they were settled in refugee camps and tens of thousands of them came to san antonio. for many years, they lived in the poorest centers of town, but then as the generations went on, they became leading citizens in the community. we have henry b. gonzalez was our first hispanic congressman in the 1950s. and that has really helped make san antonio the type of place it is today. i think it would be important for people to realize as they learn about san antonio, simply to understand what a distinctive and diverse city san antonio is, how significant its roots are in history and how much it has contributed to the history of the country. to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment giving women the right

to vote, the national portrait gallery, national archives and the library of congress have created special exhibits. curators talk about the creative process behind the exhibits including determining goals in selecting objects. the berkshire conference of women's historians and the women's suffrage centennial commission hosted this event. >> i'm martha jones, a copresident along with tie i can't miles along the berkshire conference. i'm happy to be welcoming all of you to this evening's conversation, and i have to extend the special embrace to our members tuning in from all over the world today. with this event, we begin a conference weekend, the big berkes 2020, not as we planned for in baltimore at johns hopkins. instead, we're being linked together by digital sound and image. i, for one, am grateful even for this today. the year 2020 marks 100 years

since the 19th amendment, legal protection for women's votes became part of the u.s. ko constitution. for us as historians of women's genders and sexualities, the an university is unparallel opportunity to bring new history to politics to audiences eager to know the whole story of the road to the 19th amendment and the epic rise of american women to political power. as our guest curators tonight have so vividly laid out in their galleries, this is a story best told as part of a longer tale about the troubles that have always attended american voting rights. it includes moments of courage and also coward is. it is a tale with many beginnings and one that has not wholly ended. struggles for political power run through our own times. cultural institutions are places where we convene to makes sense of our shared human experience, and ideally we would have spent this day together enjoying the

museum huddled before images and artifacts in the galleries and exchanging ideas in the conversation with these curators up close and personal. that was not possible, and our hearts ache over the missed opportunity. still, this is attributed to the power of the library, the museum and the archive to bring us together despite distance and troubles of a global pandemic. we feel now more than ever before the urgent necessity of community. this event is, for the berkshire conference, an opportunity to make our enduring commitment to the magic of what happens when we come together as members, new attendees and friends who are meeting us for the very first time. we will convene again and will as a collective of story tellers write the histories of this time striving to make meaning out of this very human experience. we owe tremendous thanks to our partners anna layman and her

team for the commitment to seeing through this unparalleled conversation. special thanks to my colleague and friend senator barbara mcclou ski for fostering understanding and the belief in the power of women and their communities to lead us even through the troubled unknown. please enjoy this remarkable conversation. i'll turn things over to kelsey malay of the commission who will moderate the discussion. thank you. >> thank you so much martha. and to the berkes for partnering with us to make this program happen. and also, huge thank you to senator mccull ski for your welcome message. we are so lucky to have you as one of the commissioners of the women's suffrage centennial mission. my name is kelsey.

commemoration of the centennial of women's constitutional right to vote in 2020. the commission and berkshire conference originally planned this program as an in-person event at the belmont hall national monument which is the historical headquarters of the national women's party in washington, d.c. and which today stands as a national monument telling the story of the history of the suffrage movement. while we're not able to be together in person at belmont hall right now, we are so thankful to the berkes and to our panelists for being willing to shift and working with us to make this webinar happen. also, huge thank you to everyone in the audience right now who is joining us. and to all of you who are continuing to commemorate the suffrage centennial and to uplift women's history in this age of social distancing. we are also thrilled to have these tlae amazing curators with us tonight as our panelists for

this discussion. curators get an inside look at the suffrage exhibits. now, to all our members in the audience tonight, maybe some of you have been able to see these exhibits in person, maybe you haven't had the chance yet. either way we're all going to get a unique look into these exhibits tonight through this conversation. so, this year, again, 2020 marks 100 years since the 19th amendment was officially ratified into u.s. constitution. standing back, the right to vote shall not be denied on account of sex. so, our panelists each curated an exhibition in the nation's capital exploring the history of women's fight for the vote in honor of this important centennial year. we have with us kate clarke lemay, corrine porter, and janice ruth from the library of

