Thank you for coming out. I hope the rain will let up. This is the 100 anniversary of ratification of the 19th th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment. Angela dodson has put together a table sort of almanac titles remember the ladies. A documents the long struggles for suffrage for women in this country. It recalls what Abigail Adams said to her husband at the time of the drafting of the constitution. Letters,n sources, speeches, newspaper accounts, photos, drawings, angela highlights the milestones in historic push for womens Voting Rights. Her book provides portraits of a number of the leaders of the womens Suffrage Movement. It places that movement in the social of other major and Political Developments that were unfolding. Men turnre women than out to vote, but lest anyone think the fight is over, just recall the massive turnout on the mall last january, reaffirming womens rights in effectively protesting donald trump selection. Angela has lots of experience reporting stories. She is a veteran journalist, with stints at the washington star and courierjournal, landing at the new york times. Became the first africanAmerican Woman voted to a Senior Editor position. She left the paper about two decades ago. She has written for various publications, including a black issues book review. Ghostwritten aor number of books. Angela will be in conversation here this evening with two other accomplished journalist, carol richard, a Founding Editor of usa today, and currently a lecturer at George WashingtonUniversity School of media and public affairs, and dorothy who has been a longtime columnist for the Washington Post and herself is writing a memoir at the moment that is due out a little more than a year from now. So we hope to see her back for that. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming angela, carol, and dorothy. [applause] dorothy good afternoon or good evening, everybody. Im glad you weathered the rain to join us. [inaudible] [laughter] will have my friends at cspan edit that out. Good evening everyone. My name is dorothy knows who just heard it is a pleasure to be here at politics and prose. It is very good to welcome all of you. We are excited about angelos new book, remember the ladies. Before i turned it over and ask angela some questions, i want to introduce someone else that was very important in the production of this book, angelas editor from her book group, adrian ingram, would you stand for just a moment and wave your hand . [applause] thank you. Thank you. Angela, i think like many people, i thought i knew something about the Suffrage Movement until i read your very riveting book. Of the give five or six key moments in the Suffrage Movement . Angela yes, i thought i knew something about the movement until i started writing about it. The key moments are these, considerednt always the first Womens Convention of the Antislavery Movement to be the beginning of the movement. That was in 1938. The other seminal moment would have been when women start 1838 in public, saw somebody shaking their heads. Seminal moment would be when women started addressing public audiences. Because women were not supposed to and were not allowed to speak in their churches except for quaker women, but a free woman of color began speaking out on the Antislavery Movement, the education of girls, and other public issues around 1831. She was followed by two white women who had been born into slaveholding families in South Carolina and became quakers and moved to philadelphia and became active in the Antislavery Movement. They had to fight for the right to speak in public. Criticized. Dely ministers wrote encyclicals condemning them for doing so. Conventionneca falls , which was mostly quaker women, but also another woman, within a week and i have, conceived, cold, and publicize the meeting ed, and publicized the meeting. 1850 tonal moment was 1860 when women met annually in conventions. They had not settled on the vote as a key issue, so they were not calling themselves suffragists, but they kept meeting to talk ,bout property rights, custody divorce, and a lot of these women were simultaneously involved in a temperance movement, which became a womens issue. The next seminal moment was after the civil war, because some of the women want to support the 14th and 15th amendments giving black men who had been slaves the right to toe, and some did not want work for that unless the womens void was going to be included, and vote was going to be included. They were told that was not on the table. Some people, like Susan B Anthony, did not take it well and formed an organization to fight for womens suffrage. Faction stayed with the 14th amendment and 15th unlimited issue, as well as the womens vote. The next seminal moment was when those two groups get back together 20 years later and finally have some energy to move. Period whenis a the states, more states, begin to give women the vote and beginning in 1917, new york womens suffrage for voting in new york. Then there are some states that follow after that. Ratification, is which occurs with the final vote in tennessee. I devote a chapter to just winning in tennessee. I think that thing that struck me the most about this vastwas the fast expanse of time. 1776. Tter was written in years latert 150 that women got the vote, 150 years. That is a long time. It has been almost 100 years since hillary ran for president and won the popular vote. I will tell you the number of times, a program angela was talking about, the number of times they got hope above hope they were going to get there and their hopes were dashed. ok, i gett that that. There were all these things that disturb them. Did that help . In. Y didnt w n in 2016dnt wi even though we won the popular vote, which means there is more work to do. Another thing i want to point out about angelos book, the majority of White American women