 Good afternoon and welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. I'm David Terri of the Archivist of the United States and pleased to welcome you this afternoon. Whether you're joining us here in the theater or joining us through our Facebook or YouTube channel. Before we hear from Tina Cassidy about Ann Paul's fight for women's suffrage, I'd like to tell you about two other programs coming up soon in the McGowan Theater. On Monday, March 18th at noon, Jesse Morgan Owens will tell us the story behind a photograph that transformed the American abolitionist movement which she explores in her new book, Girl in Black and White, the story of Mary Milgrid Williams and the abolition movement. And on Thursday, March 21st at 7 p.m. we'll screen three historical documentaries as part of the 2019 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital. Check our website at archives.gov or sign up at the table outside the theater to get email updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities. Visit its website at archivesfoundation.org to learn more about the foundation. In two months on May 10th, we will open a new exhibit upstairs in the Lawrence F. O'Brien Gallery, Rightfully Hers, American Women and the Vote. We'll use the National Archives records to tell the story of women's struggles for voting rights as a critical step toward equal citizenship. Rightfully Hers and other programs, exhibits and events planned for the coming year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which extended to women the right to vote. In June 1919, the Senate passed the amendment and in August 1920, the amendment became part of the United States Constitution. But as the upcoming exhibit reminds us, the right to vote was won through work of generations of tireless activists. And one of the leaders in that campaign for voting rights was Alice Paul. Today we take a look forward to hearing from Tina Cassidy about the complex relationship between Paul and Woodrow Wilson during the fight for women's equality. Tina Cassidy is the executive vice president and chief content officer at the public relations and social content firm Incouse. Is it public yet? She's just accepted a new job and will be starting as a CMO at WGBH, my favorite public television station on March 25th. Congratulations. She's written two books before this, birth, the surprising history of how we are born, and Jackie after O, one remarkable year when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis defied expectations and rediscovered her dreams. Previously she was a journalist at the Boston Globe where she covered politics, sports, fashion, and business. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tina Cassidy. Thank you all so much for coming today. I got here early and was delighted to see the records of rights exhibit in the Rubenstein gallery. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It was really wonderful to see in the flesh the 19th amendment and the other amendment that Alice Paul wrote, the Equal Rights Amendment. They are hanging on the wall. It's a great reminder that just how alive history is. That's especially true for me. It's something that I'm passionate about. I also took time to go upstairs today to see the Bill of Rights. And it's really awesome to reflect on the four pillars of our democracy, freedom of the press, religion, speech, and assembly. And we're going to be talking about all of those things today. While my book is obviously a historical narrative of how Alice Paul fought the president and won voting rights for women, the parallels between this century-old story and what's happening today are what compel me the most, reflecting contemporary issues about patriotism, racism, what's the right way to protest, how slow the pace of change can be, whether the women's movement can be divided and still be successful, and how to right the wrongs of inequality. So first, a little background about this story. I owe this book to a trending hashtag, Women's Equality Day, which I saw in the summer of 2016. It was August. In fact, it marks the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. And, excuse me, despite how momentous it was to enfranchise half the population, the story of how this happened, was never part of my history lessons growing up. And that annoyed me. So I wrote a book about it. Who was Alice Paul? And what can we learn from her today? She was a Quaker from New Jersey whose parents believed in equality for everyone. And she was educated at a time when few girls were. And she wanted to fight for social justice. So she went to England and studied at a Quaker institution there and studied more about it. It was there that she first laid eyes on the Pankhurst. These were the leaders of the more militant suffrage movement. They were called the suffragettes, which was actually a bit of a slur. It was a derogatory term that men applied to women who they thought were not behaving properly. These were women who had the audacity to speak on soap boxes on street corners and organize marches and rallies for votes for women. Alice Paul was captivated not just by what the Pankhurst were doing but by how they were treated in response. She first saw them at the University of Birmingham and the audience mostly filled with male undergraduates were so loud they would not basically let the women speak. They were throwing dead mice and flinging food and blowing horns and creating a real ruckus. She was captivated from that moment on. It was a watershed moment for her. So she decided to put her life on hold and join them. In those couple of years in England, she learned everything she needed to know, mostly outside the classroom, to advance the women's movement in