Rightfully hers begins with the struggle for suffrage but doesnt end with the 129th the 19th amendment ratification. Both the Immediate Impact of the suffrage amendment and struggles that persisted into modern day. Up, is theer, stand curator of that exhibit. [applause] one of the goals of the exhibit is to recognize both the broad diversity of the suffrage activists, the american many faces of women barred from voting. As susan ware does in why they marched, the exhibit looks beyond the familiar names of susan b anthony, elizabeth caddy stanton and alice paul and brings to our attention activist from a variety of backgrounds showing across race and class. Susan ware, a pioneer in the field of womens history and leading feminist biographer, is the auditor and editor of numerous books on u. S. History, including american womens history, a very short introduction. Still missing, Amelia Earhart and the search for modern feminism, and letter to the world, seven women who shipped the american century. Educated at Wellesley College and harvard university, she has taught at New York University and harvard where she served as editor of the biographical dictionary american women completing the 20th century. Since 2012 she has served as general editor of the American National biography which has long been associated with , and has participated in our charade before creating this exhibit. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome susan ware. [applause] susan thank you. It is a pleasure to be here, and all of you who have turned out for my talk, you are the price part of the price of admission you should go and see , the exhibit which is fantastic. It really both tells the story of the Suffrage Movement but also brings it up to the present and makes the case why its important for us all to be engaging with. And so i think that being here today on opening day is for me also a perfect way to launch my book, which was just published on monday, so it feels like an exciting event. Why they marched is a book of stories about womens struggle for the vote, told through the biographies of some, told through biographies and objects, so it seems appropriate to start with one of those objects. A tree plaque. And the story behind it. In the spring of 1919, just as womens suffrage leader were facing the final arduous process of winning ratification of the 19th amendment, Carrie Chapman cats and her longtime personal companion and suffragists bought a 17 acre farm in westchester county. Soon after moving in, cat commissioned a series of 12 metal tree plaques memorializing the giant of the Suffrage Movement. Women like Elizabeth Cady stanton, susan b anthony, and Hannah Howard shaw. Later that summer she carefully installed the tree plaques throughout the property. A suffragists has a great deep sense of history. They were the first womens historians and they had begun documenting this history long before the movement was successful. Withg a walk in the woods Carrie Chapman katz was like taking a course in suffrage history. But as charming as this was, it provides an imperfect model for this book which aimed to probe more deeply into some of the more complex and hidden pockets of the history of the struggles for the vote than suffragists at the time were willing to acknowledge. Racism is an obvious place to start. Consistent with the deep seeded prejudices held by most white suffragists, kat included no plaques to commemorate the thousands of African American women who participated in the struggle. Then there is eurocentrism, the international suffragists honored in the forest were all from western european countries, not from countries in south america, asia or africa which kat condescendingly believed needed to look to first world women for guidance, and add to that regional chauvinism all the domestic suffragists were from the east coast with new york state heavily overrepresented. No one from california, no one from the west, and no one from the south unless you count of these sisters who were born there but left because of their abhorrence of slavery. Finally it is hard to ignore a clear personal snub. No plaque for her arrival alice, whose upstart National Womens party caused much consternation for kat and her mainstream organization in the final stages of the suffrage fight. For too long the history of womens suffrage has put forward a version that closely parallels story, aapman cats topheavy story dominated by a few iconic leaders all whites and native born and the National Organizations they founded and led. Moving decisively away from that outdated approach uncovers a much broader, more diverse suffrage history waiting to be told. This new suffrage history shifts the framework of focus away from National Leadership to highlight the women and occasionally the men, who made womens suffrage happen to actions large and small, courageous and quirky, in states and communities across the nation. Telling these stories, the suffrage stories, captures the broadbased movement where it actually happened on the ground. Ray ofr the long gear of thelong duree campaign, women who had never participated in politics found themselves doing things they never would have thought possible filing lawsuits, Holding Public protests, collecting signatures on petitions, lobbying members of congress marching in suffrage , parades, even risking arrest and imprisonment for the cause. Women may not have fundamentally changed politics when they began to exercise the franchise, but as an aside i would ask, does anyone ever hold men to that standard . But leaving that question unanswered, many