voted for donald trump. You can see this is not going to be easy. That, thereuild on were about 96 of africanamerican women who voted for hillary clinton. Do you think it is possible that women will ever get together and vote as a tribe so they can elect a woman president . I think they will, but it would take maybe this administration that will be a blessing in disguise. The fact that 53 of white women voted for donald trump, particularly given the misogynistic campaigning and phrases, grabbing things and whatever, and that 96 of women could still, black women who voted, could vote for hillary without concern for her race, particularly, people keep saying some people thought that hillary was a flawed candidate and therefore they could not vote for her. Always, and that is we have collected 45 flawed men. One of them was blessedly africanamerican, but he was not perfect either. Women,ave to decide as when is it going to be important enough for us to do one for the girls . I have to put aside Everything Else and say it is more our nation has never elected a woman, and they had never elected an africanamerican male, so if it is ever going to happen, women will have to hold together. One of the lessons of this book was that women could not do it alone. Asy men appear in this book having helped the movement at various times. Many men attended every conference. Frederick douglass publicized the conference at seneca falls, stood up for the right for women to vote when no one else did. No one else stood with her when she put that resolution in to ask for that, and he wrote about it afterwards. There are other abolitionist men involved men who introduced the first legislation, the first womens rightss amendment into the constitution. Men had to ratify it. Wyoming foro example, by the time the they wouldme around, have been able to vote in a few more states, but women were totally dependent on male helpers throughout most of the movement. They had not run meetings. No one had presided over anything. They had never addressed a meeting. One woman at one Convention Goes on to say, i could never speak in front of an audience. I have never spoken. I have never attended a meeting. She goes on to address the audience very eloquently for an hour. What we have learned is there has to be some sort of coalition. Women will have to stand up and decide we are a tribe because we are women. Interested way women related to president wilson. Hed him in anrk upward manner. Can you talk about that . The recordas on being opposed to women suffrage and was on record for saying horrible things about his students, what a waste of time it was to educate women, so one woman and a few of her friends organized a march before Woodrow Wilsons inaugural, the day before in 1913, and their whole campaign was to work on him specifically to get him to turn around and support womens suffrage. After a while, they began picketing him and being at the white house every single day, and that in turn led to their arrest after world war i started. There was intolerance for their picketing. They were arrested, some rearrested. Some went on hunger strikes, forcefed, let go, and that went on for a couple of years, but the whole impetus was to work woodrow wilson, get him to turn around. Meanwhile, the other part of the movement was playing the good routine, and one woman and her faction were meeting with him and talking with him and trying to bring him around, and they led efforts during world war i to do womens work, whatever women do during war. And that seems to be what turned him around towards the end, or at least that was the excuse he used when he finally came out before congress in support of women. He was a stinker. Woodrow wilson was not good for afferent americans or women for africanamericans or women, and he finally came around after this terrible publicity of women being forcefed in jail. The treatment was just appalling. I think he came around because he had to come around. I am no fan. I can understand. I would not be that fan. I think the way the women handled that, just the constancy of imparting the white house, the picketing. It was wartime, they got so much criticism from americans who said White American saying you know, you are interrupting the war, but they were so persistent, and that is a great lesson. They learned that from the british women. The british women had been much more militant in their movement, she went to jail with him and marched with him. One woman went to observe the british methods. They did not think they would work in total in the u. S. , but they applied some principles. Not justing they did, private meetings in parlors, they decided to organize serious parades of women, women marching down fifth avenue, and that was a turning point. Dont you think . Moment turning point when they occupied outdoor marchingaking noise, down the street. They had seen parades in different societies, but just the sight of women in the fact they would not be silent anymore , would not be unseen, i guess, was a big deal. Things that struck me about your book, it is the first book i have seen on suffrage, and i am not an expert on this, that has talked about intersectionality between africanAmerican History and American History. It did it in the way it talks about how many of the women were abolitionists before they became suffragists, and i think that is a very important departure. Can you comment on that . Tell people i did not set out to write a black book about suffrage, and i did not set out to write a book about white womens suffrage. I set out to write a book about the Suffrage Movement in whatever i found. Early on, i found black characters in here that i was not aware of, but they interacted in ways that we do not think about. The Abolition Movement is the most important. Nearly all of the women who started the Womens Movement , and theytionists were on a first