America. She sailed back home and joined the cause, which was stuck in a rut. Suffragists here had been pleading at the state level for local voting rights. Many states would never agree to this, and so Alice Paul launched a movement for a federal amendment. And what's the first thing she did? Something that had never been done before in America. She organized the first Women's March on March 3rd, 1913, one day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, right here in Washington. One of the main parallels between the women's movement then as it is today is that it was divided, not just over strategy. The old school suffragists did not believe the federal government would ever grant the franchise to them, so they plotted away, asking states politely and having the door slammed in their face. By 1913, women only had full voting rights in six states, all out west. These were Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and California. At first, the main suffrage group called the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Humored Paul. They let her join and organize the suffrage procession. And this only revealed deep divisions. So I'm going to read a passage now from my book. The section on the suffrage parade was one of my favorites to research at the Library of Congress where the National Women's Party's papers are kept. And it was the most fun to write. It, for me, felt so vivid and real, perhaps just from events over the last two years, witnessing other marches and so forth. The energy, the creativity was really palpable in the records. And so I worked pretty hard to bring that to life. The college section of the march featured 1,000 females in their academic robes, Paul among them. Too humble to march up front with the National Americans leadership, holding banners for Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Goucher, George Washington, Radcliffe, Michigan, and Cornell. Howard, historically Black College, was also represented with a contingent of nearly 40 women of color. Most of them were members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, founded the previous month for the purpose of joining the march. Women of color also mixed within the labor section, portraying massive wage inequality. The toll of women helps to make the nation rich, one banner said. A float carried dirty, disheveled women and children, bending over sewing machines. Paul deliberately arranged the 39 non-suffrage states behind this group in alphabetical order, beginning with Alabama and ending with Wisconsin. In the middle of the lineup was the Illinois contingent, a group of 65 that included Ida B. Welles, a prominent African-American journalist who years before had exposed the widespread horror of lynching and had sued the railroad successfully for not letting her sit in the women's car. There's also an awesome letter from Ida B. Welles to Woodrow Wilson upstairs in the gallery as well. She had also helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. While the march was a shocking and radical act, the likes of which had never occurred in America, racially integrating the procession was even more so, and it almost didn't happen. Earlier in the day, when the Illinois women lined up for a practice drill, their leader, Grace Wilbur Trout, saw Welles and questioned whether she should be there. Her racist comment shocked the group, sending a buzz through the crowd. Some were so embarrassed, they were speechless. I should just note that Alice Paul invited women of color to march with her, and when word got out that that was happening, there was a bit of a revolt through the ranks of the suffragists. Trout explained herself by saying, quote, many of the eastern and southern women have greatly resented the fact that there are to be colored women in the delegation. Some have even gone so far as to say they will not march if Negro women are allowed to take part. She blamed the decision on the leader of the national, as well as on Alice Paul. Trout looked around for approval and found some. But another suffragist, Virginia Brooks, came to the defense of Welles. Quote, we have come here to march for equal rights, Brooks added. If the women of other states lack moral courage, we should show that we are not afraid of public opinion. Welles was deeply hurt by Trout's remarks and let slip two large tears which she wiped from beneath her veil. Quote, if the Illinois women do not take a stand now in this great democratic parade, then the colored women are lost, Welles said before storming off. At some point after the procession began, Welles jumped back into the Illinois delegation to march in her rightful place, while black women also marched with the Delaware, New York, West Virginia and Michigan sections. There was one group, however, that was segregated in the back. When word spread that Mary Church Terrell, a prominent African American, would lead a strong showing of the National Association of Colored Women and that Southerners threatened to boycott the men's section, which was not very large, offered to march between these black and white groups. So in addition to the racial conflict after the march, Paul formed a committee for a federal amendment and tried to raise money for it, but the National American kicked her out of their group because they thought that she was basically competing with them for funds and for attention and now that she had done something so spectacular. You know, this march was on the front page of every newspaper in America. They thought that she was going to suck all the attention away from them as well. So Paul was left on her own and she had to build a new organization from scratch and she launched the National Women's Party, which still