Factually! with Adam Conover - The Surprising Path to Women's Suffrage with Ellen Carol DuBois

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Just in time for the 100 year anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, author and professor Ellen Carol DuBois joins Adam to discuss the history of the women's suffrage, the movement’s difficult history with the issue of race, how the temperance movement helped the cause, and the winding path America took to win women the power to vote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, I got to confess, I have always been a sucker for Japanese treats. I love going down a little Tokyo, heading to a convenience store, and grabbing all those brightly colored, fun-packaged boxes off of the shelf. But you know what? I don't get the chance to go down there as often as I would like to. And that is why I am so thrilled that Bokksu, a Japanese snack subscription box, chose to sponsor this episode. What's gotten me so excited about Bokksu is that these aren't just your run-of-the-mill grocery store finds. Each box comes packed with 20 unique snacks that you can only find in Japan itself.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. And look, we've all been dealing this year with compounding societal catastrophes, to say the least. It's been a lot. And that's made it a little hard to pay attention to a major milestone in American history that's been coming up. This would be blanketing the airwaves, if not for everything else going on this year. So let's talk about it right now. blanketing the airwaves, if not for everything else going on this year. So let's talk about it right now. On August 18th, 1920, nearly 100 years ago, the 19th Amendment was ratified and women across America were granted the right to vote. To vote. You know, this seems like a pretty fucking obvious thing for a society to do because, you know, about half of all humans are women, even

in America. The sheer duh factor of this accomplishment, you know, about half of all humans are women, even in America, the sheer duh factor of this accomplishment, you know, the fact that we all take it for granted, no one in America argues against it today as a right that women should have. Well, that us taking it for granted can obscure just how radical and complex and long lasting the suffrage movement was. It's one of the greatest movements in American history, far and away. And we spent surprisingly little time thinking about it or discussing it today. And our image of that movement is really, really limited. Like picture the suffrage movement. Picture it. You're probably imagining some women in white dresses, wearing sashes, waving some signs around getting the

amendment passed, right? Well, it's true. Those women did exist, but that picture is simplified to the point of being misleading. The truth is that the suffragist movement to expand voting rights to women lasted through three quarters of a century. Generations of women worked on this project. And that means that it's also a movement which traces the biases and changes of American culture over that time. And that means the movement is a lot more complex and has a lot more stories embedded within it than we normally acknowledge. For instance, let me just give you one example. Let's talk about how the women's suffrage movement

intersected with the history of race in America. For instance, I'll just give you one example. The women's suffrage movement was born from abolitionism. It arose from efforts to free enslaved people and to eventually expand to them the right to vote. And for that reason, in those early years, there was a radical egalitarianism to suffragist arguments. They believed that all citizens, men and women alike, regardless of race, deserved a right to vote. But as Reconstruction ended and white supremacy won out with the institution of the violent, racist, apartheid Jim Crow regime, suffragist appeals began to reflect it. Major suffrage organizations, i.e. white organizations, stopped allowing black women

into their midst. Some suffragist groups even made racist appeals to middle-class white women that they should get out the vote since black men, their supposed inferiors, already had it. Even heroes of the early radical suffragist movement like Elizabeth Cady Stanton made frankly racist statements in support of suffrage. Now that history complicates the story of the suffragist movement that we tell, And we are so fortunate that black men and women continued to fight for women's right to vote despite racist obstacles within the movement. Another piece of the story of suffragism that often gets left out is the temperance movement. We tend to think of the temperance movement and the prohibition period that followed it. of the temperance movement and the prohibition period that followed it, if we think of them at all, as mistakes, as the great buzzkill of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After all,

we say, hey, what's wrong with a little drink every now and again? Those people in the past were so stupid. Obviously, prohibition goes down as one of American history's great own goals, let's say. So what good could have come out of the temperance movement? Well, we have to remember, first of all, that men in this period in American history drank like crazy. They were drinking booze instead of water. And in an era where women were often very dependent on their husbands to make a living, alcohol was a force that might not only ruin the only chance to make sure your family was provided for alcohol was a force that might not only ruin the only chance to make sure your family was provided for, but a force that would put you and your children

at risk of domestic violence. Kind of like today, actually. Alcohol is still very linked to domestic violence in modern society, but let's move on from that for now. The point is we have the temperance movement and especially the Christian temperance movement to thank for bringing a huge number of non-radical mainstream women into the abolitionist fold. It was an unprecedented vehicle for that mass organization, that first political mobilization of women getting out to fight for their rights to not have drunk husbands before they fought for their right to vote. So, you know, to some extent we have to say cheers to temperance for bringing us women's suffrage.