name basis with people like Frederick Douglass. And met with him entertained them in their homes and all that sort of stuff. Everyone heard about the man who had himself shipped in a box to escape slavery. The places they bring them to is one womans house. Not only were these early women abolitionists, they were among the most radical abolitionists in the country. They started a movement where they would not even use a product that was known to have been made with slave labor. Think about it. This takes a lot of trouble. They had stores where you could buy free goods. They did not buy cotton, trade in cotton, sugar, molasses, or else theyanything came from the hands of somebody enslaved on a farm. One of the women who was an organizer at seneca falls, her family ran one of these stores. So that was interesting to me. At the same time, almost all of were known homes stations on the underground railroad. And all through this literature about the womens Suffrage Movement, every now and then there was a letter about someone describing who they were hiding last week. Susan b anthony talks about outfitting a family to take them wright,canada, martha she talks about having hidden someone in her kitchen overnight , then talking to him the next morning. One woman talks about meeting somebody in her uncles attic, taking girls up to meet this young black woman they were hitting ready to take to canada. So it is a big thing in their lives. They are not ordinary women. They did not give lip service to abolitionists. The fact they started the Womens Movement, they were probably reformers to begin with. To quaker women were allowed speak in churches and were used to being treated as equal, so they got this thing they should have their own rights and they should finally start speaking what they believed. Felt theyso, if they had to, they would kick black people under the bus and keep moving on with the suffragist movement. That happened towards the end of the movement. One thing people do remember and know if they know anything about black womens participation was that for instance, during the 1913 march, black women were asked to march at the end of the d. C. , including women in and a group that had just formed two or three weeks before, marched at the back. One person pretended to go along with this and hid in the crowd and when her state delegation passed by, she marched right out among her white friends and kept walking. They discouraged black women from going to the convention in atlanta. This is at a time when they were courting white southern participation. White women in the south had not formed there or in organizations and had not been active. This was about 1900. They were trying to get southern women into the fold, and they askedorried, so they Frederick Douglass to not come to atlanta, because the site of this black man with these delicate white women would not go over well. They were right. One woman called out Susan B Anthony on her willingness to be able to cast black women aside because of the vote. In some other women did as well. It says in the book that one of the reasons people who were abolitionists became suffragists was because they realized if women could not vote, they could not pass legislation to free the slaves. Yeah, i was interested in how industry banded together against the Suffrage Movement. We still see that in politics today. Can you comment on that . Particularly the liquor industry fought against women because they feared that women, if they got the boat, would boat with the tribe and vote for prohibition, and other things not good for industry, like child labor laws, better salaries for women. The railroad lobbies, whoever had big lobbies at the time, fought tooth and nail, particulate liquor. At that point prohibition had not been passed. When it did, it wasnt the women. It was the Antisaloon League that got it done. We will go to the audience for questions in a couple of minutes, so get your questions ready. Also, i will ask you to come to the microphone on my left so that cspan is shooting this so they can see your faces and can capture your riveting words. , guess my last question was looking at where we are today, and i think carols questions have underscored a lot of that, you said you dont think that we could elect a woman for president now, but things might change. What would have to change within the female population in your view for that to happen . That,ont think i said but something has to change. We have to start thinking as otherand set aside some concerns, if they are not that important, and we have to have the right candidate at the right time, but we also have to raise a heck of a lot of money, and people have to get behind whoever that is. I think the candidate is a big one, the big issue. Italy was, had the experience, the publicity, had the sort of americanasense of that made her a good candidate. Right now i dont think the democrats had anybody in mind now who sounds like a good candidate to run against trump. You cant beat somebody with nobody. You need some great women to come forward. We have some great women in congress, governors, but i have not seen anybody coming forward. Have you . No, but since we are journalists, there was an interesting article in yesterdays Washington Post in which they reference a new study by harvard in which the media was taken to task for the way they covered the election. I thought it was a very good article, because in many ways they suggested that trump had been given a free ride and that andmedia was equivocating flawslly saying that the in hillary equal the flaws in trump. The article went on, actually it was a columnist, the article went on to say to compare those two things was particularly out of line, and asking that journalists start looking again at how they covered the election, but we are getting past the Suffrage Movement, arent we . Just one thi