Speaker 1: One of the biggest surprises and one of the things
Speaker 1: that made doing this research such fun, is that I
Speaker 1: think people have an image of suffragists as being oh,
Speaker 1: kind of grim, battle axes, dressed in black, serious, uh,
Speaker 1: no fun to be with, just always their eye on
Speaker 1: getting the vote, and um, you know, not not much
Speaker 1: fun to be around. And what I was so tickled
Speaker 1: to discover is that these women had a real sense
Speaker 1: of humor. That was history in Susan Ware talking about
Speaker 1: the suffragists who thought the long, hard battle to get
Speaker 1: American women the vote. Some of them, like Susan B. Anthony,
Speaker 1: are famous, others are barely remember bird or long forgotten,
Speaker 1: but all deserve to have their stories told. I'm a
Speaker 1: land for Verre and this is Seneca's one women to hear.
Speaker 1: We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most
Speaker 1: inspiring and history making women you need to hear. Susan
Speaker 1: Ware is a pioneer in the field of women's history
Speaker 1: and feminist biography. She's taught history at Harvard, Tufts, m
Speaker 1: I T, and n y U, and she's written books
Speaker 1: about everything from women and the New Deal to Billy
Speaker 1: Jean King and the Revolution in women's sports. Her most
Speaker 1: recent book is Why They Marched Untold Stories of the
Speaker 1: Women who fought for the right to vote. Listen and
Speaker 1: learn as Susan Ware tells us why the women who
Speaker 1: fought for suffrage? Are some of Seneca's on women to hear.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to a to historians, Susan Ware, and we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about the history of women's equel
Speaker 1: rights and suffrage in the United States. Welcome, Susan. It's
Speaker 1: wonderful to have you with us. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: inviting me, Susan. You know, we recently marked the anniversary
Speaker 1: of the Women's Rights Convention that took place in Seneca Falls,
Speaker 1: all those hundred and seventy four years ago, and soon
Speaker 1: we're going to be celebrating the ratification of the nineteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: In your latest book, Why They Marched, you tell the
Speaker 1: untold story of women who change suffrage history. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of these women and
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about who they were and
Speaker 1: what we might not know about them that would be
Speaker 1: helpful to know. Well, it's it's always hard for a
Speaker 1: historian to answer a question of what we might know,
Speaker 1: because I'm never quite sure what people actually do know
Speaker 1: about the history of women's suffrage, and now, of course
Speaker 1: for someone like me who's steeped in the history, UH,
Speaker 1: it's it's a somewhat different take. But I would say that, UM,
Speaker 1: one of the things that really attracts me about the
Speaker 1: story of the history of of women's suffrage is the
Speaker 1: chance to really engage with a wide range of characters, UM,
Speaker 1: women as well as men, all black, white, all across
Speaker 1: the country, and to think about placing their contributions and
Speaker 1: the passion that they brought for this movement, UM being
Speaker 1: able to bring that to new audiences. UH. And so
Speaker 1: I sort of assumed that we're starting pretty much with zero.
Speaker 1: I hope people know who Susan B. Anthony is uh
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Katie Stanton, but not much beyond that. And
Speaker 1: I think at the top of my list of the
Speaker 1: activists who were involved in this uh long long movement,
Speaker 1: UM that I would want a foreground are the African
Speaker 1: American women who were so central to the story but
Speaker 1: often have been marginalized in some of the early histories
Speaker 1: that were written and are certainly not well known. And
Speaker 1: there are three from my book that just stand out.