The point is, the point I'm trying to make here is that history doesn't move in predictable directions. Those simple stories we often tell aren't really true. And if it seems like it is simple, it's because we already know the outcomes. But if you look back, you see so many fascinating details. History is a fractal that we can look ever closer at and discover new things in. So I'm so excited to bring you the guest we have today to discuss the winding path America took to win women the right to vote.

Our guest today is Ellen Carol Boyce, professor emeritus at UCLA and the author of the recent book Suffrage, Women's Long Battle for the Vote. She is an unquestioned expert on this movement and its history, which is, again, celebrating its 100th year anniversary in just a few weeks. So this is the perfect time to release this. Please welcome Ellen Carol DeVoy. Ellen, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for inviting me, Adam. So it's the almost exactly 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in the United States nationally for the first time. That's a piece of history that we kind of know.

We talk about it. You know, the suffragettes, we have the image in our mind. The ladies with the white dresses. We have to stop. Okay, we have to stop already. Correct me. You can't call them suffragettes. Okay, why?

You have to call them suffragists. Suffragette was a term developed in England by people attempting to ridicule the movement for women's suffrage. Really? And like terms like gay or queer or even black, for that matter. These were terms that were used to attack. And clever people realized the way to drain them of their negativity was to embrace them. So the term suffragette was embraced, but only by a more radical contingent.

So I would say most suffragists went by that term, suffragist. Wow. I wasn't talking for five seconds and you already gave me a fascinating correction of what I thought I knew about this topic. You're a perfect guest for us. I've been doing this for 50 years, so I got a million corrections in my podcast. Okay. Well, what do most people not realize about this story? I mean, this is 75 years of history, this movement.

What to you are the biggest misconceptions about it? All right. Well, let me say actually two things about the 19th Amendment and the right to vote, which are very, very relevant to us today. Two things. First of all, the 19th Amendment, if you read it carefully, it's the same exact language as the 15th amendment and it doesn't actually give women the right to vote what it says is that states can't deprive people of the right to vote their gender now there are two and the 15th amendment does the same states can't deprive people of their right to vote by their race, color, or previous condition of servitude. As many of us know, the states found all kinds of ways to get around those prohibitions.

For almost a century after that amendment was passed, it wasn't actually in force. Well, it wasn't just that it wasn't enforced. It was that the way the amendment was written left the basic control of the vote with very limited exceptions in the hands of the states. Right. That is the first thing I want to say, which is the original Constitution has very little to say about the right to vote. But what it does say is that the right to vote is controlled by the states. We know that. We suffer that in every election today. That's why Georgia can do what it wants to do.

Every state has its own rules. It's more than every state, you know, every county. But the point is that the federal government's control over the right to vote is very, very limited and became even more limited when a piece of legislation, the Voting Rights Act, was gutted by the Supreme Court. About the 19th Amendment, it says it's voiced in the negative. States can't deprive. Okay. You could say that that's one of the reasons that the southern states were able to keep Black women from voting.

They weren't depriving them because of their gender. They were depriving them because of their race. If somehow what the suffragists had won had said, women have the right to vote, Black women would have been in a stronger legal and jurisdictional position. The second thing I want to say, and if anything, this is even more important, is that in the first decade or so of the suffrage movement, suffragists' vision of what they wanted was exactly to link the right to vote to national citizenship, which I just tried to explain it is not.