exists today, although it's an educational organization now. Let's talk about protests then and now. Colin Kaepernick takes a knee during the national anthem and it triggers a national debate. This is not the right way to protest, they say. It's disrespectful and that's what they told Alice Paul as well. At the time, it was not just disrespectful, but it was considered uncouth and unladylike for women to be protesting about anything, but especially to be doing so in public. The idea of women walking down the street unattended by a man was also outrageous. To clarify, Alice Paul did not call the march to the White House a protest. She didn't even call it a march. She called it a suffrage procession and it was meant to be a thought-provoking display of the contributions women make in society. There were no provocative signs aside from those asking for voting rights, but guess what? It did not matter what form their protest took. The Wilson administration and their supporters were really outraged, not about what the suffragists were doing, but what they were demanding, voting rights. So I'm going to read another short passage now to show the wide array of creative means, the various forms of protest that Alice Paul and the National Women's Party employed during the first term of the Wilson's administration. All of these continued to make people angry. There were many really hilarious headlines to look back on them today, just the way the press characterized the women and the protest at that time. So this scene picks up when the women are leaving the Oval Office. This was a time, it's curious to consider, when there was an open door policy in the White House, you could literally go in and knock on the door and watch government in action and get a meeting directly with the president. So Alice Paul and her supporters had been in to see Wilson many times and had been turned away many times. Well, they had been welcomed in, but they had not received any sort of positive response that Woodrow Wilson was supporting their suffrage ideas. The women slowly made their exit from the east room of the White House and returned to their new headquarters. After four years of toil and hardship and the damp basement on F Street, the movement Paul reignited was finally in a sunlit place of prominence. Cameron House stood at 21 Madison Place on the edge of Lafayette Park in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The building, a wide three-story brick townhouse, had several benefits. First, it was visible and just 200 steps away from the White House. The Wilsons could see the suffrage flag fluttering from its perch on the third floor balcony. Second, there was ample space to work and entertain guests, from tourists and strangers walking in off the street to catch a glimpse of the women to those attending ever-expanding fundraisers. There were also bedrooms to accommodate Paul and others, eliminating their daily commute, really every second counted for Alice Paul. Paul was now using Susan B. Anthony's old desk, a Victorian cylinder roll-top that Anthony's secretary had donated to the National Women's Party. When the indignant suffragists walked through Cameron House's front door, they entered into a great hall with a large staircase and a fireplace that burned eternal. Paul was there, waiting for them, ready to stoke their anger as they dropped into comfortable chairs in front of the flames and asked the question again, how long must we wait? With the women assembled in front of the fire, Paul pitched a carefully orchestrated idea, which she asked Harriet Stanton Blatch, another prominent suffragist, to present. Quote, we have got to take a new departure, Blatch told them. We have got to bring to the president, day by day, weekend, week out, the idea that great numbers of women want to be free, will be free, and want to know what he's going to do about it. We need to have a silent vigil in front of the White House until his inauguration in March. This would be his second inauguration. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pass in and out so that he can never fail to realize that there is tremendous earnestness and insistence in back of this measure. So far, with Paul as their leader, the women had marched four years earlier in 1913 in one of the largest and most outrageous protests America had ever seen. They had assembled an 80-car brigade to deliver signatures from all over the nation to the Capitol. They had testified, editorialized, and reorganized. They had formed their own political party. They held May Day parades in nearly every state in the nation. They raised funds and actively worked to defeat Democrats who were the party in office at that time. Woodrow Wilson, of course, was a Democrat himself. They had a booth at a global exposition, collected a miles-long scroll of signatures, and drove it cross-country from San Francisco to Washington. They dropped leaflets from the sky in a banner from the House chamber's balcony. And they had sacrificed one of their own. That refers to Inez Milholland, who if you've ever seen any images of the original suffrage parade, she was on the white horse out at the front, and she died on a Western campaign trip for the cause. So they had a martyr as well. On this day, in front of the crackling fire at their new headquarters, with the White House at their backs, they may have been exhausted, but they were neither depleted of ideas nor the passion to continue the struggle. They listened as Blatch offered a new form of protest. In America, pickets had become a common union tactic, typically ending in violence. But suffragists had been employing the practice as well. Blatch had used pickets in her suffrage campaign for the New York