congress. to get things started, i'm going to go to each of our panelists now and ask you to introduce yourselves a little bit further. there's three pieces of information i would love you to share with us. first is what your role is at your institution, the title of your suffrage exhibit, and just tell us a little bit about how you first got interested in the history of the suffrage movement? so, i'm going to start us off going in order of when each exhibition opened, so kate i'm going to start with you. so, again, tell us about your role at the portrait gallery, the title of your exhibit, and how you first got interested in this history. >> great. well, thank you, kelsey, and thank you to my co-panelists and to everyone who's tuning in. it is weird circumstance that we're all zooming together, but what a great opportunity to have this conversation. thank you. and i'm kate lemay and i am historian at the national portrait gallery. my job title is historian.

i trained as an art historian. i have a dual degree in art history and american stories. votes for women are persistent. that's tonight's mission. i came to the idea and proposed it in 2015, anticipating the 2020 centennial anniversary. we plan our exhibitions years in advance, and i just wanted to make sure that votes for women had the prime spot. it was actually moved backwards to 2019 which might be -- you know, given the light of today's context of a pandemic, i actually think we turned out to be lucky. but it's been great to see what my colleagues have done and the other federal institutions and sort of together, the three institutions almost working like a team with women's history. >> all right. thank you, kate. so, next, corrine, would you

also tell us about your role at the national archives and title of your exhibit and a little bit about your background in hist y history? >> sure, hello, everyone. thank you for zooming in tonight to do this virtual panel and a special thank you to my co-panelists kate and janice. it's been a pleasure working with them and associated with them for years now as we've worked on our respective exhibitions. this web panel and the discussion we're looking forward to. so, my name is corrine porter. i am a curator at the national archives. the exhibition i developed is called "right to be heard: american women and the vote." as the national archives curator, it's my job to develop

positions about any facet of american history, government and culture that are records at the national archives which are the permanent records facet of american history, government, that our records at the national archives. it's the permanent records of the federal government. it's a huge bit of history. obviously, a vast archive of material. i'm a generalist in terms, i don't professionalize (inaudible). when i learned of an opportunity to develop our women's suffrage exhibit, as a woman and as someone who has

been passionate about the subject, as long as i've been passionate about history which is as long as i can remember, i was really thrilled to have an opportunity to put this together for this anniversary. >> wonderful, thanks corinne. so janice, same questions to you. tell us about your exhibit and a bit of your background. >> sure. thank you kelsey and berks for this opportunity to talk about this. my library of congress exhibition is titled shall not be divine -- denied, women's fight for the vote. first part of the title is obviously a play on the words from the amendment itself. the subtitle convey is one of the principal themes that we wanted to show in this exhibit. it dispelled the notion that women were granted or given the right to vote.

instead, it showcases the long hard struggle, the fight, the years of dedication and perseverance and courage and creativity and hope by generations of women to achieve that most fundamental right of a participatory democracy. the right to vote. my current position is as cheap, but for many years, i was a women's history specialist. in that role, i had the great privilege of building, interpreting and making accessible for research purposes our vast suffrage collections. i think it's an opportunity to dig really deep into those occurred first with colleagues. i assembled a protest website which was a selection of photographs from the national women's party records which the

library holds. that led to a short book. the library was doing a series of books called women who dare. the library decided to do one focused on suffrage which gave me an opportunity to look into that. but those experiences were incredibly helpful when the assignment came to put this exhibit together. wonderful. i want to dig a little bit deeper into what each of the exhibits is about. what stories you each decided to tell in these exhibits. janice, i'm really interested in what you said about, as you were developing the title and wanted to reflect this idea that women fought for the vote, women made it happen rather than what i think previous language says that women were granted the voter given the vote. i think that is an important distinction. with that in mind, as each of you are conceptualizing your exhibits, how did you decide

