national level are white. women of color has much more

option at the state level not the national level. black women are especially important in the 1920s and in the republican party. an overwhelming majority of black activists through the 1920s are the republicans through and through and the party of lincoln. and democratic of course in the south are the people whochb involved of creating jim crow laws and disenfranchising african-american men. so black voting in the north is solid in the republican camp. after the suffrage of the amendment passes, the national republican committee asked certain back women leaders to organize black women from the national perspective in the upcoming elections. there are black women involved in elections in 1920s. one of first women called on by

the national republican committee was halle quinn brown who had been an activist for decades, over a decade by this point. she had been the president of the national associate of colored women which is probably the most important visual national election of african-american women in the 1910 and '20s. she worked really hard for republicans in 1920s and she returned the nawc into a republican committee itself. she used the public case on the nacw on behalf of candidates around the country and was a great organizer on the behalf of the republican party. then the republican party created black women's organization at the national level. and nanny took over that organization in the mid-1920s.

she's a d.c. iconic, d.c. leader. she had been active in the nacw, prominent in the women's convention as the black activist church. probably as important as nacw. she created in d.c. a social settlement. she founded a school to proflz and a great citizen and critical of any man who seemed to have sold out the race but not voting or voting the wrong way. so, nanny hol ultimate berg becomes a very active politician in d.c. she's traveling on behalf of the republican party. and outlieier here is alice dunbar nelson who was a poe wet, who was born in louisiana,

raised in brooklyn. she wound up in delaware in the early 1920s. 1920 she's 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 1920 she served and worked hard for republicans. in 1922, we'll talk more about this in a bit. in 1922, republican women had a chance, as afternoon saw it, they had a chance to pans a lynching bill in the u.s. congress and they blew it according to the view of many african-american women. and allison nelson was so mad about that she wen over to the democrats. she said the republicans can't do better than that then we're leaving them be. she left and became the

organizer of african-american women for the democratic party which had its headquarters -- this group had its headquarters in new york. more and more 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 they view as worth given the disappointment republicans had been for decades that it made sense to go over to the democrats. but hardly nobody wen with her in the 1920 itself. it's not until the second election of franklin roosevelt that in massive numbers african-americans moved into the democratic party. she's a hard venue erg of things to come. i thought it might be good since your probably getting sick of hearing me talk at this point. i thought it may be good if we reading to cub of he poets.

i thought that you might even want to stand it. this will be kind of our halftime break. stand up, kind of 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 she established in 1920, it's subset in world war. it's called i sit and sei. i sit and sew a useless task it seems, my hands grow tired my head grow down with dreams. the panic of war, the massive face of men, whose eyes have not seen death nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath. but i sit and sew. i sit and sew.

my heart aches with desire that pageants terrible, that fiercely pouring fire on waisted feels and depriving grow test things one men. my soul and pity flings up hilling cries yes or noing only to go there in that holocaust of health. those fields of low. but i must sit and sew. the little useless seem, the idle patch. when there they lie and sod and mud and rain, pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain. you need me christ, it is no rosy yet dream, this pretty futile seem. it siefls me. god, must i sit and sew. that's totally awesome, yeah.

thank you. 1920s published. you can see there, having just seen the worn woman movie this weekend i think there is a continuity here that's very powerful at a wanting to be on the battlefield. one of the things we see in that allison bar nelson poem, it's such a representation of the change in the system. the earlier 20th century what so many women activist was doing were saying because i sew, because of my domestic commitments, i outstanding to be in public life. it's precisely because i have care of children and i'm nurturing, healing and all of that, that i outstanding to be in public life and i have something to bring there that men don't have. but she's rejecting it here, she

said this does not count and she says she's rather be on the battlefield than in her home. this is a very different kind of claim from political women we have seen 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 some organizational change that is occurred around 1920, around the time of the amendment. first the national american woman suffrage association which had been the largest of the suffrage organizations transformed its into the legal women voters in the 1920s. the legal women voters and a slew of other national women's organizations joined together to form the women's join congressional committee in 1920.

