Engaged large numbers of women in the political process. A part of the campaign was getting the message out to the nation and shifting Public Opinion to support their case. Tonight we learn about the Suffrage Movement communication machine and how it contributed to the movements success. To introduce our panelists id like to welcome nancy tate to the stage. Sinceo 2015 shes served as cochair of the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative and also is on the board of the turning point suffragist morial from 2000 to 2015 served as the executive director of the league of women voters and is serving the National Academy of Public Administration and also served in the department of energy and department of education and the office of economic opportunity. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome nancy tate. [applause] well, thank you. Its so wonderful to be here at the National Archives especially in light of their new exhibit that hes just mentioned, rightfully hers. Ive just seen it and encourage then of many of you who have not seen it make a effort to do so. I am nancy tate, the cochair of the 2020 womens Vote Centennial Initiative and the former executive of the league of women voters of the United States. The league is one of the cofounders of the organization. It is a collaboration of scholars around the country. Our goal is to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment in 2020 and to shed light on the powerful but little known 2year struggle 72year struggle to vote. T was developed in 1920 by kat, the National American womens suffrage association. So 2020 is also the 100th anniversary of the league and we will be celebrating that across the country in our nearly 800 state and local leagues. But just a little bit more about wvci which is our acronym. We do two main sets of things. One is working to establish networks around the country of interested organizations and individuals who would like to know more about the centennial because we want to promote efforts to learn about this important aspect of American History and commemorate it and commemorate the full story of that struggle. Here in the d. C. Area we sponsor educational events like this one and coordinate with exhibits, starting to be held, as this one is, in the various museums and liearies around the city. This program is part of our women and the votes symposium series. This is the third one weve done in collaboration with the National Archives and aim to have more here in 2019 and 2020. They will focus on probably not well known aspects of the overall Suffrage Movements and its struggle and highlight points of relevance to contemporary issues. The 72year fight for womens suffrage is a powerful historic story and did be used to enhas our undergo of our own world and how to navigate it. You can learn more about wvci and the resources were making april by it willing us on witter and instagram using the market 2020centennial. Im pleased to browse tonights panel. The moderator tamara keith who is a White House Correspondent and part of the politics monday team on the pbs news hour. Shes going to lead a conversation with betsy griffith, author of in her own right about the suffragist Katie Stanton, linda lumston, author of the book rampant women and the right of assembly. And Rebecca Boggs robert, author of suffrages in washington, d. C. , the 1913 parade and the fights of the vote. Panel and tamara, i turn it over to you. [applause] thank you, everyone, for being here and thank you for the panel for being here. Im going to let you carry all the heavyweight on this but, you know, we know how the story ends. The story ends with the 19th amendment to the constitution being ratified and we all get to vote. So the question im hoping we can cover tonight is how we got here and how we got to the end of that story in 1920 starting, though, in the 1900s because its a long story. So linda, i think that you have at least a bit of an overview you can give us and also you can start the very inning beginning or early part of the century. Ill condense it because it is a long story. And thank you so much for having me. When youre talking about the Suffrage Movement, so much of it is about communication and targeting. And very simply, what really was an impetus for women wanting to vote in the 72year struggle was in the 20th century when it took to the streets. And basically its the emergence i would say of public women in the United States and i know in Washington People are very famous about the 1913 parade down pennsylvania avenue that was mobbed by a bunch of men. Women first started assembling in the 19th century and was a big deal and was threatening for women to get together in conventions to share ideas and get a sense of community. From that they moved on in the 20th century to soapboxing. This is a big deal because women would claim a little bit of the public turf. Traditionally male territory had been the public sphere and women had been rely vated to the domestic sphere which basically cut them out of the political process. I would say women taking to the first soapbox is really a big deal. Also, too, women started a petition going back to the Abolition Movement in the mid 1,800s. This was a big deal for a woman who was supposed to be happy to just be in her house, to go outside that house and down the street and knock on somebodys door and ask them to sign a petition. That was a political act not only for that solicitor but also for that woman who signed that petition and also started raising their consciousness about their own oppression in their lives. By the time we get to the 1910s which well focus on, women will take one more step and start the parade. The first real suffrage parade i know in new york was back in 1908 where a woman named maude malone who was influenced