what story you want to tell? in particular, were there any gaps in the ways the stories we're told that you want to address? such as this idea that women fought, they were not given. to each of you, how did you land on the story you wanted to tell? where did you start off from and where their gaps that you really felt excited about in addressing? corinne, let's switch things up and maybe start with you if that works for you. >> sure, no problem. so i think you are going to hear a lot of similarities between how janice and i really want to tackle this long fight for women's voting rights. since the national archives is the home of the original 19th amendment, that is certainly where our conversations began around how we wanted to tackle

the subject. and something that we were really committed to write off of the bat was to really dig into what it really is -- talk to secure women's equal voting rights with men in the united states constitution. because the constitution by design is the process of amending it is extremely difficult. the bar is very high. i think it is starting to shift now. a lot of more popular retelling's of women's suffrage seems to focus on the activities of just a few women over just a few years. many of them, primarily white women, primarily privileged women, so we wanted to broaden

our examination of what it took to ultimately win the passage of the 19th amendment and the support of that. looking at the multitude of strategies that activists had to employ. also, the diversity of women votes in terms of race as well as class, to engagement in this long struggle really through -- proved crucial for the ultimate success in securing a constitutional amendment. that said, we also need to recognize that the 19th amendment -- (inaudible). it did not give women --

all women the right to vote. millions of women were already voters by the time the 19th amendment was ratified in other states or jurisdictions. they had extended voting rights. so an aspect that is often essential to the success and we wanted to acknowledge that the struggle didn't end in 1920. for many women, in particular women of color, we want to carry that narrative far beyond 1920 as much as we could. we want to look at the diversity. women continue to be denied this, you know, essential right of citizenship and where it

ultimately starts to secure voting rights for a diverse group of women beyond 1920. >> great. as corinne you said, there might be some overlap in some of the thoughts that were going through your minds while planning out your exhibits. and the conversations that i have had with all of you, things like representing the diversity of the suffragists and telling the story beyond 1920 as the journey towards a full complete democracy continued. imagine those are things you all were thinking about as well. kate, i'm curious what were you thinking as you were laying out your storyline? thinking about gaps you want to address, particularly the unique perspective that you were coming from and thinking about how to tell the story through portraits. >> thank you.

corinne you covered a whole lot of issues there, so thank you for taking that hit for us. i obviously work at the portrait gallery and we endeavor to tell the history of the united states through biography and visual biography. so portraits. while i wanted the driving narrative to be portraits, i wasn't sure which ones. the portrait gallery has 22, a little over 22,000 objects and its collection and only a little over 5000 of those portraits are (inaudible). seven or 8% of our collection are women and it's the bulk of all women's history. we've been marginalized in so many ways, which is aggravating for people who are listening i'm sure.

it makes our work as curators or public historians really important because we are sometimes bridging these stories to people who have never heard of them. even if the expert knows, the regular person that comes through the portrait gallery -- we have 2 million visitors a year, they will not know who that person is. so we accompany every portrait with the story of 150 words. the story sound complicated. i have to scrutinize them over and over again to make sure it is getting everything right. i am not an expert on women's suffrage. i have become one through the process, but let me tell you it was sometimes very humbling -- a very humbling road to walk. when i started the portrait

exhibition, i was looking for the portraits of the -- african american women, of latinos, of native americans. i want to make sure that we carried -- this white narrative we've been taught in high school and point out the other players. women of color were not just sitting around to link their thumbs. they had to be doing something and they were. they just never have really been looped into the suffrage history in a way that was intersectional. how history feels and reality. it's not just a single issue of focus, suffrage, it is all of these different things. so we were attempting to look at the civil war and looking at the context of lobbying and where that came from in the 19 teens. a lot of great portraits, but

then i also have the advantage of being in an institution that borrows. janice and corinne, you both have incredible archives within your own institution, but so does the portrait gallery. because i was working with a restricted amount of women, i had to go outside of the portrait gallery. i just scoured the nations archives and i can talk more about that later if people are interested, but it was hard to find portraits of black women. i just remember going to the new york public library and looking for this portrait. the thing that was presented to me was like folded in half. it was an exhibit double. it broke my heart. she's in this book that we produced with exhibition, but she wasn't in the actual exhibition. i had to make hard decisions like that. also, all of the men that were