Speaker 1: The first is so journal truth who shows us the
Speaker 1: links between the early women's rights movement as in the
Speaker 1: Seneca False Convention and the abolition movement, and those two
Speaker 1: movements were very much in conversation with each other in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties and forties, and then when we move
Speaker 1: into the post Civil War period. The two women I
Speaker 1: would single out are Ida B. Wells also known as
Speaker 1: Ida Wells Barnett and married Church Errol and Wells is
Speaker 1: known especially for her activism anti lynching on anti lynching,
Speaker 1: but she was a very avid suffragist, as was married
Speaker 1: Church Terrell, who was very involved in the Black Women's
Speaker 1: Club movement. And what is I find so interesting about
Speaker 1: these African American women is that their story is a
Speaker 1: part of a much larger story which is about voting
Speaker 1: rights in the United States, not just for women, but
Speaker 1: for black citizens, especially in the years after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: after Reconstruction, when those rights are removed from Black men
Speaker 1: because of Jim Crow legislation. And for African American women,
Speaker 1: they never had the luxury of just having a narrow
Speaker 1: focus on the vote for women. It was always part
Speaker 1: of a larger struggle which was voting rights for African Americans.
Speaker 1: As well as women, and that was true of a
Speaker 1: lot of the other suffragists. It was never just about
Speaker 1: the vote. They had a whole range of reforms and
Speaker 1: changes they wanted to make, but they decided that the
Speaker 1: vote was an important step that they needed to get.
Speaker 1: And how interesting that here we are in two thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty two, still talking about voting rights and the
Speaker 1: larger landscape, as you put it, with with a new urgency.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid exactly right. You know, you mentioned the three
Speaker 1: Suffragists just now. Are they among the the ones who
Speaker 1: have most inspired you by their their life stories, their
Speaker 1: incredible life stories, or is there perhaps another Well, I'm
Speaker 1: inspired by their how they were in it for the
Speaker 1: long haul, and that was actually true of many of
Speaker 1: the suffrage Just remember this movement went on for three generations. Uh,
Speaker 1: took a long time for women to get the vote.
Speaker 1: But you know, if I had to pick a favorite, Uh,
Speaker 1: it would probably be a woman who really just did
Speaker 1: one thing for suffrage, but it was really quite amazing,
Speaker 1: And it was a woman named Clayborne Catlan. And she
Speaker 1: is someone that's just an ordinary woman trying to make
Speaker 1: her way and in she's living in Massachusetts, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen uh thirteen or fourteen, she decides that she is
Speaker 1: going to ride a horse across the state of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: to build support for women's suffrage. And she's never really
Speaker 1: been involved in a reform movement before. Uh. She does
Speaker 1: this pretty much on her own. She sets out with
Speaker 1: a horse and her saddlebags and some pamphlets and no
Speaker 1: itinerer and no money, and she spends four months on
Speaker 1: the road. And I like to give her example because
Speaker 1: if she seems to me a woman, an ordinary woman
Speaker 1: who is moved to do rather extraordinary things for the
Speaker 1: cause of women's suffrage. And what I also really like
Speaker 1: about Claiborne Catlin is that, even though she's just a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny little piece in this larger story, I think she
Speaker 1: knew she was important because she wrote up a description
Speaker 1: of her four months on the road and she donated
Speaker 1: it to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe on women's history.
Speaker 1: And along with it she donated the saddle bags that
Speaker 1: she had worn on her horse and a sash. And
Speaker 1: so it was the sense of her um, just her
Speaker 1: bravery doing this, and her sense of history. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, these women who did fight for the vote
Speaker 1: were part of something larger. They knew that, uh, they
Speaker 1: knew it was bigger than just them. But she touches
Speaker 1: my heart, and I must say that when I talk
Speaker 1: about why they marched, her story is often one that
Speaker 1: readers really remember. Well, I can see why such an
Speaker 1: innovative advocacy campaign. I'm sure she had impact beyond being
Speaker 1: a part of this great story of history. Is it possible,
Speaker 1: you know, briefly, to put these women in there historical context?
Speaker 1: In other words, what was life like for American women
Speaker 1: before they achieved the right to vote? How did their
Speaker 1: role in society gradually evolve from the time of the
Speaker 1: convention to nineteen when the nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified.