by the british suffragettes organized six women to mark down the street but a thousand people followed them because it was a big deal. Its so unusual for women to take to the streets and think of all the negative association that goes with that. Again, women are going to get bolder. There will be the annual fifth avenue parade in new york city will become a huge event. The First National suffrage parade will be quite the spectacle. And its real interesting and the suffrage will create their own will message and have a relationship through mainstream media. Creating their own press will be an impetus and really help women emerge in the public sphere and will change them both. It will change womens rule and our concept of the public series. The petitions linda is referring to are actually here in the archives among the many other treasures that are here. No one would have known that lizabeth Katie Stanton and lucutia lamont had the meeting in seneca falls if the telegraph wire had not been strung along the eerie canal. When word got out that women and men had voted on 11 resolutions, one of which was the right to vote, across the telegraph lines people were enraged. Had there not been a telegraph line, no one would have known but the paper. You had to think they corresponded and stanton is writing to her chum susanne b. Anthony who didnt get involved until 1852. I need to typewriters are invented, minimumo graph machines are invented, and these relationships with the newspaper are creating your own. Elizabeth cafy stanton create add newspaper in 1870 called the revolution which failed almost immediately because they refused to take advertisements from quack medicines. They thought they murdered women. They refused that revenue and failed. In contrast, lucy stone with her womens journal publishes another faction of the sufficient gra jets until 1935. But i want to start by challenging the premise of the panel. Media and the movement. I think media made the movement, but power, the power of women voting, made the amendment. They are used in two different ways in the Suffrage Movement. He power is represented by carry chapman cat. Who could influence the president. I also think that lindas point about marching in the streets, taking this little bits of the public sphere, and bigger bits of the public sphere, thats what the women were counting on. The outrage worked for them. Thats why it was newsworthy. Thats why they all wore white so it looked great in pictures. Thats why one of the pictures was the pageant on the treasury steps during the 1913 march. This one. Isnt that a great picture . The treasury stuff, then as now, this big broad marble plaza in front. It has nothing to do with suffrage, boy, does it look great on the newspaper. Still the cover of my book 100 years later. All of those considerations about what they are doing is a little bit transgressive and a little bit shocking. Thats what makes it newsworthy. They knew that the public sphere was not theirs to own. One thing that was remarkable in reading about this period is at some point they decided that they should go pickett, or protest outside of the white house. And yet this was like really controversial. Go there right now. There would be 50 people picketing every day. People basically lived there. The idea that this was controversial and yet this was a way that they got attention. Alice was an expert in publicity. She really was. She was the beginning. She was an expert in Public Relations before the term was found. These women helped create the whole field. And also when they first started picketing the white house, we werent at war yet, and they were tolerated. They were silenced. It was very transgressive. Once we declared war in april four months later, thats when it really enraged the public. They were considered can as traitors, scum of the earth. A lot of scalors roaming around washington, d. C. , they would get drunk and attack them. Who do you think in trouble . The women did. They were sent to jail. That created a whole other level. They leaned in. Do we keep picketing the white house during wartime . Criticizing your president during wartime people think is treasonous. It suddenly becomes a wold bolderer statement. Becomes a bolder statement. You cant read this but this is first of all what would these women do with social media, right . This is a tweet. But its this very directly critical message directed to the russian envoys about tell the president that hes the biggest challenge to american liberty. I dont know if we have a picture. One called the Keyser Wilson banner. Takes a beam out of your own eye. These women were not backing down from the idea that wartime was a time when they might lose sympathy. But they were not breaking any laws. When they were arrested made up, obstructing the traffic on the sidewalk. Not a thing. I want you to talk about how they made the most out of being arrested. Well, first of all just for women to pickett they chose women volunteered in droves until the arrests began. And then black women like mary d her daughter, phyllis, and working women and mothers stopped picketing when the arrests got serious because they couldnt interrupt their lives in that way. From january until april, january until inauguration was the first batch of ticketing, 1917, march was inauguration at that time. It was just so shocking that women would hold pickett signs no matterer how well dressed and put together and matronly or college delegation, whatever it was, that alone was shocking to people. The press would walk out of the white house, tip his hat, offer coffee, they ignored him. When they start ratcheting up. They will protest during the war, they actually get pushed off the headlines. They arer out of the news until june when the russian pickett goes up. And then they decide they