that committee was a kind of 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 independent citizenship for married women. before 1922, if an american woman married a non-american man, who had citizenship elsewhere, she lost her citizenship as much as if you married a britt you lost your american citizenship because you married out. and married women could not on their own naturalalize. they succeeded in getting the cable act passed in 1922. what that allowed was that any married woman could -- who came

to the u.s. could naturalalize herself whether her husband, naturalalized or not. and any american woman who married a foreign ner did not automatically lose her citizenship. with one exception. if she married a man who was not eligible to naturalization then she lost her citizenship which mean as more than woman who married an asian man would lose her citizenship. and that would not chang until the 1930s. one of the first things that progressive women wen for is 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 infan mortality. this was a shepherd town maternity and infant act, pass in 1921. it was drafted by -- i'm just going over here to point, i can't get use to having this wonderful thing. this legislation was drafted by julia lay thereupon who was the chief of the business bureau. she enacted a hordes of women who followed them. 1912, the children's bureau is created in the federal department of labor and the activists convinced the president to appoint a woman head of the childrens bureau. he appointed yule ya lay thereupon who was a long time

activist. and she had been involved in all kind of aggressive campaigns in illinois in the 1890s and early 20th century. she came to washington in 1912 and headed up the childrens' bureau. she had a whole slew of studies done and discovered the u.s. has some of the highest infan mortal rates than the world, which it still does, and she crafted a whole range of different responses to that. one of which became the shepherd maternity and infancy act. what it did was to offer to the states matching funds with which they could basically hire public health nurses to 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 then sometimes they -- 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 women's clubs and churches through synagogue. they'll send out the word they're going to be set up on saturday morning through this particular case and pregnant women would come and bring their children and be examined and get health education with the help of the public health nurse. so, this comes before congress right after the suffrage amendment. suffrage amendment is ratified in august of 1928. it's a public election in the fall. most of the guys in congress believed that there hadn't been time really between august and november for all women to get registered to vote. and so they couldn't tell what

the 20 election men. even after that 1920 election, they claimed that they feared that women would vote as a block. all women have the same political commitments and ideas and they would vote as a block. and so lay thereupon played on that. she had the women's congress nat committee and -- she was a great organizer, she had women all over the country hounding their representatives and saying you know please pass this, please pass this, women's hell dpnd on this, the health of the country depend on this and sure enough it passes with lots of guys say, i never would have voted for that thing but every woman in my state was writing and i figured 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 so it felt like i had to. so it passes under the threat under the women voting block.

very briefly the power of progressive women to get ledge allergies through congress because of the fears of this women's block created by the passage of the 19th amendment. in places where the maternity infancy acts was presented, the inmortality infancy declined. after 1924, after the 1924 election it was clear women were voting pretty much the way that men in their family voted, that women were also divided, there was conservator women as well as progressive nurses. there were people that wanted ploilk health nurses coming into their home and women that didn't. and congress got wise with the divisions among women voters and by 1929 they xed out the aprobation for the maternity and infancy act even though it was doing a lot of good. but a version of it is are you

viefed in the social security act of 1935. and the act implored a enormous amount of women as public health nurses and aids of the state. another fear of this women's block was passage of the child labor amendment to the constitution in 1924. it's before the 24 election. lay thereupon was sick about the service of national anti-child labor laws that they has been ruled unconstitutional. she said we're going to have to change the constitution. we're going to have to amend the constitution that say congress can ledge late in this area. in 1924 she gets an amendment through congress that is never ratified by the states. never did find the three quarters 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 but this women's block that didn't at first exist. african-american women were very much involved in trying to get maternity and infancy act funds into african-american communities across the country. they are active on behalf of end of child labor laws impacting their states. progressive legislation for women in their states. so, they had a lot of legislative goals in common with white women, but they also had goals that were peculiar to afternoon bottom that had to do of course with racial justice. 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 porcht, visual

anti-lynching crusaider was anna wells who game anna wells barnett. she began publishing pamphlets that tallied the number of lynchings each year across the united states, mostly in the south but not exclusive in the south for sure. she exposed the lie that white southerners told to justify lynching which was usually that there had been a rape, a black man had raped a black woman. that was the excuse given so often by lin chers, she showed by a study of white newspaper, using the white press, she shows that these hundreds of lynchings that she's documented, that you if you look at the local paper rape isn't the excuse there. that is a cover. so she is run out of memphis on a rail under threat against her

life and she becomes an international activists against lynching. she wound up eventually in chicago in the mid-1890s, she mares a lawyer in chicago and continuing her lynching crew said for the rest of her life. she also became the founder of a social settlement in chicago. she's very vital to the suffrage. she became an activist in the republican party. she was going to run for office here's in the late 1920s. she is just every where on behalf of racial and social justice from the 1890s on. and it looked like, as i said the republican party is a party of most african-americans in the early 1920s.