Speaker 1: Can you give our listeners a sense of what it
Speaker 1: was like for women in those days? Well, you do
Speaker 1: realize that is rather a huge question and um time
Speaker 1: period too to cover. But I think if we sort
Speaker 1: of take the beginning point and the endpoint, it would
Speaker 1: help show the contrast that happens in between. And in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty eight, the year of the Seneca Falls Convention, Um,
Speaker 1: the prevailing ideology was that women belonged in the domestic sphere,
Speaker 1: that they would be primarily defined by their roles as
Speaker 1: wives and mothers, and if they never married, then they
Speaker 1: would be dependents of the men in their family, and
Speaker 1: they often had a few legal rights, certainly not the
Speaker 1: right to vote, but not even the right to troll
Speaker 1: their own property as married women, or if they were
Speaker 1: working for wages, their wages those would go to their husbands.
Speaker 1: By the time suffrage is finally one seventy two years later,
Speaker 1: three generations later, that landscape has dramatically changed. There are
Speaker 1: many more opportunities for women to participate in activities beyond
Speaker 1: the domestic sphere, and of course their roots for this
Speaker 1: throughout the nineteenth century, but you really see a flowering
Speaker 1: of women's contributions to civic associations and um all kinds
Speaker 1: of reform causes. They're not just staying at home with
Speaker 1: the children. They're out there trying to improve the world.
Speaker 1: And they also have more tools at their disposal. They
Speaker 1: have better legal rights. They also have much wider access
Speaker 1: to education, especially at the collegiate level, but also graduate education,
Speaker 1: so that they can conceive of having careers as social
Speaker 1: workers or lawyers or doctors. And in many cases these
Speaker 1: kind of opportunities were not available at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the suffrage movement. So what you actually can see in
Speaker 1: a capsule form is the huge changes that were occurring
Speaker 1: in American women's lives in the second half of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. Having said that,
Speaker 1: a lot of women embraced those changes, but a lot
Speaker 1: of women and an awful lot of men were really
Speaker 1: scared about those changes and the assault that they seem
Speaker 1: to pose on traditional gender roles. And so whenever I
Speaker 1: talk about the suffrage movement, I always say, we have
Speaker 1: to talk about the anti suffrage movement too, because it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have taken so long if there wasn't much opposition.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it really came down
Speaker 1: to fear that women's lives were changing so much. And
Speaker 1: so when women start asking for the vote, and then
Speaker 1: when it gets to look like maybe they are going
Speaker 1: to get the vote, for some people, this is almost
Speaker 1: like the last straw, you know, the sense that there
Speaker 1: never they'll never be home, they'll abandon their husbands and
Speaker 1: their children, um, just because they're going to vote once
Speaker 1: every two years. Um. But I think we have to
Speaker 1: take those fears seriously and learned from them, because after all,
Speaker 1: we're seeing tremendous pushback today against women in politics, women
Speaker 1: who use their power to make a difference in their society.
Speaker 1: So so much to learn from history, and we're learning
Speaker 1: a great deal from you today, Susan. Was there returning
Speaker 1: point for women's suffrage in the United States? And when
Speaker 1: did it become even a possibility in the minds of Americans?
Speaker 1: When did they begin to to grasp what it represented? Perhaps,
Speaker 1: and then maybe you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: suffrage for black women, because, um, we know that h
Speaker 1: recognize that black women and other women of color had
Speaker 1: been left behind. Uh, and that often comes out and
Speaker 1: as we talk about this history, so help us with
Speaker 1: that as well. Well. When I look at the long
Speaker 1: deray of the suffrage movement, it seems to me that
Speaker 1: there really is a what I call it quickening around
Speaker 1: the years nineteen o nine nineteen ten. And just to
Speaker 1: put that in context, UM, do the math. That's sixty
Speaker 1: more than sixty years after Seneca falls and within ten
Speaker 1: years of when the nineteenth Amendment is going to pass.