legislature in 1912. And so when she delivered her final plea to the women of Cameron House, they stirred. Quote, Will you not, she asked, be a silent sentinel of liberty and self-government. And the next chapter goes on to explain what the silent sentinels were all about. These were shifts of women who stood in front of the White House gates holding signs. They did not speak unless they were seriously provoked. And, of course, it was meant to be only a peaceful protest. But they were attacked and jailed on many occasions. So it turns out that Washingtonians thought women standing silently holding signs in front of the White House was even more outrageous. And it triggered a series of unwanted arrests with sentences up to six months. But all the while, the message about the need for federal amendment continued to be heard. In fact, the arrests really became a turning point because women started, people became more sympathetic to the suffragists for how they were treated. Next, I'd like to talk about the similarities between Woodrow Wilson and our current political situation. Right after Wilson was elected president, he segregated the civil service. As the first president elected from the south since reconstruction, this move empowered white supremacists, triggered racial violence, lynchings included, and gave the KKK the boost it needed. In fact, Wilson even screened a movie in the White House about the KKK called Birth of a Nation. Racism then combined with nationalism for another combustible mix. We were engaged in World War I at this time or about to be engaged in World War I. And Wilson wanted to clamp down on the First Amendment, attacking not just the press, but individuals who were criticizing him. On the streets, there was a mob mentality. If any seemingly able-bodied man or those with a foreign accent were seen or heard in public, they were assumed to be a spy. Would they not be fighting in the war in Europe? Vigilantes beat them and dragged them to the police. The government supported this practice. Do process, be damned. Going after those he believed to be seditious extended to Alice Paul. And when she and the silent sentinels stood in front of the White House, Wilson had them arrested even though they had the right to be there. They even pulled the permits. And of course, Russia played a role in all of this. I'll read another passage here. The scene begins with suffragists arriving in shifts to their posts outside the White House, gates to stand silently with their signs. And they planned this particular protest and the message on their banners to coincide with a Russian delegation that was arriving in Washington. It is worth noting that Russia did allow women to vote. And American women still couldn't. And I think the broader context of the idea of Americans that were fighting for democracy abroad while half the population did not have the franchise at home was yet another idea that really started to bring more sympathy to the suffrage cause. The next day, a car dropped off Lucy Burns, Dora Lewis, and their heavy cargo in front of the White House about an hour before the Russians were expected to meet with Woodrow Wilson at 12.30. The women unfurled their 10-foot hand stenciled cloth signs stretched between two wooden posts, shuffled into position, and straightened the banner between them. The crowd, many of them on their lunch hour, slowed to read the wordy message. I'm going to read it, but this is the longest protest sign I've ever seen in my life. It says, to the Russian envoys, President Wilson and Envoy Root are deceiving Russia. When they say, quote, we are a democracy, help us with the world war so that democracy may survive. We, the women of America, tell you that America is not a democracy. 20 million American women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement. Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally. As pedestrians process the words, and it took a while, of course, some scribbled to transcribe the banner. The situation grew tense. To attack the president so directly in front of diplomatic guests was an unprecedented outrage, not only for those witnessing the protests from inside the White House, but for many who saw it happening on the street. Murmurs rippled through the crowd and cars stopped to take in the scene. The Russians, arriving by motorcade, passed quickly through the gate, but with enough time to see the sign. Bystanders, men and women alike, were enraged that the delegation had seen the protest. Quote, take down that banner, or I'm through with women's suffrage for life, one man screamed it burns. Lewis argued with the man as he stormed off and ignored her. Quote, you are a friend to the enemy and a disgrace to our country, one woman sneered at the protesters. Why don't you take that banner to Berlin? You are helping the enemy. Another man, a local builder driving by, stopped to read the sign. Let's tear the damn thing down, he shouted. It's treasonable and I'm with you, one man, a visitor from New York shouted back. Come on boys, let's tear that thing down, said another. A police officer who had just arrived was jotting down the message on the banner and asked the gelling mob to slow down. Wait until I finish transcribing this, he said. But the men so agitated by the sight of these women holding a sign could not be held back any longer. They grabbed it, punched it, shredded it, pushed burns and left the women stunned but standing. Others shredded what remained, leaving one tiny piece of fabric dangling from the post. The officers and two other security guards who had been inside the gates ran toward the scramble. From across the street, near the National Women Party headquarters, suffragists watched in horror as