womens lives were profoundly affected by participation in the struggles to win the vote. In my book, i hope, captures those personal and political transformations. But history isnt just made up of written documents and tests. Texts. Objects and artifacts play key roles as well especially in the creation of personal and group identities. And this insight is especially relevant for social Movement Like suffrage which came to embrace Popular Culture and public spectacle as a primary strategy to win support for its cause. Suffrage objects like buttons, banners, leaflets and posters are especially evocative in connecting every day lives with the broader movement. In many cases they literally were, to borrow a phrase from novelist tim obrien, the things they carried. This characters broadly define include both human actors and in in animate objects hints at the suffrage history waiting to be tapped. My story has covered the span of the suffrage struggle but with a tilt, lilt toward 209th toward 20th century. Profiles and object from the west, south and midwest promised a more Representative National story and the inclusion of , African American and working class suffrage stories remind us that the movement was not just white and middle class. With the exception of susan b. Anthony, none of them held a toptier leadership position. Instead they represent the broad diversity of rank and file suffragism. So what are some of these suffrage stories you have never heard of . Let me start with the cookbook. Published by the Washington Equal Suffrage Association as part of their Successful Campaign to pass a state suffrage referendum in 1910. In addition to the cheerful logo, votes for women, good things to seek on its cover, of cover, the cookbook contains what to me was a somewhat surprising chapter on mountaineering, specifically what to cook when you are on a mountaineering expedition. That to set up the story of cora smith eaten, a pioneering western physician. She was the first woman licensed to Practice Medicine in north dakota who served as treasurer of the Washington State suffrage organization. Eaten was also an avid mountaineer who climbed all 7 major peaks in the Mount Rainier range and planted a vote for women pen it on the summit of pennant on the summit of the Columbia Crest in 1909. Unfortunately that pennant has not survived or i would have chosen that object to accompany her biography. And then there is the first issue of the Salt Lake City periodical, the womens exponent, from june 1, 1872, which mentioned whoops, one slide too fast. There we go. There. Here we have it. But you are still not going to be able to read the small type, so i will tell you that this front page mentions both susan b. Anthony and polygamy, and that sets up the story of his longtime editor emmaline wells, a polygamist mormon wife who was also an avid suffragist. Utah holds a special place in suffrage history because the territory enfranchised its women in 1870. Wyoming was the first territory in 1869. However unlike wyoming, since the vast majority of utah voters were mormons, it was impossible to separate voting from the issue of polygamy, and suffragists split between gingerly acknowledging mormon women as allies versus emphatically refusing to have anything to do with them. And the story of emmaline well suffrage career shows how the seemingly straightforward question of votes for women became entangled in one of the most hotly contested legal and moral questions of the 19th century. This poster from the interNational WomensSuffrage Alliance conference in budapest in 1913 reinforces the International Dimensions of the suffrage cause and sets up a the story of a local favorite, mary church carol, and africanamerican suffragist. Carols suffrage philosophy was built around an intersectional vision that embraced race as well as gender. An implicit challenge to white suffragists who tended to focus only on the subordination created by their sex. Her vision for suffrage and race relation was also grounded in an International Framework that placed the domestic situation in the United States in dialogue with customs abroad. But when she spoke at foreign conferences, such as the International Console of women thus council of women in berlin in 1904, she was often the only woman of color in attendance. Hazel came to suffrage from the world of theater. Her claim to fame is staging a pageant called allegory, right here in washington, on the step s of the Treasury Building as part of alice pauls suffrage parade, timed to coincide with Woodrow Wilsons inauguration, in 1913. This is something you can learn more about in the exhibit. Led by the command commanding figure of columbia, and this is a commanding figure if there ever was approximately 100 one, actors, all female except for one boy, staged a series of tableaux as marchers streamed past on pennsylvania avenue. She demonstrates the bold ways that suffragists took over public space and deployed spectacles to build support for their cause. And finally, a personal favorite, a totally unknown Massachusetts Woman named clayborn catlin who in decided 1914 to ride across the state on horseback alone. And without having raised any money, which meant she was dependent on donations to cover her expenses and also to feed her horse. She did this in order to rally support for the cause. Over the course of four months, she organized 59 meetings, visited 37 cities and towns and covered 530 miles. All of her personal belongings plus a parcel of leaflets, a horse blanket and a shoulder strap, which said votes for women, had to fit in a pair of