Speaker 1: And at at point, UM, I sense a certain frustration
Speaker 1: on the part of suffrage activists, especially younger ones, where
Speaker 1: they sort of look around and say, we've been at
Speaker 1: this for an awfully long time and we've only won
Speaker 1: women suffrage in four states. We need to pick up
Speaker 1: the pace, we need to shake things up. And so
Speaker 1: starting in around nineteen you see the suffrage movement really
Speaker 1: moving out of where it was mainly in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: which is meetings in church houses and women's parlors and
Speaker 1: taking to the streets, holding mass demonstrations, standing on street
Speaker 1: corners and selling newspapers, making public displays of their support,
Speaker 1: with the goal that it's really putting women's suffrage in
Speaker 1: everybody's space, like it's there, you cannot ignore it. Um
Speaker 1: and that I think was a very important step. Now
Speaker 1: it also is controversial because more traditional suffragists are not
Speaker 1: always keen about taking to the streets or picketing the
Speaker 1: White House, which Alice Paul and the National Women's Party
Speaker 1: starts doing in nineteen sev um. But it does have
Speaker 1: the effect of making women suffrage a topic that you
Speaker 1: can no longer ignore, and the suffrages wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that people were talking about it, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that politicians who were predominantly, if not exclusively, men,
Speaker 1: had to take note of it, because they're the ones
Speaker 1: who are going to be voting on things like a
Speaker 1: federal amendment. Uh. And I think it took a lot
Speaker 1: of activism and it was never a done deal, but
Speaker 1: they did manage to make it an issue of national importance.
Speaker 1: World War One, which happens in nineteen seventeen nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: is part of that because women are able to use
Speaker 1: their contributions to the war effort to say, look what
Speaker 1: we're already contributing to society, And remember, this war is
Speaker 1: supposedly to make the world safe for democracy. How can
Speaker 1: you possibly deny women the right to vote? And arguments
Speaker 1: like that did finally hold sway, although again we have
Speaker 1: to remember that once the amendment passes Congress and is
Speaker 1: sent to the States for ratification, it really does come
Speaker 1: down to one vote in Tennessee in August of nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: which is where the centennial date comes from. UM. In
Speaker 1: terms of the African American women's participation in the movement,
Speaker 1: I would say they always knew they were important. It
Speaker 1: was just that the white women didn't always recognize their
Speaker 1: contributions or welcome them as openly as we would have
Speaker 1: liked them too. Into this movement, which really is about
Speaker 1: human rights, uh, not just about women's rights. And I
Speaker 1: think that the trick uh for coming to a broader
Speaker 1: understanding of the suffrage movement is not to ignore or
Speaker 1: dismiss the racism of many of the white leaders, but
Speaker 1: to recognize that it's there and then also foreground the
Speaker 1: contributions of African American women, because if you just dismissed
Speaker 1: the whole movement just an example of white privilege or racism,
Speaker 1: then you have erased and marginalized the contributions of African
Speaker 1: American women once again, and that is not a good outcome.
Speaker 1: And again, so much of what you've just talked about,
Speaker 1: we have similarities in terms of the need for advocacy
Speaker 1: and marching and inclusion, et cetera, playing out to this day.
Speaker 1: I think there's just so much to learn from all
Speaker 1: of this. Senecas one hundred women to hear will be
Speaker 1: back after the short break. Now, when you're studying these
Speaker 1: remarkable women, were you able to notice similarities among them?