the men closed around their colleagues. All they could see was the top of the poles and people in straw hats struggling this way and then that way. They held their breath as the guards approached to break up the scene. Burns and Lewis stood still, clutching their wooden poles when another man let from between the officers to pull off the last bit of fabric. The police caught him but they let him go when he handed over the remnant with a smile. Quote, you are giving just as bad an impression by standing around here as these people are, one of the guards said, speaking to the crowd as he pointed to the suffragists. Are you going to pinch them? He meant arrest them, a man asked. No, he said, we won't give them the satisfaction and there would be no arrests that day. Although the police tried to shoo away the crowd of about 250, those watching were in no rush to leave. Even Burns and Lewis stayed a few minutes longer, perhaps hoping to be arrested. When it was clear the trouble had passed, the suffragists walked calmly back to headquarters. Meanwhile, bystanders gathered around the attackers to shake their hands and congratulate them as the media closed in for interviews. Later, police picked up the strips of material and carried them into the White House where DC police superintendent Pullman huddled with Joseph Tumulty, Wilson's right hand man about how to respond to the situation. The Wilson's were angry. Edith, the first lady, was especially indignant that these women were causing a scene and embarrassing her already emotionally wrought and exhausted husband. After conferring with the administration, Pullman agreed to find some excuse, however flimsy, to arrest the suffragists. Quote, if the thing was attempted again, they would make sure that Paul knew there would be no tolerance for picketing anymore. The threat of arrest did not scare Paul. She told the press that she planned to repeat the Russian protest the next day. Quote, we have ordered another banner with the same wording and we intend to show it in the same place, she said. And sure enough, within 24 hours, a new batch of silent sentinels were back at their posts carrying signs that read, she got punchier the second time around. We demand democracy and self-government in our own land and Mr. President, what will you do for women's suffrage? PASS is indeed prologue. We have so much to learn from the suffrage movement. For example, when we're fighting for democratic ideals, we need to include everyone, or else we're really not fighting for democracy, are we? We're only fighting for some people. Change is hard. It can take a very long time. The First Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls was in 1848. It would be another 72 years before women could vote. And even then, not all women, although that is what Alice Paul had intended. Black women and black men faced disenfranchisement through poll taxes and literacy tests. Of course, the 15th Amendment, which was ratified in 1870, gave black men the right to vote. But obstacles were presented shortly thereafter. Black women knew and feared that the same thing was going to happen with the 19th Amendment, that they would be disenfranchised almost right away by laws and regulations at the state level. That proved to be true. The federal government did not recognize Native Americans as citizens until 1924. Those of Asian descent could not become citizens and vote until 1952. And the Voting Rights Act meant to address all of the barriers to voting, passed in 1965, and yet voter suppression continues. So there's always more work to do to make our union more perfect. Alice Paul knew this. In fact, her work did not end when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. She went to law school after that, and three years later, she wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed Congress in 1972, but was never fully ratified by the necessary 38 states. However, in the last 18 months, Illinois and Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, becoming the 36th and 37th states needed. Virginia, you may know, came close last month to being the final state needed. It passed the Senate there, and I'm told there were enough votes in the House in Virginia, but the House Speaker did not want it to come up for a vote. So that doesn't mean that the ERA is dead again. In fact, there's activity happening in Arizona right now. It's going to be a huge 38-mile march in the manner of March that Alice Paul organized from New York to Washington during the suffrage cause. And Arkansas is also talking about passing the ERA now, along with Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. So I think that there are always ways in which we can see history in our current situation, and for me, as Alice Paul said, carry the banner always. So thank you so much for coming today. I'm happy to answer questions. I can talk about my writing process. I can talk about the story, the research, and I can also talk about the ERA or any other questions you may have. I know that this is being live-streamed and closed captioned, so if you do have questions, if you could speak into a microphone, there's a microphone on either side, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. Not all women were suffragists. Not all men. There were some that were. Men that were suffragists. You talked a little bit about the narration there on women that were not suffragists, what the issues were economically, taxes, fear, other aspects or reasons why they were not behind that from the perspective of that time and why it took so long for everything to come together in the time that Allison was there. If there's anything you can provide details from why it didn't occur prior to that time and