c-span three. follow us on twitter at c-span history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. announcer: and state professor leann bannasack refers on the hundred years of women suffrage. this interview was recorded at the organization of american historians annual meeting in philadelphia. >> when did women begin the public campaign for the vote in america and what was it that triggered the movement? >> that's an interesting question. so the traditional date that we look at is 1848, the seneca falls convention for women's rights. in truth, it started a little bit earlier than that with women who were interested in the abolitionist movement and excluded from conventions in london and elsewhere finding

that they also thought it was important for women to talk about their own rights. and, in fact, the question of the right to vote in 1848 was probably of the many items on the agenda, was the most controversial. it was a very close vote. women at the convention and others focused on access of women's rights at the time. that's really the date that we highlight as the start of the women's suffrage movement. >> what is happening in other countries at this time? are other women allowed to vote? >> it's important to note that actually women in new jersey voted from 1776 to about 1807. so women in at least partly of the united states had the right to vote. then it was taken away as the constitution was revised. in point of fact the first

country to give women the right to vote was in new zealand 1893, much earlier than in the united states, although 1890 the first state to give women the right to vote permanently and that was in 1890 in wyoming. the u.s. was not the earliest of the countries to give women the right to vote, but it was also not particularly late before, in addition to new zealand finland was early in 1906 and then at the other end you have some countries which are surprisingly late so switzerland, for example, didn't give women the right to vote until 1971. >> what are some of the tactics that the women are using over the decades to get the 19th amended passed and ratified? >> so there are a myriad used,

the most important mentioned is the use of really the exclusion segregation of african-american women from the suffrage movement and some those ignoring because that was an important tactic in terms of convincing congress to pass the 19th amendment. what it did mean is that when the 19th amendment came to pass it only enfranchised a portion of women, not all women. if you think about the 100 years, we have to think at, take a realistic look at what the 19th amendment did and didn't do. none of those tactics were really using racism as a tactic in terms of getting the right to vote. there were other tactics too, that were important. i think one of the interesting

things from my perspective is that women were also really some of the first groups to lobby effectively and efficiently congress in the way that we think of lobbying today. so that with the national women's party kept a very extensive card catalog of every member of congress, it recorded who they were, what they're interested were, when they were visited. they were visited regularly by constituents. they would be lobbied, when a vote would come up they would go to the card catalog and they would revisit every congressman that was important to the vote. the last tactic that we talked about is the use of making sure that you publicize the importance of getting the vote. that really happened in a series of suffrage parades picketing

the white house, similar to what social movements do today were used by women at the time. one of the most famous stories was of the 1913 suffrage parade which occurred around the inauguration of woodrow wilson. it occurred the day before as he was entering washington, d.c. it was such a large suffrage parade and also there was a lot of violence by standard, so that had actually overshadowed woodrow wilson's inauguration. >> the interaction between the women marching and the paradegoers, makes headlines. does it help their cause? >> alice paul, the head certainly thought it did. it races in the consciousness of

all citizens the fact that this is a concern and issue of women. the other aspect of it was certainly the violence that kurd in that parade also made people think about women and the protections they needed. in the sense of what happened to a set of women walking in the streets that really raised consciousness. >> another tactic, you mentioned the picketing outside the white house, the arrest of these women and held in prison and some of them decided to do a hunger strike. >> that's correct, they were force fed. >> what impact did that have on the america's conscience? >> it certainly brought the public to a physician of opposition again, not only the

local leaders who had arrested women, but also put pressure on woodrow wilson in terms of supporting the rights of those. the necklace i'm wearing today actually is a comememoration of that. when the women came out of prison they were driven a pin that said they were part and arrested and put in the work house. >> who came up with that, the pin? >> the national women's party. most of the members who were arrested that day were part of the national women's party. that was their way of commemorating it. >> once the 19th amendment was ratified and face, what was the expectations of women being female voters? >> a lot of debates on what

female voters would do in two ways. the first one is would they bother to register and then vote. there were people that dude they would be ununiformed voters but simply follow injury husbands. on the other hand, early on in 1920 others noted a real interest in women voting, so the st. paul newspaper in 1920 wrote a whole article of how women were going out to register to vote and how important that was. the second question is how would they vote? what would they do when they walked in the voting booth. one expectation was they would follow the progressive movement because there were prominent women activists, jane adams were a part of that and because

women's organizations also supported a lot of progressive, political parties hoped they could incorporate women and they would vote the same way their husband would. they organized women's division and tried to bring women into the party. >> what was the outcome? >> hard to say because we really don't know what women did in the voting booth obviously, we have a secret ballot. but there have been some political scientists who tried to determine the vote. mostly what they've uncovered is really not much different from men in the early elections. women were not the progressive voters that many politicians thought they would be, but they did vote kind of with the

regular party. >> when do women go from being voters to participating in politics and running for office themselves? >> i would guy women were participating in politics from the very beginning, not in the elector rl politics. she only got 12 votes, she was out there. the first woman to run for president was victoria wood fall four years later in 1874. so women candidates were there from the very beginning. but you do see the number of women in political office grow very slowsly after the 91th amend. if we look at just where women served in the state legislatures or whether they served in

congress. each as late as the 1940's you have 1.5% of most state legislatures 1.5% of congress being women. in your local state legislature there would be three women on an average in the state legislature. it's not until 1970 that you see the first jump in women serving, so in the 1970's women were entering state legislatures for the first time. we see a real jump of women entering congress. sadly, even with those numbers, you're talking about not that large, so if you look worldwide the u.s. really doesn't look very good in terms of women's

representation on the national or local level. we rank 78th in all countries. >> what do you think of the legacy of the 19th amendment is for different ethnic groups and who were the leaders of women's rights for those different groups? one legacy of the 19th amendment for african-american women and latino women, they still had to fight for the right to vote. ? some senses you see white women saying we're done. we have the vote, now year going to focus on other issues. for african-american women that was not true and so through the 30's, 40's and 50's, african-american women are still fighting.

many had been active in the suffrage moment i was talking way colleague before i came here about local women in pennsylvania. one of the interesting things is that we tend to focus on the people we know the best. there were lots and lots of women all over the country fighting for the right to vote. so in pittsburgh, there was daisy elizabeth adams who formed the new negro women's convention. from the 20's, 30's 40's into the modern civil rights. all around the country which are stories like that of women who haven't been recognized in our history books because they've either been not part of the traditional story we tell or who were fighting on the local level and one of the things i hope is

that this 100th anniversary allows us to really celebrate those people. there are many opportunities for this celebration occurs for local and state groups to really explore their own history and see those women who may not have been written into the history books, but were nobody theless really important in the light zone. what do you think the lasting legacy of the 19th amendment is? >> there are lots of them. we just need to recognize that the way the suffrage movement works and the battles that were fount then.

i do think the importance of race continually in our politics and the way it plays out in the current women's movement has that, looks back to that legacy of what happened in the suffrage movement. i also think that i think that's probably the one that to me is the most important. >> thinking back on your research of these women, what do you think their reaction would be so women who ran in one in 2018 cycle, a female speaker of the house and as we talk, women running for president. >> on the one hand, they would say this is what they had asked

so hard for but also a word of caution, 100 years is a long time the battle of suffrage and even at this point, women still are underrepresented in those venues i think would also be a note of caution. >> leann, thank you. >> my pleasure. announcer: 100 years ago 19th amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. on sunday at 8:00 a.m. eastern, join us. the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage, live sunday at 8:00 a.m. eastern on "washington journal" and on american history tv on c-span 3.