Speaker 1: Do they have certain personality traits or characteristics that made
Speaker 1: them effective, that made them the leaders they were and
Speaker 1: the committed leaders they were? Well, there, it's both the
Speaker 1: committed leaders, and it's also the followers, because I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that we need to remember is
Speaker 1: that this is a social movement, and by the nineteen
Speaker 1: tens it's a mass movement. So you have a whole
Speaker 1: range of people who have, for various reasons, decided to
Speaker 1: sign on. And I think that in some ways, the
Speaker 1: comparable moment for second wave feminism is what is often
Speaker 1: called the click moment, what all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: woman's thinks that's wrong, or I'm going to fight that,
Speaker 1: or I'm going to do something about that. And I
Speaker 1: have a sense that most of these women had a
Speaker 1: moment like that where they just looked at their world
Speaker 1: and said, this doesn't make any sense, that women are
Speaker 1: not being treated equally with men, and I am going
Speaker 1: to try to do something about that. And then, of
Speaker 1: course what's fascinating is to see those who really are
Speaker 1: just the foot soldiers, the ones who hand out leaflets
Speaker 1: and maybe march in a parade or try to organize
Speaker 1: voters in in their precinct, and those who really dedicate
Speaker 1: their whole lives to um to the movement and to
Speaker 1: making it happen. And what I just find fascinating is
Speaker 1: I study. It is just the range of women that
Speaker 1: I meet. Uh, And I really do feel like I'm
Speaker 1: meeting them when I encounter them in the archives and
Speaker 1: I hear their stories, and it just reminds me of
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty work of social change, of what it takes,
Speaker 1: how many people, both leaders and followers, it takes to
Speaker 1: make change happen. Uh. And I think that the suffrage
Speaker 1: movement is a perfect example of that. And I think
Speaker 1: it is also a way of encourage people to think
Speaker 1: more broadly about the contributions that women have made to
Speaker 1: American society, not just getting the vote, but much beyond that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of history out there, uh, and women
Speaker 1: are very much part of it. Um. Of course, this
Speaker 1: is what I do for a living as a women's historian,
Speaker 1: trying to tell these stories. But they're important to our
Speaker 1: national story, and the women's suffrage movement is very much
Speaker 1: part of that larger national story. Certainly very important. And
Speaker 1: as you talk about that click moment, I can imagine
Speaker 1: listeners thinking about click moments today, not just for women
Speaker 1: in the United States but the world over that really
Speaker 1: persuaded large numbers all of a sudden to say why
Speaker 1: not it's time or I've had enough, I've had enough exactly.
Speaker 1: You talked about what it was like as you were
Speaker 1: marveling over these women that you've come to know, or
Speaker 1: as you said that you met. I love that the
Speaker 1: fact that you were meeting them as you were doing
Speaker 1: your research. Were there big surprises for you in any
Speaker 1: of those meetings. I think for me one of the
Speaker 1: biggest surprises, and one of the things that made doing
Speaker 1: this research such fun is that I think people have
Speaker 1: an image of suffragists as being oh, kind of grim,
Speaker 1: battle axes, dressed in black, serious, uh, no fun to
Speaker 1: be with, just always their eye on getting the vote,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, not not much fun to be around.
Speaker 1: And what I was so tickled to discover is that
Speaker 1: these women had a real sense of humor. Uh. And
Speaker 1: some of my favorite aspects of suffrage research are are
Speaker 1: finding the songs that poked fun at the men's reasons
Speaker 1: for not giving the women the vote, or the Valentines,
Speaker 1: or the poems or the plays that women wrote. They
Speaker 1: had a sense of humor as well as this commitment
Speaker 1: to getting women the vote. And also I think it
Speaker 1: it also plays into something that I think was really
Speaker 1: one of the most profound things that that I learned
Speaker 1: from my research as I was trying to recreate what
Speaker 1: it was really like for people to be in the
Speaker 1: suffrage movement, which is how personally satisfying it was for
Speaker 1: these women to be part of a larger cause. They
Speaker 1: made friends, they felt like they were doing something useful.
Speaker 1: It was all part of the sense of feeling like
Speaker 1: they were part of something bigger than themselves. And I
Speaker 1: think it made an enormous difference to these women. And
Speaker 1: while we can't really say specifically, if we look at
Speaker 1: a woman's career after ninety oh, she was changed by
Speaker 1: being in the suffrage movement. It just makes sense that
Speaker 1: someone who's been through this experience has put herself on
Speaker 1: the line. And remember that some of these suffrages literally
Speaker 1: put their lives on the line because they go on
Speaker 1: hunger strikes when they're imprisoned. That changes a person. It
Speaker 1: gives them the sense of feeling part of something larger
Speaker 1: and bigger and feeling part of a women's cause. Uh.