in 1920, of course the presidential election returned to republican president and a republican congress. it looks like to african-american voters, this is our moment. they started answer tating for the dire anti-lynching bill. they lobbied so hard against the segregation of the federal government, you may know here in washington, the federal government became much more segregated under wilbur wilson in the 1910s. african-americans are pushing back against that. also many african-americans are pushing congress, please implement a 14th amendment. the 14th 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 that they had reducing the electorates. of course it had never been enforced. there was this huge push to enforce the 14th amendment by

african-american women and other activists. early '20s looks like the anti-lynching legislation is going to pass and make lynching a federal crime. so often, local law enforcement officers were part of lynching crowds. and so, ida wells is an important leader on behalf of the dire anti-lynching bill in the 1920s. mary talbot who had been another organization of colored women. in the 1920s, the anti-lynching bill actually got through the house of representatives, it gets into the senate, there's lobbying until you can't see strait. the democrats threaten a filibuster and the republicans drop it. it's at that point that alice dunbar nelson says to heck with republicans i'm becoming a

democratics. very few people followed her at that moment. it was a crushing defeat for women and men who worked so hard and had so much hope in the 1920s that maybe an anti-lynching bill will pass. it's not a surprise given everything we have been talking about but the ku klux klan was very visual in the 1920s. the clan had chapters in every state. had people elected to local offices from the klan. women were really active in the klan in the 1920s. one of the interesting thing about the activism of women of the klan in the 1920 is that although they're pressing an anti-catholic, anti-semetic, anti-black racist agenda they're for the equality of white women

and white men. so the women who are active in the klan in 1920s are working women, not a majority of them are, but a solid minority were. there are women who were physicians, stenographers, small business owners and covered the whole range of women workers. they are very important in organizing boycotts against businesses that were owned by jews or owned by catholics. they tried to destroy those businesses in their communities. they start whispering campaigns against candidates from office against the party they don't prefer. i think that often we have a picture of what anybody, male or female in the klan is like. one of the big important leaders, daisy bar, daisy douglas bar was a quaker preacher, one of the most important leaders in the klan in the 1920s.

so, this group is not what one expects. 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, attention 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 nus this room associate the equal rights amendment with the 1960s and '70s. equal rights for women did pass in the congress for 1972. it's a good reason to associate that amendment, that suggested amendment to the constitution with the 1960s and '70s. the equal rights amendment was penned in 1923 by alice paul, who was the founder and hole

look doing it again. this is alice paul, the founder and leader of the national woman'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 suppose to achieve that goal, make it impossible for laws to treat men and women differently. that still would have allowed employers and everybody else to treat men and women differently but not committed law to treat men and women differently. the overwhelming majority of women activists in the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, and early '60s oh pose it had era. they fought the labor right that

it would undermined protective legislation for women workers. in the late 19th century and through the early 20th century, activists in the labor movements and middle classes and the leader allies, worked like demons to give laws that set limits on the hours that women workers had to work. they gave middle ages to women workers who had such a hard time organizing because the labor move wouldn't interested in them, didn't give them much support, so it's hard to gain power through collective bargaining. the law was -- to women workers than men because the party was reluctant to organize women workers. the whole generation of working class women and their middle class and elite allies had worked to get state laws, set minimum wages, set maximum hours that required employers to get women a ten minute break the

four or five hours they were on their feet. some industries got an actual lunch break because of protective labor legislation. those law haves come hard. they were not extended to men. the supreme court have decided that most protective legislation could not be extended to men because it was a violation of crack law. women were so much more vulnerable than men according to the supreme court these laws could be extended to women and so they were. loads of women, wage earning women benefited from those laws. if the equal rights amendment had been passed it would have undermined those laws. that seems really clear. so, the era, when it was context confers meaning, here's one of the places where you see that so clearly. so, on a 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 base legislation that would benefit privileged women at the expense of wage earning women and it would have. it would have hurt more women than it would have helped. in evidence, further evident of the fact that the ear when -- era when it was originated, the republican party in 1940s, the first party to support the era, that's because they consider it pro business. it would have allowed business owners to exploit women just as much as they exploited men. equal exploitation. so the republicans, not the democrats are the first, the pro working class party for the 1930s, democrats don't support

