Abolitionists and temp rest movements. This is the first of a twopart program. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the National Portrait gallery at the smithsonian institution. Im Kate Clarke Lemay and im the curator of votes for women, a portrait of persistence. For this exhibition, i worked about 3 1 2 years researching, teaching myself this history and finding all the objects. In the exhibition we have about 124 objects of which there are 63 portraits and in curating the exhibition, i was hoping to commemorate the 19th amendment and tell the history of the 19th amendment and how women lobbied to get this amendment passed and ratified. But also ask questions about it and ask what does it do and what does it not do and why 1965 and the Voting Rights act is considered another sort of part two of the 19th amendment. So if youll follow me, im going to take you through the exhibition and show you a few of the objects that tell this history. Lets go. Were in the first gallery of the exhibition and i mentioned that we have portraits that drive the narrative but i also wanted to include in the exhibition pieces of art, like the one were looking at which is titled the war spirit at home. And its by a female artist and she was active in 1860s and i wanted to include this painting because it portrays young children, youve got these four kids, one is a baby, but the three kids are celebrating and mother who is reading the New York Times and we have a servant or a helper whos cleaning the dishes. And what i liked about this painting is that its from 1866 and it depicts sort of the war, the civil war and the battle of vicksburg, so its kind of looking back. And spencer decided to portray this moment in time by looking at the lives of women and the women are very serious, but the children are very much engaged in the celebration because they dont understand how severe and difficult that battle of vicksburg was. During the battle, the men on both sides of the Confederate Army and the union army starved because the city was surrounded and embargoed. And so why am i talking about the civil war in a suffrage exhibition. Thats a good question. What i wanted to do was to demonstrate the divide between the north and the south as well as between the races africanamerican and white because this plays a big part in shaping the Suffrage Movement, especially when the 14th amendment was passed and ratified in 1869, it included the word male. And this is the first time in the history of the constitution that gender was specified and it delivered a very severe blow to the Suffrage Movement where women were trying to advocate for their right to vote. If they werent even considered citizens, which is what the 14th amendment does, it granted citizenship to anyone born in the United States, then when the 15th amendment enfranchised american citizens, it only enfranchised half the population. So this is a huge divide. The Suffrage Movement disagreed on how to handle it and thats when they split between each other. So susan b. Anthony wanted to advocate for suffrage by excluding black women whereas lucy stone was trying to advocate for universal suffrage. And africanamericans were suffrages, and so if youll come with me now, were going to go talk about one of the major africanamerican suffrages. And she famously gave a speech at a Suffrage Convention and what she said were all bound up its bound up together. Its intersectional. So black men really couldnt just sit around and let people take away their rights and not advocate for them, so they became active in Church Groups and really worked on learning how to speak in public, understanding their rights. Understanding how to get those rights by their local communities by being involved in those local community Church Groups and thats a really interesting topic that not a lot of people have gone into or understand as much, so people do understand that the Suffrage Movement was divided, but they dont understand that africanamericans remained very active and so this exhibition endeavors to make sure that we include africanamericans and their stories. Like Sarah Parker Ramon whose portrait is on the far wall. She was an activist in the Antislavery Society of massachusetts and took her activism abroad. And thats another really interesting story is how american suffragists were not only focused in the United States, but they were also active elsewhere, especially in europe. And were going to talk about and what is being referred to as the myth. So this is a portrait of stanton and susan b. Anthony. Its by napoleon stanton. He captured them together. Anthony is pointing to a book and very dignified and this is a, what would be like a publicity shot today. They were using to portrait to represent them to a wider audience. They didnt meet until 1851. So it was a gathering, the First National convention in 1848. In new york and stanton and others penned the declaration of sentiments. Which is really the beginning document, one of the first documents put into writing when they were advocating for the vote. But what i hope this exhibition explains by going back right back to 1832 is that women were getting together and talking and advocating for their rights, their Citizenship Rights, well before 1848. Suffrage just didnt appear out of thin air. It has a long history that starts well before so thats a great intellectual