cant pickett every day. The tensions have gotten too great. So they wait until the fourth of july and carry not only their pickett signs but an American Flag, thinking who is going to attack the American Flag . Alice is in the hospital at Johns Hopkins and lucy burns, whom she met in a jail in london when they had both been arrested forer picketing, takes over and shes even bolder. Shes the one who comes up with the Kaiser Wilson pickett. They are shrewd enough to begin to quote the president s words. So the judge cannot charge them with sedition. They can only be charged with obstructing traffic. For that because they are not caving, the judge has to keep adding to the sentence. The original sentence was a threeday jail term or 25 fine. And the women in a pattern that civil rights marchers would follow, said well fill the jails. These women are going to jail and people are shocked that the government would put women in jail. Then the government ends up putting women in jail for one month and two months. And seven months. Alice fall and rose were the only two to be forcefed because they go on Hunger Strike. They go on Hunger Strike because they are protesting they are political prisoners. They ought not to be there and to protest they do the Hunger Strike. The First Americans to ask for political prisoner status which is amazing. They had to sneak the news out to their friends through the jail bars or throwing rocks out the window because nobody knew what was happening inside the jail. Part of the communication strategy was getting the news out. And alice was hunger striking. Once she started she couldnt quit. There is a great story. The only thing she had to read was her oxford book of english verse. Somehow she scribbled a note on there to the people outside, make sure you use all this. It makes excellent ammunition. Somehow she smuggled that out. They did. I heard she had all five of her daily newspapers delivered to the jail. And she had her stenographer ome once a week before she got she writes her mother thats the plan. Maybe shes trying to reassure her mother. Was declaring themselves political prisoners, did that help the movement . Or no . Going to jail help the movement . It was taken entirely that was the strategic that pingerson, the more radical wing of the british Suffrage Movement. Ultimately the National Womens party were called radical here. They had nothing on the British Movement. The radicals of the British Movement were throwing bricks through windows. They tried to set fire to the ministers house. Slap policemen in the face. American women were standing outside with a sign. Ok. That strategy if you are arrested, demand political prisoner status, if they refuse t go on Hunger Strike. I think i agree with you, linda, she was a brilliant strategist and p. R. Person and turned amazing situations to her advantage. She had a little bit of blind spot there where she would follow pinkhursts examples and not think through whether they translated to an american system. In 1915, 1916 when she tried that party in power strategy, campaigned against even prosuffrage democrats to hold their feet to the fire, that works better in parliamentary. I think the political prisoner thing was a little bit similar. It was a tactic that had worked elsewhere and she didnt necessarily think through with it. The finger on the major weakness of alice paul. She was politically naive in an american system. She imported not only these outdoor tactics but a parliamentary plan. Beginning immediately after the march she wants to hold the democrats in power because wilson won the presidency, the democrats had taken over the house and senate. There was bipartisan opposition. Mostly southern democrats. And there was bipartisan support. So Carrie Chapman cat refers to pauls strategy as stupendously stupid. The two of them i feel like they would have had to dream ach out out. Cat was unbelievably diligent lobbyist, if this neat steeth needed a referendum. And that needed two successive legislatures she had that down. She never would have been bold enough to pickett at the white house. She was trying to woo wilson. She wanted to be considered that nice nonthreatening mrs. Cat. Ill meet with her. Its an inside game. Outside game. Make the moderate look more moderate. Several historians have argued they were perfect good cop, bad cop relationship. It was easier for wilson do deal with Carrie Chapman cat because she looked in her larger, more conservative organization. So much more patriotic in comparison to these al list pauls. Alice pauls. You have stanton and Carrie Chapman cat and ann howarder shaw and allison lucy. And its a motherdaughter competition. Both cat and paul were these dynamic, charismatic, very attractive, powerful speakers whose followers would have followed them off a cliff to the white house, to tennessee for the ratification. But what cat had and what womens suffrage is women getting the vote from all those referendum, all those state legislatures, we wouldnt have gotten the vote if it had only been paul and the protest. You had to have cat. You could have won the vote if you hadnt had paul. I also sorry. Once it went to the states for ratification, the fact that cat had all of these state level organizations was vital. I was hoping we could tease that out a little bit. In terms of the political structure of how this worked, they were out in the states trying to build movements in the states, trying to get state level things passed. And the national movement. When the 15th amendment was passed and it enfrance chiesed black men and no women there was a huge split in the Suffrage Movement. There were people like lucy stern and julia ward howl who said well fight for women next. There were meme like stanton and anthony who said if we accept the 15th amendment, its going to be a w