Speaker 1: And to me, that is one of the most important
Speaker 1: takeaways of the suffrage movement and why I hope we
Speaker 1: realize that it didn't just end in nineteen twenty, um
Speaker 1: that these feelings and these networks and these French ships
Speaker 1: would have continued on past nineteen twenty. And the other
Speaker 1: reason for taking that perspective sort of the thinking of
Speaker 1: it's the long women's suffrage movement, is that for certain women,
Speaker 1: especially African American women, nineteen twenty was not a milestone.
Speaker 1: Most African American women in nineteen twenties still lived in
Speaker 1: the American South, where they're voting rights even though they
Speaker 1: were supposedly guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment, were restricted by
Speaker 1: Jim Crow segregation. So for African American women, it's really
Speaker 1: the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five rather than
Speaker 1: the Nineteenth Amendment that is the key one. And again
Speaker 1: I think that just makes me want to put the
Speaker 1: suffrage movement into this larger perspective about working for progressive
Speaker 1: social change, working for feminism. What the suffrage movement is
Speaker 1: doing didn't end in ninety it didn't end in this
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. It's still going on now. It's all part
Speaker 1: of this one larger story. Oh that's so beautifully said.
Speaker 1: You know, I often say that we're all still on
Speaker 1: the journey for women's rights the world over, only we're
Speaker 1: in different places on the road, some ahead, some farther behind.
Speaker 1: But we're still journeying. And that's why I think we
Speaker 1: have so much to learn from what you're telling us today,
Speaker 1: from your work and from women's history, and to that point,
Speaker 1: the women that you've researched and have come to meet
Speaker 1: and know through your research employed strategies. You've talked about
Speaker 1: some of those strategies. Do you think any of those
Speaker 1: are lessons still to be learned by women activists today? Oh?
Speaker 1: For sure. Uh. And I think one of the most
Speaker 1: obvious is branding. Um. And the suffrage is had they
Speaker 1: had their own colors, their colors purple and gold and white.
Speaker 1: The anti suffragists had their color too, that was red,
Speaker 1: and any time there would be a suffrage event, you
Speaker 1: would see those colors. And when I look out at
Speaker 1: the pictures of the sea of pink pussy hats the
Speaker 1: women's marches in two thousand seventeen, I see the same
Speaker 1: thing happening. It's that sense of making a statement through
Speaker 1: what you're wearing. Uh. That's kind of a flip response, um,
Speaker 1: But I think that one of the things that I
Speaker 1: really learned from the suffrage movement is that you have
Speaker 1: to have multiple strategies. And if I can just digress
Speaker 1: a little bit about suffrage history at the very end,
Speaker 1: and you, I think you'll see its application to the present.
Speaker 1: The suffrage movement was split uh in the in its
Speaker 1: last decade, between those who like Carrie Chapman Kat who
Speaker 1: were basically working through the system, trying to lobby politicians,
Speaker 1: trying to get laws passed, get referendum on state ballots
Speaker 1: and things like that. In opposition or alongside to them
Speaker 1: were the more radical militants like Alice Paul and the
Speaker 1: National Women's Party who were picketing the White House in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen and getting themselves arrested and going on hunger strikes,
Speaker 1: and they were quite impatient with the more conservative women.
Speaker 1: Um and the conservative women were quite upset at the
Speaker 1: radical women because they thought they were hurting each other's cause.
Speaker 1: But in retrospect, it's clear that the movement needed both.
Speaker 1: It needed those who are working within the system and
Speaker 1: doing the kind of scut work of lobbying and following up,
Speaker 1: but it also needed the public displays that got people's attention.
Speaker 1: And I think that is a perfect, you know, dual
Speaker 1: strategy for any kind of movement that's working for social
Speaker 1: change today. You need to be out there in the streets.
Speaker 1: You need to be getting people's attention, you need to
Speaker 1: be having the media talk about you. But that's not enough.