debate that i encourage you to look into. So i brought us up to 1869 and now the next gallery which starts in 1870. So were in the second gallery and i wanted to make sure to include representation of the Womens Christian Temperance Union because it helps us get into a lot of the different issues that american women were facing. Temperance was a Large Organization that had about 150,000 women involved and they would gather and meet in what was called chapters and so in 1873, the Womens Christian Temperance Union actually endorsed the suffrage cause. So all of a sudden, suffragists expanded their membership and their reach by 150,000 members, which is an incredible amount of people. For that era. So at the top, you see the womens holy war and whats great about this very active energetic print is that theres a woman on a horse and shes like a joan of ark figure and shes leaping over these really well marked barrels of alcohol. So you can see gin, whisky, beer, rum. Behind her are her compatriots, women wielding axes and hatches and theyre part of the temperance league. In the name of god and humanity, that reads the banner that one of them is carrying. The battle was against alcohol and when women were married to alcoholics, they became a very vulnerable population. So they were organizing amongst each other in ways that helped them not only get support, but also understand their rights. And what they could do to advocate for their rights. On the bottom, you see the oratorical prize and it says womens Temperance Union at the top and i wanted to include this little medal because i was curious to know how women were teaching themselves to speak in public. So if you think of like toastmasters of today, thats a good idea of what they were doing in the Womens Christian Temperance Union because they were actually awarding prizes to women who were speaking and having a little contest in order to award them for good speeches. So thats an interesting object that i was able to find. The reason it was important for women to know how to speak in public because the cause was being spread through speeches. A lot of women were going on the lecture circuit and were speaking in auditoriums that were referred to as lyceums. They were being paid. Elizabeth dixonson earned 20,000 annually in 1873. She made more money than mark twain so i think thats kind of an interesting comparison because whos name do we remember today . Even though dickinson was more famous than twain at the time. Next well talk about some of the scandals the suffragists got involved in. Victoria hall was well above her time. She started her on business as a wall street banker with her sister, tennessee. She advocated for free love, which means sex outside of marriage. Which was definitely outside of the norms for women. 1870s. And she also ran for president on a Third Party Ticket and she was the first woman to do so. And right here, we have a really nice portrait of her attempting to vote or asserting her right to vote as she would see it. She voted when you werent supposed to vote as a woman so here she is, shes pointing her finger in the air and asserting her right to vote. Shes dropped her record of the vote into the ballot box and lot of women at this time were doing what would be referred to as illegal voting. It was explicitly illegal for women to vote so Victoria Wood hall was one of thousands across the country who sought to change the system by going out, voting, getting arrested, not paying the fine, then serving a sentence in jail so that then they can appeal through the court system and they tried to change the laws that way. But they failed. There was another severe blow that was dealt to the Suffrage Movement in 1873 when the Supreme Court ruled against a woman named Virginia Minor who had tried to vote and had gone up through the court system but then the Supreme Court found that women should not vote legally in the United States. We were discussing how victoria would place her ballot in the box. Here, we have a different type of box. This one is made of metal. Where as the one victorias portrait was likely made of wood. What i like is that it says womens ballots on it. So its very much in your face that women were voting separately and most likely not on equal terms for equal types of suffrage. So could vote for municipal suffrage or school suffrage. In some states allowed women to vote in president ial elections. So this box is in elwood, indiana, which is one of those states that allowed women before 1920 to vote in the president ial elections. It was made by the barnard and company out of st. Louis and they made these boxes between 1860 and 1920. I think its really an interesting kind of piece of material culture that illuminates what womens rights were like and what it looked like and felt like. Were looking at a caricature of Victoria Woodhall. This was done in 1872. And this exemplifies some of the struggles that women were going through at the time. So if you see this is a caricature. So she has, she was known for wearing like victory roles on top of her head, but the cartoonist turned them into devils horns then fitted her with devils wings, so shes become a demon. Then shes walking away from a woman whos looking over her shoulder as if you know, maybe a little undecided that shes made her decision. Shes going up this mountain and you can tell one, two, three