Yeah. They tried to do this by their first wording of an amendment said the right national, all citizens of the United States. And the 14th Amendment had done something that had never been done before, which is to establish that there was national citizenship. So having established national citizenship, they tried an amendment that said national citizens had the right to vote, but you can't deprive women. That went nowhere. And by 10 years later, they defaulted to the language that had been first established in the 15th Amendment. So you're saying that they wanted a stronger amendment that was more of a positive right that said, if you are a citizen, you have the right to

vote. But instead, it ended up a much more limited amendment that said, well, states can't deprive people of the right to vote for this reason, which. That's right. Wow. So if that original effort had been successful and of course, given what was happening in American politics by the 70s, it was a very high bar. Not only would it have been stated in the affirmative, but all people, even you, Adam, would have had your right to vote protected or asserted. you, Adam, would have had your right to vote protected or asserted. Now, just one other little detail about this. Once it became clear that an amendment could never get through Congress that was phrased this way, that would really, really, really change the nature of the franchise. And this is a detail that some people might know, but not understand.

Many suffragists began to say, well, look, the 14th Amendment says that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. This is one of the most famous sentences in the Constitution. And then they said, and then it goes on to say, the rights and privileges of those citizens are protected equally. We know that language. So they said, okay, women are persons. Persons are citizens. Women are persons. Therefore, women are citizens.

And then, and this was the crucial point, of course the right to vote is the right of citizenship. What's the point of being a national citizen if you can't have the right to vote? Yeah. Seems pretty obvious. So in 1872, women all over the country, including here in our beloved state of California, but also everywhere, Black women in South Carolina, and Susan B. Anthony and 15 of her friends and neighbors went to the polls in the very consequential election of November 1872, and they made their case. They stood before these, you know, the kind of people who work, no negatives intended, but the kind of people who work the polls on Election Day, they're just there to get their five bucks.

Yeah, the same the same people who are there today. It's people who got nothing better to do but to hang around the high school gym for the whole day. Right. We have to say right now they're essential workers. So, yes, no, absolutely. And thank you to thank you to them for doing it. But they're not they're not they're not highfalutin officials of the state. They're just folks looking to pull. and they say, oh, you're ridiculous. You're a woman. You can't cast a ballot. You can't vote. And then she gives them this whole argument, 14th Amendment, women, persons, persons, citizens. And mostly, I think, because they realized, two of the three polling officials realized they were Republicans and they realized she was going to vote for Grant. So they said, okay, put it in. And so she voted. Different days back then. Well, I don't know.

You know, if somebody came up and said, yeah, I'm a illegal immigrant, but I'm going to vote for Trump, put it in. Different Republican party, different Republican party. So she was thrilled. And then a few days later, a week later, a federal marshal comes to her house and she's under arrest. Now, there are very few federal criminal laws at this point, but one of them passed in the aftermath of the Civil War was meant to keep former Confederate officials from voting. the Civil War was meant to keep former Confederate officials from voting. But it was just against the crime of illegal voting. So she's accused of the crime of illegal voting.

And the story of her trial, I won't spend the rest of our minutes detailing it. It's a very interesting story. Tell us a little bit about it. It sounds fascinating. Okay. Well, it's a federal crime. So it's a federal judge that sits in, oversees it in Rochester, in Monroe County, New York. And there's not a whole structure of district courts and federal courts. So the judge that sits over this trial is actually a Republican member of the United States Supreme Court, a recently appointed Supreme Court Justice. The trial is conducted in a very irregular way. And the crucial point is that after the trial is conducted, and Susan B. Anthony had gone all over her county giving a lecture

to hopefully to hit most of the jury pool on them about her understanding of why she voted. Comes to trial and comes the opportunity for the jury to make its decision. And the judge, Judge Hunt says, I have already determined that there is no decision for you to make. There are only two issues here. Did she vote? And is she a woman? And both of these were uncontested.