involved in the suffrage movement. we just put them out. we did not put them, because we figured they are already relatively well-known. that was a bit of the process. >> and the second move to this idea of the obstacles and challenges that you all faced, just in general and finding the exhibits, finding the objects that you needed to tell the story. thank you kate for bringing us into that conversation. janice, if there is anything you would like to add before we go into telling the stories. >> sure. i mentioned this idea of

documenting the struggle. i think corinne alluded to some of the other goals that we had were similar with what the national archives did. we wanted to stretch the traditional narrative. the story is 1848 to 1920. no, that is not right. we want to make sure that people understood coming in what were the influences that led women to gather in senegal falls in 1848. who were those who influenced these women. what premised tracks where they familiar with? we started the narrative much earlier and then, like corinne, we extended it. she goes more into the modern period than we do, but we certainly indicate that it was a limited victory. there were women who were excluded from being able to vote in the 19th century. they were excluded on the

account of citizenship, whether they were native american women or of asian descent. women in the u.s. territories, i think that certainly comes strong through our narrative. i wanted to expose like my colleagues the class divide and the racial tensions and the regional divides in order to show how there was some very uneasy alliances that had to form. maybe only temporarily to achieve a certain victory. people would then break off into different factions. i also wanted to have some fun. we have lots of cool documents, but i also wanted to bring in some objects. there are a number of objects. we had an opportunity to actually borrowed back from our since stir institutions, the smithsonian, materials that had come in with the paper

collections but did not stay at the library of congress. we have a collaborative relationship with the smithsonian. they were transferred years ago to this mid sony and for the purposes of this exhibit, we want to bring some of those back. i wanted to show in some of these non manuscript materials, the creative strategies of marketing. the cookbooks and the fans, all the swag that they exhibited when they were on street corners talking about the cause. so in light of that, that comes through. and lastly, i think we wanted to really focus on the images and words of the participants. i think that is where our unique perspective at the library came in, and that as kate mentioned, we are so blessed that the library was acquiring materials long ago.

the library of congress was great friends with susan b anthony and the blackwell family. he solicited papers while they were still active in the moment. anthony, stanton, the blackwell family, stone, we have those papers. we were also able to acquire the records of the two principal national organizations, the national american woman suffrage association and the national women's party. even within my division, i had a wealth of material, but i'm also situated in the largest library in the world. an incredible rare books department. wonderful photographs and posters and moving images it and cartoons. maps, everything. my problem was that i just had too much information. the opposite of what kate was struggling with of only being able to find a small amount

within her institution and having to go out, i had perhaps the opposite challenge there. >> i just want to say, janice, it was so nice of you to help me when i was trying to figure out what to feed, you know, how to use your stuff. it was great to have that collaborative spirit when we were researching. >> going off of the past couple of answers that we've gotten from our panelists, we've kind of touched on some of the challenges of telling stories through objects as well as of having this plethora of objects to choose from. could you each talk a little bit about why exhibit and telling stories through objects is so important to spreading awareness about this history and bringing it to life? educating people about it in a kind of new way. also, some of the challenges that come along with telling the story that way. so why are exhibits so

important for learning history? what are some of the challenges you face when telling the story through objects? so janice, would you like to get us started on that one? >> but i think one of the challenges for me, it's just a massive story. it's an incredible complex movement with so many individual stories. the state, political level, the national level, it's a difficult story. there is a -- but what is fascinating is it's never brought up. you have researchers constantly returning to the collections in my division and probing them in new ways and uncovering new angles but they are exploring and that we are learning about. but then of course, it's how do we bring this together and balance that new research?