brown canvas saddle bags which she later donated to the flesh ingerre the schles library. Clayborn is an example of an ordinary doing extraordinary things in order of these suffrage cause. Other stories describe a husband sisters whom, two were on opposite sides of the suffrage divide, a lesbian couple whose neighbors dubbed them the farmers suffrageette. I dont think that was a compliment. A bestselling southern novelist who wrote one that tanked, and artist gave up her painting career to become a suffrage cartoonist, and africanamerican activist, ida b wells, who refused to march in a segregated suffrage parade, and several more i dont have time to mention. Even though each story and its accompanying object stands on its own, when read together, they provide a surprisingly comprehensive history of the entire movement. And if i have chosen my 19 objects and subjects well, the whole truly will add up to more than the sum of the parts. And if there is a clear take away to these suffrage stories, its that we need to keep lives in focus while we also track the big picture, even though they were often only the foot soldiers. Remember, not everybody wants to be head of an organization or a president or a general, their rank and file contributions made a difference to the Larger Movement and to the participants themselves. Their hard fought suffrage victory, the culmination of three generations of sustained political motivation and spirited public advocacy represent a breakthrough for american women as well as a major step forward for american democracy. Important is the goal of suffrage was however, the struggle was always far broader than just the franchise. Speaking to fundamental questions about womens role in politics in modern life. Who gets to vote also raises profound questions about the relationship between citizenship and suffrage over time. Think of suffragists as the Voting Rights activists of their day. The Suffrage Campaign honed womens political skills, and they put those skills to good use in the decades after the area in its large perspective, it was not a hard stop but part of a continuum of womens political motivation that stretches across all of American History, not just just tween a seneca falls in 1848 and the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. Inappropriate, still appropriate, indeed welcome to celebrate the upcoming centennial as an important marker in american womens history. But rather than positioning 1920 as the end of the story, it is more fruitful to see it as initiating the next phase in the National Womens political activism a story still unfolding. Another reason for the centering 1920 concerns the plight of African American voters for whom the 19th amendment was at most a hollow victory. In 1920 the vast majority of African Americans still live in the south where their Voting Rights were effectively eliminated by devices such as whites only primary, poll taxes and literacy tests. For African Americans it was the Voting Rights act of 1965, not the 14th, 15th or 19th amendment that finally removed the structural barriers to voting. And in a parallel disenfranchisement, few native american women gained the votes through the 19th amendment either. In addition to the importance of suffrage of Womens Womens demands for the vote , emerges as an integral part of the history of feminism. Because the protests womens exclusion from voting, demanded an assault on attitudes and ideologies that treated women as second class citizens and to formulate that challenge involves conceptualizing women as a group whose collective situations need to be addressed. Even though white suffragists were often clueless that they were speaking primarily from their own privileged, class and race positions, the growing consciousness of womens Common Concerns fostered a sense of sister hood unusual in early 020th century america. Special groups of women, often women of color were excluded from supposedly universal vision, demonstrates how racism intercept weekend feminism throughout the women suffrage move. And aftermath. Contemporary feminists have significantly broadened their commitment to recognize the diversitied womens experiences and work hard to include multiple perspectives within the broader feminists framework but it is still a struggle. The Suffrage Movement is part that story, warts and all. Stepping back, i see a dress line from the spectacle from the Suffrage Campaign to the sea of pink hats worn at the Womens Marchs at marchs across the country to protest the inauguration of donald trump. The play book the suffrages pioneered down to their distinctive colors and seizure of public spaces provides a clear blueprint for the mobilization of women in our contemporary political landscape. The wave of female candidates in last years midterm elections and the unprecedented numbers of women who have already declared they are running for president in 2020 are another clear legacy. The diversity of these candidates 0 muslims, asians, jewish, may seem like an an operation when set against the all right history but these breakthrough directly filled on the demands for fair and equitable access, political realm that were central to the struggles to win the rights of vote in the first place williams 1920, williams haskel published a book hail of the Suffrage Campaign which i discovered fairly early in my research and i return to it many times when i was writing my book. Comprised of a series of fictional sketches telling the story through the eyes of ordinary, and extraordinary suffrage workers going about their daily business of incredibly d