Wow. It was a, it was an incredibly shrunken notion of what was at trial. So she's found guilty, not by a vote of the jury, which is dismissed without taking a vote. She's found guilty. Now, she had hoped the whole point of this wasn't just for her and all of these hundreds of women around the country to vote, but for them to be kept from voting and then to take their case all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Ah, yeah, yeah. So that they would get a decision by the Supreme Court saying, your interpretation is correct. It would have made, first of all, it would have made an amendment unnecessary. And second of all, it would have established this basic principle of what I shall call universal suffrage. All citizens have the right to vote um but the judge uh did various things to um uh to uh basically i'm not a constitutional lawyer either but uh not um bring habeas corpus to bear so she couldn't um protest

and go up to the supreme court cut off that route of appealing to the Supreme Court that so many American movements have had. She tried to use it, but she was blocked from it. There were plenty of women who had done this. And a woman from St. Louis named Virginia Minor did go up to the Supreme Court. 1875, the court ruled, and only its second important women's rights ruling, it ruled on this argument. And its ruling was, the lawyers in your, especially the women lawyers in your audience will have covered this in their constitutional law class. The court ruled, yes, women were persons and yes, women were citizens. And yes, citizens all had equal rights. But no, the right to vote was not

a right of citizens. And I want to dwell on that for a second, because we talk about a lot of you know, I've talked about on my show, on this podcast about how, you know, the founding fathers didn't intend for everyone to have the right to vote, you know, that that wasn't part of the constitution. That's part of our national myth, but it simply was not the case about, you know, what was in the minds of the people who wrote the constitution or how the constitution was interpreted. And a lot of times we hear that. And I feel like we don't take that that seriously. We're like, well, you know thomas jefferson in the back of his mind probably wanted to but not really you know because that myth is so strong in us you know we believe that well no the seeds were there but you're saying that and what what year was this minor versus haper set case 1875 so in 1875 that's

that's that was the poor fellow who uh who refused to accept Francis Minor's vote. Well, so 150 years ago, the Supreme Court itself said, no, the Constitution does not guarantee a right to vote to all citizens. That's it. We're done. And that's why amendments were needed, because like it, it straight up was not fucking in there. Um, yes, absolutely. Uh, let me, let me sort of say something that would cover the time from your point about the founding fathers to this 1875, a little less than a hundred years later, please. Um, don't forget the country had undergone a revolution a constitutional revolution

um the 15th amendment for all of its flaws had introduced the right to vote of um the 10 percent the most the most um um degraded 10% of the population, former or 5% because it was only male slaves. Degraded isn't the right word, but the part of our population with the least amount of rights. Yeah, denigrated perhaps. Denigrated, thank you.

The United States is the only country that had slavery, which granted full political rights to former slaves immediately upon emancipation. The rest of them take a long, long time. Well, we took we took we took a long time as well. We took a long time as well. I mean, we granted those rights. And there was that brief period after Reconstruction where Black Americans, Black men voted all the way up to the 1890s. Yes. I'm sure you watched Watchmen to see the Tulsa race riot. It was really until the turn of the century that until that in the 70s and 80s, black men served in Congress. Yes. And in the Senate of the United States through the 70s and 80s. So we have to realize that there had been an absolute revolution in the concept of the franchise. It had started to take place earlier. You know, I'm sure that Thomas

Jefferson not only wanted to keep Black men from voting, but property lists white men. And by the 1820s and 1830s, that was done. All white men could vote in the United States. And all the limits of that, no women, no black men. It put the United States way ahead of any other country in the world. It's way ahead of any other country in the world. So we're off women's suffrage a little, but I just mean to say there was a moment. It was more than a moment.

It was a period in American history, let's say 25 years at the outset, in which possibilities for American democracy were much greater. And that's why there was so much reaction by the end of the century. Could you talk about one of the things I find really fascinating is the connection between the suffragist movement and the abolitionist movement of the movement to abolish slavery and the movement for black voting rights in America, because that's a story with a lot of twists and turns and a complex relationship. I wonder if you could break it down for us. Well, the women's rights movement begins really earlier in the 1830s as a, one would have to say, a sort of offshoot of the abolitionist movement.

Women, white women and black women both were important in the abolitionist movement. And as many, let's call them feminists, using a word that wasn't used then, as many feminists said, they learned about human rights. They used that term. They learned about human rights in the school of anti-slavery. The question of voting rights comes up when it does in 1848 because the anti-slavery movement is beginning to move into politics. Political parties are beginning to be formed that will culminate in the middle of the 1850s in the brand new Republican Party. At this point, then, getting rid of slavery is going to begin to require not just moral rectitude, but political power. And that is what begins to take both the Black Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement into politics. Now, let us go forward 20 years.

