Corrine hi, i am corinne porter. I am a curator here at the National Archives museum. I am going to show you around the exhibition today. Before we head into the gallery, i want to talk about this lenticular that is out in the lobby. It has a photograph of the 1913 womens suffrage march, looking up pennsylvania avenue toward the United States capital. It is overlaid with a photograph from the 2017 womens march from pennsylvania avenue as well. And it is a lenticular, which has a special effect. As you walk by, the image changes between the two. We really wanted to have it in the exhibit to help grab the publics attention, and also to signal this is a historic exhibit, but one that continues to have contemporary relevance today. Lets head into the gallery, where rightfully hers is on display. So, this is a National Archives exhibition to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. But it is more than a 19th amendment exhibition. That is because the 19th amendment, landmark voting right victory that it was for women, did not give all women the right to vote. Married women were already voters by the time the amendment was added to the constitution. But millions of women for reasons other than their sex remained unable to vote. So this exhibit looks at that story as well. We have this introductory video here that is also meant to grab peoples attention and pull them into the gallery. It also gives you a sense of what types of stories you are going to encounter here at the rightfully hers exhibition. The exhibit is organized into five sections that ask five questions, that you can see here with the women were carrying their protest banners. Those questions are, who decide who votes . Why did women fight for the vote . How did women win the 19th amendment . What was the 19th amendments impact . And what Voting Rights struggles persist . The first is, who decides who votes . This is a small, but important framing section of the exhibit. To this day, there is not a citizens right to vote in this country. And when the constitution was first ratified, it made no mention of voting qualifications. So that is really a power that was left to the states. So one of my favorite stories that really highlights the powers that states have in deciding who votes is women in new jersey who were americas first voters. Beginning in 1776 when new jersey became a state, the new jersey state constitution made no mention of sex when discussing voting qualifications. It only had a property requirement. So women who owned enough property, primarily widows and single women, so not all women in new jersey, could and did vote in elections at the local, state, and national level. And they did so for the first 30 years of the republic, until new jersey changed its law, using its power as a state to do so, to restrict the vote to just white men of property. At that point in time, women as well as africanamerican men lost the right to vote. For women, it wasnt until the 19th amendments ratification that they got the right to vote back. Lets head to the next section, which is, why did women fight for the vote . I love this section of the exhibit, because our records do a wonderful job of telling the personal story of the women, not just why they were fighting for the vote, but what the absence of the vote meant for them in terms of economics, social, legal, and other consequences. Women like emily barber. She sent a petition to congress. She was a teacher. She argued that as a woman, she has to pay equal taxes with men, but as a nonvoter has no voice in how those tax dollars are spent. She further states that with acknowledged superior capabilities for teaching and governing schools, she has been obliged to teach for one third of the wages of a male teacher in the same school. I just love to point out that this petition was sent to congress in 1879. So, 140 years ago this year, women were already arguing they needed the vote to press for equal wages. Of course, as a wage earning woman, women like emily barber, from their working experience, it was really clear how Vulnerable Women were without the vote. One of the other ways a lot of women came to ultimately fight for their right to vote was through engagement on other reform issues. Lots of women were engaged in the antislavery movement, the temperance movement, as well as the consumption of alcohol, as well as other educational, public health, and social reforms. One of the most important endorsements that the Suffrage Movement got came from the Womens Christian Temperance Union in 1881. They were the largest Womens Organization at the time. We have this petition here from the Womens Christian Temperance Union that argues that the ballot is the most potent element in all moral and social reforms. So through womens reform activity, they realized, even if they didnt initially support womens suffrage, they realized that they needed the ballot in order to really press for the changes that were most important to them. I love this section of the exhibit. It has wonderful records that tell the personal stories from individual women who fought for the vote. We really wanted to include as many voices and arguments as we could from women and men who fought for womens Voting Rights. So we also developed this projection display that includes beautiful portraits, as well as quotes from other women and men who were active in the Suffrage Movement, arguing why women needed the vote. Working women must use the ballot in order to abolish the burning and crushing of our bodies for the profit of a very few. The rights and interests of the female part of the community are often times forgotten or disregarded, a consequence of