how do we presented to an audience that is interested in the topic, but they're not steeped in that background. i think that is how to use research in order to contextualize those items. that benefits us as we're trying to research what we have and how to present it. we need to understand that people are not coming through an exhibit and going to read massive amounts of material. so how do you present it in the most accessible way? i think that is where you design comes in. it's huge how working with designers and sharing with them your concept of what you are trying to do here and then see what they can, how they work with you on that. so i think that would be what i would say in terms of the importance of the exhibit and the collections and the

research. they all have to work well together. they are four different audiences and different purposes however. >> corinne, we heard from kate a few minutes ago telling the story of men in the suffrage movement. there just wasn't quite room to really get into that in-depth. along those lines of what challenges did you face and also, where they're parts of the story where you were just like this isn't going to fit? did you have to take some things out? >> certainly, i think the challenges that, respect. (inaudible) >> the national archives are positive of the

federal government. that is billions of individual pages of documents as well as millions of photographs, maps, charts, sound recordings and artifacts of course as well. one of the other challenges that i had working on it is that as the archive of the federal government, i was best poised to tell the story of the women's suffrage movement at the national and federal level. but of course, there's much more to the story than that. it definitely took some work. research and mining to find those stories among our records as well. they were there, not only because suffragists were so

prolific and persistent in lobbying the federal government. unfortunately for them, it took decades to make some headway, but there was plenty to discover there. one of the other challenges that i had is that as the archive of the federal government, it really reflects the points of view and perspectives of the entity that created that archive. also, it is really limited to the other individuals or organizations that it interacts with, especially during this time period in the 19th and early 20th century. who is in the federal government and who were they interacting with primarily? men, white men.

so it did take some doing to find -- it wasn't a real challenge to find records that documented the women's suffrage movement, but in particular to find the reporting -- the recording and those voices from women of color in particular. oftentimes, we don't write to our government officials, or when we do so, they don't records demographic information.

with some creativity, we fortunately got there in the end. i know there was another part of this question. i'm trying to throw in everything all at once. >> yes. i think that's great. the importance of telling stories through objects and also the challenges that come with that. >> the one other thing i would add is that one of our challenges, there are some challenges especially in creating exhibitions and using primarily visual experiences. there is an added challenge there to telling stories with a two dimensional document.

there are some challenges to get around that and design really was a big one in this case. another challenges is also an opportunity, in particular with our archival holdings, because the records really tell the story in and of themselves in many respects. i really wanted to put archives into a story that i got as many different women's voices and (inaudible). >> we look at why women -- i try to get as many off -- arguments of why women not only one of the vote needed to vote. for themselves and their children and so forth. but also, it adds so much

nuance and texture. historians have a far different task, but the average visitor, something that happened over 100 years ago, it begs the question why should we care? >> great. we have some wonderful questions coming in from our audience. i'm seeing that a lot of the questions -- i also wanted to ask you will, we can go ahead and transition into showing some questions that we are getting from the audience. first of all, if you could each remind us of the run dates of your exhibit.

kate, can you remind us when that was? >> janice and corinne, remind us when you're exhibits will be closing. right now infertility, in these moments of social distancing, are there ways for all three exhibits, for folks to continue to engage with the materials online or another ways. >> my exhibition was opened in march of 2019 and it rained through january 5th of 2020. you can find a small slice of it on google arts and culture. if you search for votes for women on google arts, you will find it. we also have partnered with c-span and with american history tv for a little tour in two parts.

there is a variety of online sources. you also have this big beautiful book that i poured my blood, sweat and tears into. so please, take a book. thanks. >> thank, you kate. thank you for sharing the book and for showing us the book. i wanted to make sure we got that in. janice, what about you? what are some people -- some ways people can stain gauged? our exhibit was originally slated to close in september 2020. unfortunately for us and for all of you, it will be extended. i know -- i think that at this point, for sure i think it will be through the rest of the calendar year. i don't know how far into 2021 we may go to. hopefully, there will be some time for all of you to come and see it because i do think that the setting is spectacular.

the library of congress is a gorgeous building, the jefferson building, and the designer did some really intriguing things to make use of the space. that would be nice for us to see. before we started our discussion, you shown a bit of a video that was taken in the exhibition space to give folks a flavor of that. we have an online version of the exhibition. i shared the links and i think you will be sharing them in the chat box. the online exhibit is there. a lot of the collections that i've mentioned, even if you come to the exhibit and look at the online exhibit, there are even more ways to further your engagement with these materials. we have been madly digitizing a lot of our suffrage collection. many of the collections that i mentioned earlier are now online at the library of congress.

just follow the link, digital collections from the home page, and you will get to it. just put suffrage in the search box and they will pop up. a fun thing for those of you who may be looking for something different to do while you are at home, help us transcribed these items. we have a project called by the people, and we are running a number of suffrage collections where we are asking people to volunteer and help us transcribed materials so the transcriptions will be brought back into the library's main search engine therefore making it more discoverable. also, making it more understandable to many younger people who've never been taught cursive. lots of ways to stay connected and help grow this field and resources for future study.