Now let us go forward 20 years. It's the end of the Civil War. It is a moment of reckoning. What's going to happen now that the 13th Amendment and the 14th Amendment have been passed, and it is clear that Black people are citizens, which it took amendments to do because of the horrible Supreme Court decision of Dred Scott. Now the question is, what's the status of Black people? And now we get to the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments, which is the 15th Amendment, which we've already talked a little bit about. The Republican Party knew it could count on Black men to vote for it, especially in the South, as it brought the Confederate States back into the Union.

So it had a partisan reason, as well as a a moral reason to enfranchise black men. You couldn't enfranchise women and count on them voting any which way. They were half of the population. Plenty of them would vote for the other parties. So the 15th Amendment is not only phrased in the negative, as we've said, but only addresses disfranchisement by race, color, and previous condition of servitude. Suffragists, particularly Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, decide that, to use Stanton's words, the constitutional door is slamming shut. And she was right. There was not another amendment passed until the early 20th century. not another amendment passed until the early 20th century yeah um so uh um they objected to the 15th amendment the suffrage movement split on that question um this is a terrible moment in in a in

women's suffrage history where women had to choose uh between the rights of black men and the rights of women. So some in the suffragist movement opposed the 15th Amendment, which granted or prevented states from preventing black men from voting. Correct. And they felt they had to choose. Why was it a choice to them? Because once black men were enfranchised, there would be no more opportunity in the constitution. So they felt they were in competition with black men for the franchise.

I would say less than competition is that they're trying to hold off a solution to this problem and to press, to get women included. They're like, if we, if we're not included in this amendment, we won't be like, there's not going to be another amendment passed later. Right. And they were right. Yeah. All right. So this is a terrible moment. And then... Can I ask? I mean, the way you put that is a very strategic consideration.

I'm also aware you're talking about, you know, white women in the 19th century. Like, was there was there racism in the movement as well? Well, let me move forward to that. Please. Well, there were some black women who agreed with this strategy, not all and maybe not the most. But some black women agreed. Sojourner Truth was one such woman. OK, now let's you know, I talked a little bit about this continuing effort to get universal suffrage.

Yeah. Now it's about 1880. United States in general is moving in a very reactionary way with respect to slavery and with respect to black rights. And trying to deny those rights. Say it again. Like different states and municipalities are trying to deny those rights. There's a snapback. It's more than that. It's northern suffragists as well. And the most notorious of these is my own beloved Elizabeth Stanton, who was very elitist. also believed, as she said, that women like herself, educated women, women who were the daughters and granddaughters of revolutionary heroes, should vote before the ditch diggers. This is, in fact, a very Jeffersonian view of voting, that it's only for proper people. view of voting that it's it's only for proper people uh yeah that's that's well said that's well said but her position is that the only difference between me and thomas jefferson is that i'm a woman uh i'm as smart as this first generation, I would say the most egregious.

And Susan B. Anthony, who's usually her best friend, who's usually grouped with her, did not go so far. Anthony was in her heart, much more of an abolitionist. We can see this in the eighties, whenever she goes to talk somewhere, even to the South, she would go and talk to black people. She'd go to their churches and their societies. But she's also very pragmatic and they're struggling to get white southern women into the movement and they realized, you know, white supremacy is on the rise and they have to set aside black rights. I hope I'm not sounding too excusing of this, but I do want to put it in the context. If we look at all the other reform movements of the 80s and 90s, the labor movement, even black rights, they're very conservative.

movement even black rights they're very conservative um and uh the labor movement is not welcoming of black people at all and it's only the women's rights movement that gets that that has a reputation that has tainted it all the way to the present well it's it's interesting because i was about to mention the labor rights movement. And so I'm glad you brought it up because I've read about the early labor movement in the US. The fact that there was a lot of racism in it and that there were particular unions and guilds that didn't want to include black workers, even though they were working side by side or in the same industry. You know, these are unions that if they got all the workers in, they would have had so much power. But, you know, the members of the white members of the unions were were racist. They were they were bluntly racist. They saw these black workers as their competition. Yeah. People who would who who their employers would bring in at lower wages. Well, so that's part of the shameful history of the labor movement. And it also critically disabled the labor movement from achieving many of its aims.