why those women were not supportive at that time. Sure. So there's a lot to unpack there. Let me first start with why were some women opposed to suffrage? It's a great question. I don't want to wrap your mind around that, but there was a, the cultural norm at that time was that women had men to speak for them and there were many women who were quite comfortable with that cultural norm. That extended especially to the household where the man was considered the head of the household who would speak on behalf of everybody. Some people thought that if women voted it would cause discord in family life because the woman had a different idea of politics than her spouse. There would be arguments. Some people thought women were not smart enough to vote. Some people thought politics were too tasteful for ladies to be involved. There were many reasons why people were opposed to suffrage women included. In fact, women were some of the loudest opponents to suffrage much like they were to the Equal Rights Amendment. I think all of those arguments were really culturally and religiously based and I think as people began to really understand what suffrage was all about and as cultural norms began to change, so did attitudes. I think one of the things that really helped to speed up the change in those cultural norms was World War I. Suddenly you had women doing jobs that only men had done. Women were holding down the farm and the factory for family life and it seemed really unfair that women were trying to manage everything and also sacrifice their husband, sons and brothers in the war effort and yet had no say in it. Cultural norms changed over time. I think to your point about men, I had my dear friend, Beth Monaghan, give me a gift this week a pocket watch from Britain that said vote for women on the face of it and at that time men would wear pocket watches on the outside of their vests and it's a really beautiful, colorful antique that I cherish but it also just made me so excited to think who was this man who would be so bold to be supporting women in such an obvious way at a time when so few men did. There are always progressive thinkers out there. There are always people who will believe in equality and there are some people who just take longer to get there. I think we're all going to get there at some point and that's my hope. Another question, yes? Two questions, number one, how much did Alice Paul cooperate with the prohibition amendment forces because there was a lot of mutual self-interesting in each one supporting the other. And the other is how much did President Wilson know about the mistreatment of the women who were jailed at Lorton and they were force fed and there was generally a horror story. Was he aware of that? Did he approve it or what? Thank you, great questions. I'll start with the second one which was did Wilson know how the women were treated in prison? Yes, he did. He was getting daily reports from the Wardens and not only that but when some of the men who were either married or the love interests of the suffragists who were imprisoned went and they would bring back the daily reports directly to the White House to say this is unfair, this has to stop. The President was very sheepish about it. He moved to exonerate the women and they did not want to be exonerated because they knew that so much of their power in that moment in terms of publicity was for being in jail and they wanted to stay there. So it was sort of interesting in that regard. Your first question? Prohibition. Yes, so really interesting many of the suffragists were also prohibitionists because at that time women were still the property of men they did not have a lot of legal rights so if your husband was an alcoholic and beat you or the kids you had no rights. So women thought that really one of the only ways that they could kind of get at some of those injustices was to just ban the sale of alcohol. So when the 19th Amendment passed Alice Paul raised a glass of grape juice in celebration for the amendment. Another question? Yes, can you tell us about the financing of the women's suffrage movement? Yeah, great question about the financing of the suffrage movement. So I think one of the most important things to know is that Alice Paul died penniless in a nursing home in New Jersey and she relied on the generosity of others for the 60 decades that she fought for women's rights. One of the main benefactors of the women's suffrage movement was Alva Belmont and if any of you have ever been to the Belmont Paul house here in Washington it's an amazing place, it's named in her honor. Alva was a wealthy New York socialite and she also built Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island which is a beautiful place to check out. She was responsible for not only writing checks directly including paying for rent and so forth at the National Women's Party's headquarters but also just financing big chunks of it and she would encourage her friends to do so having fancy soirees in Newport and New York City. But Alice Paul couldn't rely just on Alva Belmont. She had a really brilliant fundraising strategy. One of the first things that she did was she started a newspaper called The Suffragist and you'll notice she didn't call it the suffragette and I sort of studiously avoid using the term suffragette in my book because it was sort of a slur but The Suffragist was a weekly newspaper where if you joined the National Women's Party with a small fee you would get the newspaper on a regular basis so the paper served two purposes. It was the house organ getting the message out sort of side stepping the mainstream press. I like to think of it as Alice Paul's Twitter handle at that time and it also raised funds for