>> wonderful. but corinne, of the ways you engage with the material? >> sure. there is a website that has a number of information including our own online exhibit pages. i'm just writing my brain trying to think of the exact url. you can get there from the museum home page for sure. the run of the show at this point is through january 3rd of 2021. i do not know if we will end up

extending the exhibition time. so definitely keep your eye on either archives .gov or of course, the national archives as that information. (inaudible) i also gave a tour. (inaudible) you can also find our collaboration with american history tv and american artifacts. >> wonderful. >> i feel like those people who are giving those acceptance

speeches at the oscar and forgot somebody. i did not have the prop, but it is available in the libraries online website. pardon? >> to everyone in the audience, there are so many wonderful resources that each of your institutions that have a go with exhibit. we will definitely follow by email to everyone in attendance tonight and share links to all of those wonderful resources so that everyone can have them and can continue learning the history. allowing you to experience these exhibits virtually for right now. we will make sure to show those as well. also, i'm going to make sure to remind people to visit at the end as well. people can also book pop-up displays by going to the website. i will send a reminder about that at the end to everyone and we will send that with the

additional resources as well. another question i'd love to share from the audience with all of our panelists. could you each please tell us about one up yet you're exhibited best exemplifies the story of the women's suffrage movement that you are trying to tell in your exhibit? interpret that question as you will. i imagine it is difficult to narrow down. but could you tell us about one or two of your favorite objects from the exhibit or ones that you think are really good symbols of what you were doing with your exhibits? who wants to start? >> i can go first. i have a passionate love for our portrait of ida b wells. it was taken in 1983 -- 1893 and she's about 30 years old. she's perfectly poised. she has her hair up and it's

set with a hair comb. she's wearing a beautiful dress with a broach at the neck. there are very specific details, kind of like signals that women of the 19th century we're giving to each other to say i am a dignified woman. i am educated, i am respected, i'm respectable. for black women, that wasn't especially powerful political statement because of the culture with the failure of reconstruction. they were up against that at the turn of the century. as many of you are probably aware, ida b. wells was not only a suffragists but a journalist who advocated for anti-lynching laws that are just recently being passed in certain states. what i like about this portrait

of her is that it shows her at the cusp of her own activism. in 1893, her best friend was lynched in memphis tennessee. as a journalist, she reported about it and protested his death and that of his two friends. they were lynched by a white mob because they were successful grocers. they were doing well in business. when i get the welsh protested -- ida b. wells protested, or offices were burned. she had to leave memphis for her life and go into self exile. you are able to read this portrait even more -- with even more on. not only wage she wearing this

gorgeous dress and a beautiful fashionista. in the lace there is embroidered it beadwork which must have been incredibly difficult to do. her choice of photographer is interesting to. she's just suffragists, a feminist, so she wasn't going to go to just any photos studio. she wanted to make sure that she was in control of her image. she could probably trust a woman to help her do that. it's an interesting object. i think it's a real bridge through time. it's one of the reasons i love objects. it's one of the reasons i love my job because i think that portrait reaches a younger woman in ways that other objects just don't. young people gloss over the. that is my favorite object.