their deprivation of political rights. Corrine lets move on to the third section of the exhibit, which is really the focal point of the exhibit. Its the largest section. How did women win the 19th amendment . In this part of the exhibit, we look at the diversity of women, as well as strategies that were engaged in the fight to ultimately win the 19th amendment. This is a more than sevendecade, multigenerational struggle. So there are a lot of stories we tell in this action of the exhibit. But we begin at one of the first critical juncture points in the struggle for womens Voting Rights. That came at the end of the civil war when women suffragists, many of whom were also engaged in the antislavery movement, hoped that as the government considered the rights of freed men that women may also gain the right to vote at the same time. Here, we have a petition for universal suffrage. That is for everyone to get the right to vote. From 1866. Its signed by a number of women whose names are pretty familiar with the womens Suffrage Movement, including susan b. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady stanton, and lucy stone, and they are really urging the government to consider extending the right of suffrage to women as it considers doing so for newly emancipated africanamerican men. Unfortunately for them, the government did not listen to their pleas. And once the 15th amendment passed congress, it was clear that women, both africanamerican and white women, were not going to get the right to vote. This really created a huge amount of tension among women suffragists. They were divided over whether or not to support the 15th amendment, and it created something that is called the schism in the Suffrage Movement. Two new National Organizations were formed. The first one was the National Womens suffrage association. That was founded by anthony and stanton. They did not support the 15th amendment. They focused their work from that point onward to fighting for a constitutional amendment that would give women the right to vote. Here, we have a petition from the american women suffrage association, which was founded by lucy stone, her husband, and other suffragists. They did support the 15th amendment. However, they focused their efforts on women winning the right to vote at the state and local level. They werent necessarily opposed to a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. However, they didnt really feel it was they werent very optimistic at the success of a constitutional amendment at this point in time. One of the really fascinating things about the womens Suffrage Movement is that after women lost the vote in new jersey in 1807, the first states to give women the right to vote beginning in 1869 were in the west. Wyoming territory was the first territory at the time to give women the vote and became the first state to do so when they obtained statehood in 1890. Interestingly, no states east of the mississippi gave women the right to vote in the 19th century. Here, we have a petition from utah. It was a really interesting case because utah had a mormon majority legislature. Congress was really opposed to the practice of polygamy, made a number of efforts in the later part of the 19th century to try and outlaw the practice of plural marriage. This petition is from women who had already gotten the right to vote from utah when congress was trying to pass legislation to outlaw polygamy, and they make lovely arguments about the fact that women managed to maintain their respectability as voters and really urged congress not to take the vote away from them when they passed that legislation. Congress was not successful in doing so at this point in time, but just about a decade later women in utah did lose the vote when Congress Passed antipolygamy legislation, but once utah got its statehood, they gave the vote back to women. One more interesting thing about this story is that this is the only Time Congress took the vote away from women as well. So the womens Suffrage Movement took more than 70 years. Generations of women had to fight for their right to vote. One of the reasons it took so long for the Suffrage Movement to be successful was because there was fierce opposition to enfranchising women, not just from male politicians, but a lot of women as well. This was a period of time of great social change, womens roles, in particular outside of the home, were shifting dramatically, and lots of women really resisted that change. We had this fantastic petition from more than 850 women, who urged congress not to give them the vote, and they make a number of different arguments for why they dont want the vote. I am just going to read one of them to you. So they argue that, because these changes must introduce a fruitful element of discord in the existing marriage relation, which would tend to the infinite detriment of children and increase the already alarming prevalence of divorce in this country. This petition comes from 1872, so pretty remarkable that that argument was being made already back then. And weve got this great graphic here that shows the mother heading out the door on election day while her husband is left at home with the children and doing all the cooking and cleaning, and really speaks to the fears that a lot of antisuffragists had at that point in time. So, certainly lots of women and men were opposed to giving women the right to vote because of how it might change, in particular, the family dynamic. But that was not the only reason that antisuffragists were opposed to giving women the right to vote. So we have this section, this exhibit case that looks at the way that race came into the discussion and the debate