her so women from across the country would send in their little subscription with these adorable handwritten notes like keep it up, keep going, thank you. Here's my three cents. So it was always a struggle though and one of the other tragedies which is probably still true for many nonprofits today is that they're all fighting against each other for the same scraps of fundraising dollars. And this was one of the major reasons why in addition to differences over strategy and vision but the National American really pushed Alice Paul aside because they didn't want to compete with her congressional committee for fundraising dollars. So initially Alice Paul was working under an umbrella with the National American doing the Federal Amendment work and finally they said no and she knew she had to fundraise for that work, that committee work, it just didn't work. So that was a good question, thank you. Question? Yes, thank you for your talk. I will say that among the things that my family left behind my great grandmother left behind a tiny little pink button that said vote no on women's suffrage. Really? Wow. And another postcard that said we trust men as a whole why not at the poll. Interesting, do you know the story behind that? No, again I think it was what you said about believing that the male could speak for the family even though she was a fairly educated woman. You know it always struck me as an incredible contrast just like Phyllis Shafley traveling the country to say you shouldn't have equal rights because then women would travel the country and neglect their families. But my question was I believe I'm correct that there was a woman in the Congress at the time even though women didn't have the vote, Jeanette Rankin. And I wondered if she played any role in the suffrage movement. Yeah, well so thank you for reminding me of her. She in her story is in the book. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Montana and it's interesting to think about how progressive the western states were then giving women the vote first in America. I think that it's just because they had such a low population they really believed that every one of their votes truly mattered in Washington. But Jeanette Rankin got to Washington and really had to very carefully tow the line between the two factions of the women's movement, the National American and the National Women's Party. And it was challenging for her and both organizations really wanted her endorsement. She managed to negotiate that pretty well. I think the most important thing to know about Jeanette Rankin is that when the amendment came up for a vote she voted for it. Yes. Two questions. Can you speak a bit more to Wilson and his wife's position on suffrage and how it evolved with World War I and whether it was resignation that finally just had them pushing forward and also can you speak, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but the dynamics between Republican and Democrat support for suffrage and how it shifted? Yes. And then the second thing I would very much appreciate some comment on is some of the logistical challenges of organizing the 1913 March. Yes. I mean, when you think about it in terms of an era of planes, automobiles, phones being incredibly new and not viable. And second, how, if at all, the fact that a woman really wasn't supposed to be in the public sphere impacted the suffragettes movement and particularly for example in Tennessee they had to enter the Heritage Hotel via a ladies entrance. Right. Good questions. So first, Woodrow Wilson and his second wife, Edith, the first lady, how did their minds change on suffrage? Wilson was opposed to a federal amendment on suffrage. He claimed that he was in favor of suffrage at the state level and he said he even voted for it in New Jersey. However, the truth of the matter is that while Wilson called himself a progressive Democrat at the height of the progressive era, he was actually quite regressive on social issues. As I mentioned, he segregated the civil service. It was almost one of the first acts that he did as president and he was religiously conservative as well. His father had been a Presbyterian minister and I think the traditional role of women was something that he really embraced. He basically spent at least the first seven years in office actively opposing the federal amendment at first stalling and then refusing to listen anymore saying he was too busy with the war. I think it was really only two things, public pressure as the war escalated and people started to really grapple with this issue of democracy. What are we standing for as a democracy? How can we be that beacon of light around the world? Also just the political dimension of what could happen to Democrats. As people became less enchanted with the Wilson administration toward the end, there was a lot of concern that Democrats were going to get crushed in the next election. Wilson knew he had to do something in order to try to get votes from people who might support suffrage or lean Republican. I don't give Wilson that much credit for coming around, as you might say. I think he was really backed into a corner on it and also at the end of his second term as president, he had a debilitating stroke. Edith was basically running the government at that point. He was bedridden and knew he was not going to run again, so he really had nothing to lose. He also was quite aware of public opinion and where that stood, and people by then were in favor of suffrage. Your question about how to organize a major march back in the day. It's really astounding because not only did she pull off something truly poetic and enormous. There were about 8,000 women who marched that day. She did it in two months with