>> janice or corinne. >> i guess i will jump in. it changes. it depends on my mood. it depends on what may be happening in the news. let me mention there is a wonderful letter that susan bee anthony wrote. i think it speaks volumes to their partnership. a very successful partnership in terms of sharing the duties. also, and this is typical in the correspondence between suffragists, they made incredible guilt trips on one another to get them to do more and more. who's not doing enough?

keeping a scorecard. anthony writes to stanton because she is dedicated to giving a top. she turns to stanton who she considers a better rider. for all of you teleworking mothers out there who are balancing work and child care, you would love this letter because anthony says no matter. he bounce a baby on one knee and the other on the other but get to the task. the reputation of women depends on it. it's a great letter. i would also say that there was an item, and you probably experienced this corinne and kate. you have no idea until you start researching it, the

underlying story. . we found a document fold it up in the -- there was a card that said by a bail, by a doll. what was fascinating is that during 1914, this cincinnati or just makes this dot pattern as part of this grassroots movement called by a bail. average people were asking to buy bails of cotton to help the cotton industry that had basically what been in a calamitous fall as a result of closing the export market in europe. what was fascinating about that while we got into it was how smart suffragists were.

the president at that time, she cut checks for 50 dollars and gave them to each of the 14 state suffrage chapters in the south and said by cotton. curry favor with the southern manufacturers, the southern legislatures. what turned out, how the suffrage jaw actually revealed an interesting story about the strategies that they had in terms of trying to turn the south, which obviously didn't work, but they tried. >> corinne, what about you? can you narrow it down? >> >> i will limit myself to one. i will talk about another record, nor but since the

question was -- the woman suffrage movement is so broad and multifaceted, it's hard to pick one record to represent the whole story. (inaudible) >> the record that comes to mind for me is a letter that was written in 1923. a few years after the 19th amendment was ratified. the letter she addressed to president calvin coolidge. she was writing to him and pleading with him to help proceed justice because she had

been turned away when she went to register and vote in birmingham, alabama. it is an emotional letter and it is so powerful. you can see how distraught and frustrated she is at this moment in time. and she has brothers who served and world war i. one lost his life and service to his country in a war, keeping the world safer for democracy, and, you know -- i really can't put it even into words. i can imagine. you can get a sense of that -- what that must feel like, but you can't really know. what's even more remarkable

about the letter is that she also has the only record that i found, and i looked at hundreds if not thousands of petitions and memorials and letters from women. it's the only letter i found where an african american woman -- (inaudible) here she is in 1923 and she's turned away when she tries to register and vote. it's a remarkable and powerful letter. the women's suffrage movement is really important, but it's

just one chapter in the long narrative of the ongoing struggle for the right to vote in this country. her letter really bridges many of those struggles and signals. this conversation that continues to be debated up through today. what our voting rights should be and who should be entitled to them. >> we are just about out of time. i just want to ask if any of you have any final thoughts

you'd like to share. any lessons we can learn from studying this history today. and the last thoughts before we end? >> i just want to say that it feels really big than the three major federal institutions have put so much time, energy, money and resources into major exhibitions. it's hard to recognize. it's hard to recognize an exhibition with more than 80 objects and have it being about women and only women and women's history. as a historian, it is very infuriating to see how many

exhibitions there are about world war ii, world war i etc. they are punctuated as male history and presented as male history when half the population were women and they were there to. i just want to say that it feels really important that these institutions have addressed women's history and such a big way. i hope that we can continue. i wanted to point that out. >> i'm glad we had this big year, the centennial year, to really amplify these stories more than ever. to have that the just the beginning of continuing to be really about women's stories. the standard american history

narrative. thank you so much for being here tonight. thank you so much for the important work that you've done with all of these exhibits. to tell women's stories and to really elevate this story about women's fight for the boat. thank you for being here. once again, to our audience members, we will follow up by email with all of these wonderful resources you talked about related to each exhibit. a reminder also that these displays are available at the women's centennial commission which is partnered with the archives to distribute these free pop-up displays which can be picked up throughout 2020 and beyond. they also come with digital resources. if you like one of those pop-up displays, get those by june 27th. you can go to women's about 100 doubt or or contact us for more

information. thank you again to our panel. thank you to berkshire conference to partnering with us on this program. to martha jones, to senator you can take 45 you have a gib block coming up. virtual events for the time being, thank you all again for the wonderful discussion. thank you. >> thanks very much kelsey. thank you >>. >> thank you everyone and happy centennial.

next on american history tv history tv, author rebecca roberts on the decade leading up to the passage of the 19th amendment and how women gained the right to vote. she is the author of "suffragits & the 19thamendment." the white house historical