over giving women the right to vote. Racebased arguments were used on both sides of the Suffrage Movement, not only for or against giving women the right to vote, but also for or against doing so through a constitutional amendment. We have this really fascinating postcard from the Georgia Association opposed to womens suffrage. I will just read a couple of arguments that the postcard makes to vote against womens suffrage. Because universal suffrage wipes out the disenfranchisement of the negro by state law, and because White Supremacy must be maintained. It makes pretty clear that Southern States in particular, especially because they had been able after the 15th amendments ratification, after the end of reconstruction, had been able to implement discriminatory measures that pretty effectively disenfranchised a lot of africanamerican men, they feared that giving women the right to vote, in particular africanamerican women, would undermine that effort. This was a critical issue in the Suffrage Movement, but it is also really important and was a goal of this exhibit that we highlight the Critical Role that africanamerican suffragists played in the fight for womens Voting Rights, in particular the ultimate success of the 19th amendment. We have this petition here from washington, d. C. , signed by both africanamerican men and women, urging congress to pass a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote. Something i find really fascinating about this petition is that these are petitioners from the District Of Columbia, and at this period in time, 1877, when this petition was signed, there were no Voting Rights in the District Of Columbia. Something else that is really interesting about this petition is it is signed by two of Frederick Douglasss children, including Frederick Douglass junior at the top of the mens column and rosetta douglas sprague, who signed it mrs. Nathan sprague on top of the womens column. All of the documents we looked at so far in this exhibition are in the holdings of the National Archives, and the National Archives preserves them for future generations. I think it is really spectacular that a petition that you sent to congress today, just as these africanamerican petitioners did in 1877, becomes part of the National Archives holdings, and we are really fortunate that we have it here today to help tell the story. Thus far on this tour, we have seen lots of petitions. Women, when they were pressing for their Voting Rights, really only had their First Amendment rights available to them to press their government for their rights and for political change. But one of the other First Amendment rights that suffragists use, the freedom to assemble, they used pretty effectively as well to gain greater visibility and public attention in particular for their cause. We have this great wall mural here of one of many suffrage parades that were staged throughout the country. This one is here in washington, d. C. , from 1913. It was one of the most consequential marches that was staged. Women more than 5000 suffragists participated in this march. It was held the day before Woodrow Wilsons first president ial inauguration. I hope that you can see here, this is all the space that these women had to march up pennsylvania avenue. This photograph is actually digitized from a congressional hearing that was held after the march was over. Because the police really didnt do very much to control the crowd. The suffragists could barely make their way through the crowd at points, and they faced verbal harassment and even some instances of assault as well, as they marched through this unfriendly crowd. And the police argued that there were just too many people, so they couldnt possibly keep the crowds back. But of course, as you can see here, there is plenty of room. They could have opened the way for these women to march peacefully for their rights. One of the women that we know who participated in that march is Marie Baldwin. She is a native american woman. We thought it was really important in particular because many of the photographs you see from the womens Suffrage Movement are primarily white women marching and protesting for their vote. But we know that women of color were there and were important to the movement, and we really wanted to make sure to spotlight their stories whenever we could. We know Marie Baldwin was a participant of the suffrage march here in washington, d. C. This is actually her official personnel file photo. She worked for what is today the bureau of indian affairs. I think it is a lovely photo, and i love that she chose to wear her traditional native dress for the picture as well. And i also want to just point out that ida b. Wells barnett was another woman of color who participated in the 1913 suffrage march and was a really critical activist, not only for womens suffrage, but for a number of different issues. Throughout the gallery, we have womens photographs in these gold frames. We just wanted to make sure we pulled in as many different womens stories and highlighting the Important Role that they played in the struggle for womens Voting Rights. Youll see that throughout the gallery. So women petitioned, they marched, and they protested. The fight for womens Voting Rights would not have been successful if, as i said at the start of this tour, millions of women were not already voters. Thats because their states chose to give them the right to vote, beginning with the wyoming territory in 1869. Some states chose to give women equal Voting Rights with men, and other states chose to extend partial or limited suffrage to women. We have some great records that help tell the story of partial suffrage in p