Speaker 1: That's not going to get things done. You need to
Speaker 1: also be there in your organizations and doing your networking
Speaker 1: and reaching out to women and men, trying to build
Speaker 1: coalitions to try and pass legislation. And each is dependent
Speaker 1: on the other. Uh. They may not always be speaking
Speaker 1: to each other, they certainly weren't by the end of
Speaker 1: the Suffering movement, but each I think needs each other.
Speaker 1: And I think that's one of the things that that
Speaker 1: I really took away from studying what it took to
Speaker 1: finally get this amendment past. And again I just remind
Speaker 1: listeners that it took seventy two years of agitation before
Speaker 1: women got the vote, and it really did come down
Speaker 1: to one person in Tennessee in nineteen twenty. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't think that if that hadn't hadn't passed, Tennessee women
Speaker 1: would still be voteless, at least I hope not um.
Speaker 1: But I think it does show how how long and
Speaker 1: committed a struggle. It was so well said, and what
Speaker 1: a perfect example of the components of activism, because those
Speaker 1: debates are clearly still going on today in terms of
Speaker 1: what's most effective, and as you said, we should learn
Speaker 1: that both had their place. The wonderful reminder. Unfortunately, we're
Speaker 1: running out of time, and we could go on for
Speaker 1: hours and hours. It's just fascinating to listen to you.
Speaker 1: But given what we've been talking about in terms of
Speaker 1: the journey continuing for equal rights for women, that fight
Speaker 1: is still going on today. What makes you optimistic? What
Speaker 1: gives you hope? Well, I think I would point to
Speaker 1: my experience voting in two thousand twenty. Unfortunately, because of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, I wasn't able to physically go into a
Speaker 1: ballot box um and to a voting place and and
Speaker 1: cast my ballot. I voted absentee. But I found when
Speaker 1: I was doing that that I've just felt overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: this sense of being part of a larger movement. That
Speaker 1: when I was filling out my ballot, I was standing
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of all those who had come before me,
Speaker 1: who had fought for voting rights for women, for African Americans,
Speaker 1: for all the groups that have been disfranchised, and it
Speaker 1: was that sense of optimism which is tempered by the
Speaker 1: challenges still to voting rights, but it gave me a
Speaker 1: sense of being part of something larger and that we're
Speaker 1: in it for the long haul, and that we just
Speaker 1: need to keep going forward because it's important, the cause
Speaker 1: is important, but we're not alone, and that we really
Speaker 1: are standing on the shoulders of those who have come before.
Speaker 1: What an inspiring conclusion to this conversation. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Susan Ware. I hope our listeners read your book Why
Speaker 1: They Marched so they can learn so much more than
Speaker 1: we had time for today. But thank you so much
Speaker 1: for this wonderful conversation. Well, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: It's always great to hear fresh perspectives on women's history.
Speaker 1: Here are three things I took from that conversation. First,
Speaker 1: it's good to shift focus and think about the ordinary
Speaker 1: women who did what they could to make a difference.
Speaker 1: For example, one day in nine thirteen, Caitlin decided to
Speaker 1: ride her horse across Massachusetts to bring attention to women's
Speaker 1: suffrage and spent four months doing so. Second, women struggle
Speaker 1: for voting rights didn't end when the Nineteenth Amendment passed.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: that black women and other women of color had their
Speaker 1: right to vote protect to under law. Finally, the suffragists
Speaker 1: of yesterday have lessons that women's movements can still learn today.
Speaker 1: Those early activists were very aware of branding, says Susan Ware.
Speaker 1: They always were white to stand out, and they knew
Speaker 1: they had to use multiple strategies and tactics because they
Speaker 1: were in the fight for the long haul. Tune in
Speaker 1: next week to hear about her and next featured woman,
Speaker 1: and discover why she's one of Seneca's one Women to Hear.
Speaker 1: Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between
Speaker 1: the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with
Speaker 1: support from founding partner Pung. Have a Great Day.