It was a it was a wedge that was used, you know, in order to break the labor movement apart in some places. And, you know, there were in Stephen Greenhouse's book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, the history of the labor movement, he talks about cases in which, you know, if that hadn't been the case, the labor movement would have won certain major battles rather than have lost them. And so I'm curious if you see it the same way with the women's rights movement or with the suffragist movement that, you know, I understand that sometimes you're talking about this as a political concession they had to make. Hey, we're trying to attract white Southern women. You're boxed in. I don't southern women you're boxed in i don't know if that's a political i don't know if that's a compromise i would approve of um but even apart from that uh there must have been times as well that it that it was a strategic mistake to do this um as well as a moral mistake well um that's a really good question. I would say at the beginning of this period, let us say in the mid-1870s, they could have kept a more capacious view of women's rights going. I think probably more significantly in the end of this period, in the teens, in the early 20th century, where this generation that we're talking about who had been schooled in the anti-slavery movement were dead and gone. And the leaders of this movement, which by now was a segregated

movement, and also there was a black suffrage movement. The white leaders of this movement had no, had not been raised with any kind of, any kind of vision of racial equality. And so when, so the suffrage movement in the last decade, it, I want to be very careful about this. Let's also remember that the president of the United States starting in 1912 was a Southern Democrat and Democrats controlled all the branches, both branches of Congress and the presidency. National, you know, Wilson, we now know, his name has been removed from various honorifics, Wilson purged the federal government of Black

people. The chances of Black, for instance, another thing that happened is by this time, Another thing that happened is by this time, long before, Black voters had been disfranchised. They'd actually been able to vote in the 70s, I think. So the chances of Black people having any role in a national movement was minuscule. But to go back to our earlier point, there were still state suffrage movements which were beginning to pursue, which were pursuing successfully the right to vote at the state level. And the majority of Black people lived in the South where they were thoroughly disfranchised. But increasing numbers of Black people were migrating to the North in what's called the Great Migration. And in crucial cities in the North, and I'll name two, Chicago and New

York, there were Republican parties that had power, both in the state and the city, and they counted on Black voters. Black voters were not a majority, and they counted on black voters. Black voters were not a majority, but they were a crucial minority. And in both of those states, especially in Chicago, because there was a great black suffrage leader. Especially in which, sorry? Chicago. The great Ida B. Wells was in Chicago,

and she was organizing black women to play a role in electing the first Black man to Congress since Reconstruction. I think his name was Oscar De Priest. A little less so in New York because, of course, the city politics are controlled by Democrats, but the state politics have, go back and forth between the parties. There's room for black suffragists at the state level. And even, I would say, in some Southern states, now that we know the actual details of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which of course required voting in legislatures in 36 states. Final crucial vote was in Tennessee. And Black suffragists, Tennessee had two parties, it was a border state, and the Black suffragists were active in Tennessee. They were active in Delaware. So what can I say? It may be possible, it may have been possible, that in certain environments,

more welcoming to black voters might have made gains at the state level and gains during the ratification less difficult. it's such a complicated question because as you describe i mean in the early 20th century up until the 60s you know the southern democrats as you described were a dominant block in national politics whose only goal was to uphold the southern apartheid state right Right. And I mean, it was a dominant political strategy for 50 to 75 years. And you're right. I mean, to some extent, any national movement would have to make its compromises with that because that's the political reality on the ground. On the other hand, you know, so I can look at it on the one hand that way and I can look at the other hand that way and say, well, for a movement that that grew out of the abolitionist movement that,

you know, was, as you said, originally committed to universal suffrage for all citizens. And it's it seems like it would have been better to hold on to that, to those values. But, I mean, we weren't alive at the time. We have to look at all of history together. Well, I would say all I ask of the public, you know, there's an irony here. Just like the right to vote finally comes up for victory in the deepest, darkest depths of Jim Crow, right? Right now, as we celebrate the 19th Amendment, we're in the midst of a Black Lives Matter insurgence. So there is tremendous attention to the racism of a whole range of American heroes, American white heroes. Having said that, all I ask of the American public, and of course it is my privilege to ask something of the American public,

all I ask of the American public is that they, as you say, see both sides. public is that they, as you say, see both sides. The costs, even some pragmatic costs, but also the range of history. The suffrage movement covers one quarter of American history. Yeah. So, yes. So we need to know about the complex racial history of this movement, but complex it is.

