And its my privilege to welcome many of you back to historic Decatur House in the White House Historical association for another one of our wonderful lectures. Tonight is one of the annual National Heritage lectures that we do in partnership with the Us Capital Historical Society and the Us Supreme Court historical society. We have our wonderful colleagues from both here tonight and my friend Jane Campbell who is the president of the National Historical society. On june 4, 1919 the 19th amendment was passed and sent to the states for ratification. The suffragists used the white house as a backdrop to challenge an equity and bring attention to their cause. Tonight we look forward to hearing more about their successful efforts to secure womens rights to vote. Before i introduce our speaker i have a couple of other introductions and things i would like to share. First of all we have guests smith college, the Washington Club of smith college. Stand up. [ applause ] they are special guests