children shes carrying as well as the alcoholic husband strapped to her back. And so this exemplifies the choices that women had. Either you throw in your stock with somebody like woodhall who was advocating for free love at this time and that is a very, very soft term for sex outside of marriage. She was advocating that women should enjoy sex and have sex outside of marriage and why get married therefore. Why have this burden of the ill husband and all these children without any support. So she was trying to promote sort of choices that women had, but of course at the time, women werent supposed to be having sex and definitely werent supposed to be enjoying it so this was very much a taboo subject and thomas nast really captured that in the portrait as woodhall as this demon lady. So were looking at a portrait of velvet ann lockwood. She was the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court in 1880. She was arguing for cherokee land rights. She became an Expert Witness for native americans in subsequent trials. What i like about this portrait is now dignified she looks. Her hair is bound up in this beautiful coif. She has her lace collar on and it really represents her as this respectable woman. Because she was a suffragist and they were constantly being accused of being outside the bounds of femininity. And so she was actually the first woman to campaign for a presidency. I mentioned victoria who was the first woman to name herself as a candidate for presidency, but couldnt campaign because she was serving a jail sentence and yet founded the equal rights party. This is like a Democrat Party and like the Republican Party but a thirdparty ticket. The suffragists were running for president on a thirdparty ticket and its really thanks to victoria that locke was able to run in 1884, then in 1888. So shes a really good example of sort of f what women could do. She was a lawyer. She was advocating for rights in the Supreme Court. She was also running for president. Then over here, abigail, she was actively trying to persuade male legislators to change the laws of these western states and she was based in oregon and founded the new northwest, which was a newspaper in 1871 that advocated for womens rights and so a lot of people think that suffrage was only based in the northeast. But in fact, it was very, very active across the United States. There are lots of mormon women advocating for suffrage in utah and wyoming, famously became a first state to endorse suffrage for women in 1869 then utah later in 1870. So theres a nationwide approach to this movement. Probably one of the longest in United States history and the most widespread. Were in the third gallery now. This is enthe titled the new woman. It begins in 1892 and goes up to 1912. The new woman was educated, she was out on her bicycle. He was out and about. Not in the home. Physically active and this puzzled a lot of people as you can see. And this depiction of the farmer his wife and possibly his daughter. The new woman in her riding habit. Shes wearing bloomers or pants. Shes asked them for a glass of water and so of course they oblige, but as shes drinking the glass of water, theyre thinking to themselves, what is this person . Is she a woman . Is she you know, what is she doing . Why is she outside of the home . And you can really kind of tell the confusion that a lot of americans had when women started to advocate for their rights, but then also enact their rights. Enact their freedom to move around in society. And to go to school and to get educated. So magazines were picking up on this. Leslies was owned by Miriam Leslie who had married frank leslie who had died so she changed her name to become mrs. Frank leslie in order to assume the authority that it took to publish a magazine like this. And so you can see the use of the color, this is a women riding open aired carriages in a parade. And so shes obviously carrying the banner that says votes for women. It speaks to some of the privilege behind the movement so a lot of wealthy white women were the ones that were out there advocating in parades like this. In part because the parades excluded africanamericans. But they were doing, theyre doing well in getting the word out and so Miriam Leslie changed her magazine to make sure it included illustrations like this. If you study leslie after she took over, you can see a clear trajectory into the feminist causes of the era. Just kind of interesting. And finally, were going to look at an example of antisuffrage and this is from puck. This is from 1894 and new york had tried to change its state referendum to include womens right to vote. And it failed. Despite having a petition of 600,000 signatures in support of changing the states legislation, the referendum failed. It exemplifys what was happening in this era. The suffragists had taken on a state by state approach. They were no longer you know going for this sort of amendment change that had been proposed in 1870s or the judiciary changes. They were trying to do like a full court press through state by state but it wasnt going very well. It was very frustrating. Puck not supporting the womens cause. Its depicting this woman as a fanciful you know, not serious, she cant figure out how to dress herself much less fit into a voting booth so how could women even see themselves in this role of having a political voice. It depicts these