virtually no money and didn't even always have access to a telephone. She worked around the clock tirelessly. I think she was very clever in terms of how she activated certain groups of people to help her or to bring different state contingents together. It's a real testament to her organizing capabilities and she was a total taskmaster in addition to being a smart strategist. Your other point about how women weren't able to really be seen out on the street publicly without an escort and things like that, yeah. That was just how it was then, which is why all of the protests were so eye-opening and shocking and it seems like it took those, today seems like such a basic normal act to really jolt people out of their complacency around the fact that half the population didn't have the franchise. I think it's one of the reasons why the movement ended up being successful because it was a shocking form of protest. Hi. I know that 1920 was also a great turning point in our deep south where major cases of enslaved conditions and the turpentine factories and the lumber mills and the mines were being finally exposed and women for the first time were able to actually kind of perhaps speak out with the other Christian peoples there who says, yes, we should not have tens of thousands of poor African-American men who just happened to have not had a full education because there were no African-American high schools in some parts of our deep south that they should have to be living under such conditions, horrific conditions, horrific. My question is we had very highly educated women here in D.C. so after women got the right to vote, 1920, we had highly educated women at Howard University and we had this group here that was highly educated. Have you in your research, have you come across groups of highly educated women who said, this is horrible, we've got to get this exposed more, we have to stop it, we've got to make sure that these states develop high schools, develop secondary education institutions so these people can get better educated. This P&H system is illegal, separate, is not equal with education in their hands. What were they able to do from here? Yes. Thanks for that question. I mean, I can't speak directly to what they did for education but if you think about what giving women the vote enabled them to have a say in, I would say education would probably be at the top of the list for so many women, not only for their own kids but for other peoples as well. And I think it just also gave people a voice who otherwise didn't have one so if they had, if there was injustice in their own community, they could certainly stand up for it. Now of course, giving women the vote did not immediately improve the conditions in the south, especially because so many African-Americans were immediately disenfranchised. So there was still a power imbalance there and segregation that continued. Hi. I'd like to know a little bit more about your writing process and given the amount of research that you talked about you're doing, did you leave out anything that you now wish was in the book or if you couldn't include it in the book, would you like us to know about it or are you going to maybe continue and to tell us more in another book? Thank you for that question. My writing process, basically I start with an idea and then kind of build a structural framework for the book and lay out, you know, how I'm going to tackle it. This is somewhat linear because I'm talking about a two term presidency here so I have clearly defined goal posts. But the research includes National Archive Records, primary source material from Alice Paul Institute, from her papers at the Library of Congress and at Harvard, the same for Woodrow Wilson, his papers in Virginia and also here in Washington. Newspapers, you know, really provide the color, the smell, the sights, the sounds of that day and a really good sense of what the mood is in America throughout this time. You know, I could, would I have, should I have included anything else, maybe, but I really tried to stick to a narrative that made this read like a novel, although there is no quote in here that did not get quoted directly from a letter. None of it is made up, in other words. It's all from primary source material or newspaper articles. So there is probably 20 years more worth of research I could have done reading every single thing in the microfilm department, but her story needed to be told now. We're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment a year from August and so you're going to start seeing more exhibits all over America celebrating the work of Alice Paul. So I wanted the story to be a part of that canon. You touched just a bit on the ERA. Are there comparisons to be drawn between opposition to the suffragists and the movement and opposition to the ERA? Yes. I think there are very clear comparisons. I think so much of it comes down to religious-based cultural beliefs and women who are conservative women primarily who just are quite happy with the status quo. What's interesting though is that the ERA, if you really look at it over time, has not been a partisan issue and even more recently many Republicans have been endorsing it. So it shouldn't be partisan. I think in terms of the question so many people ask why would women not support, why would women seemingly go against their own self-interest? You know, there are women who just believe that we're better off with the way things are right now or maybe how things were 50 years ago and progress is scary. Anybody else? Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure to be here today. Don't forget there is a book signing one level up at the archives bookstore. Books are at the cash register.