this because they 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. nothing is meaningful in itself. what confers meaning is the context in which something exists, i think era is a fantastic example for us of precisely that claim. by the time we get to 1938, the 1938 of course we're in the midst of roosevelt's second tomorrow, most new deal legislation already passed. freezing rain ly franklin was the circumstance of mayor with the help of mary nor ton, whom we'll be talking about at the bus stop when we finish. finally set a minimum wage maximum hours law for men and women. and eventually the supreme court

okay'd it. at that point you may think, once you got protective legislation going to men and women, why would you not be support the era at this point. because no women were helped during act, it wen to half of women wage earners because only people in certain occupations were covered by the act. many more women were covered then men in the act. many women needed the protected laws they had gotten in previous decades. it wasn't until the 1960s and title seven of the civil rights act was interpreted in the ways it was interpreted that it began to make sense. that the era look like good strategy for wage earning women and of course the wage earning women came to support the era. so huge changes there, topics

for further lectures i would say, i would say there. so, in sum, 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. the 19th amendment is unimaginable without the voters out in the state especially in the west. it was an important step in the creation of the modern gender system which created men and women were much more alike than the victorian system liked them to be. it admitted women to democratic citizenship because they wouldn't have a franchise without it. millions of more than women are excluded from the polls even after 1920. it left many aspect citizenship untouched, as for instance, jury service, election to office, and many other aspect of citizenship we have not had time to go into. it helped to expand the scope of

the federal government itself. when we saw -- one thing i think i did not say when i mentioned the sheriff's department town and maternity and infancy act, it really did expand the purview of the federal government. it's one of the reasons the guys in congress were so reluctant to pass it. it just didn't seem this is where the federal government should be involved. so, women's vote and the fear of women voting as a block actually 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. helped introduce to american culture the equal rights division which would be an important issue for women and men well into the 1980s.

the end. so, if you're not too exhausted we do have time for questions and answers. i was suppose to get through by 8:15. that really worked okay. >> chart that showed of the united states where did you get that from? >> the map? >> yeah. >> absolutely. that map is online at the center for american women and politics. and i think you can probably find it by typing in teach a girl to lead. teach a girl to lead. that is a fantastic website for all kinds of information for women and politics. you bet. >> reflected on the suffrage?

>> what -- issue been separate. yes. he really wanted it to be left to the state. he really didn't want to take responsible for it. he didn't think it should be a federal issue he thought the state should handle it. but finally he got backed into a corner during world war one and couraged congress to pass the amendment. >> here in d.c.? >> that's alice paul's group. i think i mentioned earlier one of the thing i don't like about the way that suffrage history's often talking it makes it seem like the museum was in 1910, it's all about alice paul and the party and the women who chained themselves to the fence who went after wilson and who was horrifically fed out of a prison. there's a new museum that's going to open failurly soon and

it's going to feature some of the the history of the suffrages who were force fed there. but that's not the whole story and it wouldn't have been an amendment had it not been for the women's pear here in d.c. yes. >> done work on the relationship between frontier america and the women's vote. the map is so dramatic. >> yeah. the question has to do with -- the question is why in the west franchise those women fully so early and so many places in the east do not. there are numerous studies trying to explain that and there are lots of explanations out there. i think the most compelling is that the political instructor, the infrastructure of politics in the east is so well established that it can withstand virtually any challenge to it. in the west, that infrastructure is still new, look at wyoming,

right to confirm because of territory and already its getting smashed with the sflands for suffrage. in the west the political suffrage was less firm and controlled. you didn't have general right families who have always been in control of these institutions, for instance. didn't have loads of money behind the institutions in the same way they had old money behind the institutions in the wooes. they are weaker. those weaker institutions can be challenged and defeated. so, i would say that's the most compelling explanations in any view. but there are plenty of others out there web talk about afterwards if you'd like. yes? you first then the woman behind you. >> in the hand out on the important operations agencies, i'm curious why you didn't mention the women's bureau which i was retired from in january