women as fanciful, sort of a ditz. Theres a lot of antisuffrage that accompanied the whole movement. And the exhibition, i chose to highlight some of those examples, but not too much because i was more interested in how africanamericans evolved and what the strategies were in the movement. So were looking at two examples of womens Voting Rights in colorado. I wanted to highlight colorado because its the first state where suffragists were able to lobby and convince the male legislators to change their state constitution. To make sure women could vote. If that makes sense because when wyoming was a territory, they sort of grandfathered in the right to vote when it became a state. Women didnt have to lobby legislations when it became state to get the right to vote. It was written into their constitution. The colorado example is pretty interesting. If you come in close, you can see the three party tickets. The bottom in the ballot, this would be what they voted with in 1893. You could see equal suffrage approved. Or equal suffrage not approved. Once colorado women achieved the right to vote, they then elected female legislators. So this is a portrait of three of the four female legislators from the era from the 1893, 1894 and its Louise Kerwin and agnes riddle. So you have two democrats and one republican. And in the back weve got three portraits of africanamericans. Theres hunt on the left. Anna julia cooper in the middle. And mary church on the right. These are studio portraits made of these women while they were students at oberlin college. It was one of the first liberal arts schools in the United States to accept africanamerican students. What i love about these portraits is how young they are. You know they each went on to lead great lives. As activists. As women that were advocating for Citizenship Rights for all people of the United States. But particularly for africanamericans, cooper was was a teacher at the M Street Colored School in washington, d. C. Which is now the Dunbar High School. She was living the life of someone who truly believed in giving liberal arts enl kags to africanamericans. As did mary church terrell, who in 1893 found that the National Colored womens association, but she was also teaching at the M Street Colored School, the Dunbar High School in washington, d. C. What i like about these two women is that they were taking on the responsibility to assimilate africanamericans in a way that would give them white collar access. So they became once they went to the Dunbar High School, then college, then they were business people. Leaders. Other teachers or nurses. So they embodied that argument of w. E. Boyds and booker t. Washington into these two men had been having about how to best simulate africanamericans during the reconstruction. So booker t. Washington advocated for Technical Training where as deboise advocates for a liberal arts training and these women were walking the walk but theyre less recognized than the men and theyre very much equal to both of these men in the ways in which they were strategizing, how to make life better for africanamericans during a difficult time. These three are in this exhibition because they were not advocating for only suffrage but for other things outside the parameters of this single issue focus. Africanamerican women were doing lots and lot of activism. Even though they were still excluded from the National American womens Suffrage Association which the two fractions we were talking about in the beginning in 1870 when the Suffrage Movement divided, they had come back together in 1892 so they then moved forward with great force and good strategies. Theyre doing still the state by state strategy, but theyre also excluding africanamericans the whole time. So my point is these women were not just sitting around you know waiting on the sidelines. They were being very, very active in and of themselves within their own groups. And their own societies. And their own local communities. Were standing in front of a banner thats carried by ann in 1911. And the writing is an excerpt of scripture called glorious light. Written in 1871 by the british dean of canterbury. What i liked about this banner is how it has that sense of spiritually that i think was so important to the suffragists during the first up through the 19 teens and it also has that sense of emerging and onward and making progress forward. So i wanted to be sure to include a couple of banners that we borrowed from the National Womens party because they really speak to a lot of the thinking thats behind the movement. And also point to the activism. And so this actually concluded the first half of the exhibition. We have covered the movement up through 1912. Weve covered the first generation of suffragists and from this point on we discover sufficie suffragists still dont have the right to vote in the United States, but well trace how they switched tactics and really achieved progress in a very comparatively kmaul amount of time up through 1920 and then talk about the changes and the ongoing battle through 1965 in the second part. This was the first of a two part tour of the National Portrait gallerys votes for women exhibit, marking the centennial of the 19th amendment. You can watch this and other american artifacts programs by visiting our website at cspan. Org history
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.