after. >> oh thank you so much. >> serving there since 1974. and the first public case that i was responsible for finishing there was pub occasion on the impact of title 7 on the civil rights on the protectived laws, which shows some states repealed them, and some states extended those for benefits suches male periods, rest periods to men. but of course not every state had meal period and rest period laws? >> 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 era i certainly would have talked about the women's bureau because it's crucial in that fight from the era. it's kraushl from the beginning. the women's bureau was in the --

it's it was called the women in industry service. it becomes in 1920, the women's bowie roar, a permanent bureau in the federal department of labor and it continues to be an important advocate of wage earning and women. it's crucial if the fight against the era in the early going. >> that the huffing ton post just posted something about what the proposal is in the president's budge for women's bureau, which is to reduce the funding from $11 million to 2.something million dollars. >> $2. >> 2 point something million dollars to do away with region offices and leave only 15 people in the national office. >> wow. >> and the huffington post

actually has a link to a letter that's being signed on to raise this as an issue. >> thank you for that. really appreciate it. and thank you for your service. then the woman right behind her. >> my question, were there any literacy test for white amendment after the 19th amendment? jim crow type of laws directed towards white women? >> in the south -- white him also had to go in and face those tests, it's just that they had white regist registrars were on their side on the other side of the counter, so they were more than likely to be franchised than african-american women, not that pause they had a higher literacy

rate or understood the constitution any better was because they had an advocate on the other side of the counter. and the women in puerto rico only women who got the vote and that remains the case for 1935. >> massachusetts for instance? >> no. there was no literacy test there. one more over here and we'll do this side. >> on the more lib ralt of the western states, i would suggest check the census records and you'll find moe of the single dominant man who mostly needed the single women and the -- realize if you had suffrage that would more likely attract the single women that the single men needed. something called the harvey girls, you may have heard of the fred harvey houses and how many families in the west between chicago and l.a. has a harvey girl as one of their an

sessionsters. e st. >> yes, i should have mentioned this. it wasn't clear that was a winning strategy. one of the thing we want to keep in mind that suffrage, women suffrage that campaign was not the campaign of women against women. it's women and men who support women'see suffrage against men and women who oppose it. it's not women versus men. that's not the history. whether or not there was a winning strategy i'm not so sure but i know there are guys who had it in mind. absolutely. how long over here? >> question about the child labor laws. you said they had been declared unconstitutional. >> federal one. >> federal one. and the ratification of constitution the amendment was not ratified. how is it that it eventually pass? >> yeah, great. so, the -- that fair labor

standards act in 1978 not only set minimum wage for workers in various occupation and the 40-hour workweek the workweek for those who were not going to be paid overtime, but it also abolished child labor in those industries. it was that act that was the first federal law that then survived the supreme court. fair labor -- a lot of people thought it was no way it was going to survive the supreme court because other laws in each of those categories had not. but the supreme court had changed enough by the time the act came before it that it was forbidden. so the constitution was never amended to make that possible. it was a clang within the supreme court itself. great country. >> a couple things i want to encourage everybody to see and listen to the hello girls

speaker which is she's magnificent. it's a discussion of women suffrage at movement, the first war, thousands of wrung american women going over serving as nurses on the front during spanish flu. then her talk is on the hundreds of women who, i think a few hundred women who wen over and served as telephone operators connecting the lines between the french, they were bilingual so they were checking the french and american lines and they helped -- she's a very good speaker. but my question of course is knowing that there were 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

impact do you think that had on the nation in giving in our government and giving women the right to vote? >> there's a lot of contention over that. fantastic question. it does seem possible that that moved some men in congress to vote for the amendment but i don't think we have the work yet that would show us that. what we definitely do have is this pattern of men in congress who have women in their states who are voting at least in presidential elections shifting to vote for the amendment. that we've got. so we know women voting out in the states having already been enfranchised we know that makes a huge difference. we don't have the careful work it will take to see if men in congress change their votes on the suffrage amendment once women started doing that work in the war. looks like maybe that could have hadden impact but we don't have that to show it yet.

i think that's 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 actually wanted to protect women. that they saw it as a means -- they didn't care it had equalized the relationship it had actually helped, for example, the laws that gave women breaks. that it didn't defy the men. thing like that. >> yeah. that's a fantastic question. in the early 20th century there are loads of different arguments for women suffrage. probably the majority of them and the most powerful in the 20th century were arguments based on the difference between women and men. those were arguments that said, because women are morally spur

your to men -- because they are sexually pure, pie yas to men, they outstanding to have public power, right. that is a very powerful argue. that women are more muir churing than men, they're cooperative by nature, they know a thing or two about house keep requesting more and more because of cooperate capitalism, the things that have been done in homes before that women had control over, like the purity of the food and the milk they gave their kids, the purity of the air around them and the water they drink, they had some control over that on the farm, you get into chicago and you have no control over any of that. the house is filthy because the air is filthy all around you. you can't get clean water to come into your home you have to buy milk from people you don't trust. the food is killing people. and because of that women need public power because they feed

to be able to say to the legislation we feed pure food and drug laws, we need sanitation and cleaner air. because we are responsible for our families that we have got to have public power in this new context. so that's probably the most powerful widespread kind of argue that was made. but of course there were loads of other ones, there are loads of people who are arguing women -- because women are right sparing general right like men they should have the power to vote. that is the argue for women's equal, that women are full human beings like men and ought to have the same rights. then there are also people who argue, especially in the labor movement, wage earning women who argue because the museums are not supporting us, the only way we're going to get any protection in the workplace, we're going to improve our wages and work conditions. the only way is through legislation, and that way is

through the power of vote. very practical set of arguments there. it fits under the whole range of arguments. sometimes african-american women argue on the basis of just justice alone but argue that maybe they can help stop the disfranchisement of african-american men and jim coun crow if they get some kind of political power. >> -- from the others who advocating from children, did they bring in birr control issues into that argument and for that matter abortion rights if. >> no, that avoided -- julia in the children's bureau avoided issues of birth control like the plague because there were so much division over the issue and the population, the population of women and of men and certainly not a lot of support

in congress. she believed and i'm sure she's right that it would have been difficult for childrensee parent to continue to get aproerpgs if it had come out on behalf in favor of birth control publicly. privately she did write -- women flooded the children's bureau with letters, all kind of very very personal stories told in those letters, incredibly moving to read through some of those letters. and women will ask, how will i stop having all these babies. and sometimes she'd write back and send information on how you can get ahold of a particular nurse or doctor or what would become eventually planned parenthood to try to get help with that. but it was strictly under the radar. too dangerous, too hot to touch. yeah, too hot to touch. yes. >> you were talking about women getting -- not getting full

citizenship just because they got the right to vote, but i was really surprised to find out that the uk, for example, only started passing citizenship of children through mothers ten years ago. and so, i'm curious when that would have happened for u.s. if women weren't considered full citizens. could their children become american citizens by being born to american mothers or more than fathers? >> so long you're born in the u.s. you're an american citizen regardless of the citizenship of your parents. if you were an american woman and you married a foreigner and you were living abroad wen your child was born then your childive not a citizen. but if you're any child born in the u.s. we have birthright citizenship in the u.s. 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.

>> yeah thank you. question up here. >> just as a follow up to that. when did it become necessary for people coming to the united states to become naturalalized to become citizens? >> there's been quite a long shifting process there, and it has -- there's always been a process by which in the 20th century there's also been a process by can you became a citizen, although sometimes it was very very informal. >> if you came in the 18th or the 19th century you just got off the boat and you were citizens. >> yes, you could. >> so when did that change? >> sometimes in the late 19th century. and it's still very informal. it's different in different places too. it gets codified especially in the early 20th century.

and it's really codified in the '2 os but there's a series of steps in the early 20th century that begins to cod fie that naturally. that's a great question. have we done it, have we exhausted ourselves completely? thank you. thank you all so much for being here.

>> announcer: next, a look at some of the divisions in the women's museum. professor and author marjorie spruill talks about her book, "divided we stand" which talks about imputing liberal and the early fascism in women's movement from the 1970 to today. the new york society and the reading room cohosted this event. and now it is my great pleasure to introduce tonight's