Well, we have to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Ellen Du Bois. so ellen tell us a bit about the story of the passage of the 19th amendment itself how did it happen well i said that there were many surprises and i would say the last is that it almost didn't happen. It took so long. It happened so much later than it should have. But it could have taken much longer. France did not grant the right to vote to women of France until the 1940s. It couldn't do that for us. The suffragists who had worked their delicate asses off to get it through Congress and had done so now knew that they had this terrible mountain, terrible mountain to climb, ratification. And most amendments don't even get through Congress, but even those that get through Congress don't get through ratification ERA. And so the first, you needed 36 states. So the whole point of the structure of the constitutional amending process

is that it is a very, very, it's rife with obstacles. So through the Congress, two thirds of the Congress, and now we're at a point where a minority of opponents in a minority of states can stop the amendment. So it ends up taking June to 15 months, I think. It might be 18 months, 15 months. And, you know, the first 10, 15, 20 states are pretty quick, and then it slows down. And it is a long time. I should have checked this out, I should have looked at my book. Your book, which is called what?

Suffrage, Women's Long Battle for the Vote. It took many months to get the 36th state, because the majority of states who opposed were Southern. And as we've said, they weren't going to ever do so. And some very conservative Northeastern states controlled by conservative Republicans. The Republican Party was long, the party of Lincoln was long gone. We were into the party of Coolidge on the verge. And so the final story, which is a wonderful story, that it ends up, the perfect 36, as it's called, the 36th state ends up being the state of Tennessee. Who would have thought?

And there's a great story here, which I'm sure some of your listeners know, which is Tennessee, because it was a border state, had a residual Republican party in the eastern part of the state. And there was an incredibly hard-fought battle in the steamy summer, the steamy, steamy month of August 1920. And in the end, it gets by with one vote. And that vote comes from a 24 year old Republican state legislator named Tom Byrne, Harry Byrne, not Tom Byrne, Harry Byrne. And the famous story is that he gets a letter from his mother telling him to be a good boy and vote for Mrs. Katz. And they actually found the letter. Now, that's real. Yeah, it's a real letter. Now, you know, there are a million politics behind all this, but in any case,

Tennessee barely passes it. The governor rushes off the certification of state ratification and rushes it to Washington because the opponents are trying all kinds of devices, which they don't give up for months, to try to undo the ratification. Wow. But suffragists... He's like, my mom wrote a letter. The mom wrote a letter. Come on, we got it. The last vote of the last state.

The mother's in Portland, right? Don't hit us. Don't hit our kids. We're moms. don't hit us don't hit our kids we're moms suffragists were desperate to get in before the 1920 election and so it gets august 26th all right when it gets to the august 26th we know how little time there is between then and the election another presidential election it is two months and a week uh and they had to register women around the country uh and there were obstacles to registering women particularly in southern states even after it passed there was so little time to register them. Well, we're back to our original point, which is states control. Yeah. And we still see that today. I mean, in Florida, you know, there was that proposition of people of Florida voted to extend voting rights to

previously incarcerated people to end felony disenfranchisement there. And then as soon as they did, well, the state passed new rules in order to try to limit as many of those people from voting as possible. That happens. That happens any time. It seems that the franchise is expanded. People at the state level work to restrict it. That is true. And don't forget, this is a doubling of the electorate. Nobody knew what it would do. of the electorate. Nobody knew what it would do. Yeah. In the end, it took many more decades for the women's vote to make a profound difference in American politics, almost as long as it took to win the vote, 50 years. But nonetheless, there was terror in the established parties, There was terror in the established parties, both terror, a competition of terror and a competition to like, you know, Republicans, Democrats.

No, we did it. No, we did it. No, we did it. Women should vote for us. Women should vote for us. Yeah, I understand why there was terror, because like, OK, if you're a politician, say you've been a representative in Congress for a decade. Well, you've won five elections. You basically know who votes for you. You go talk to those people every time. You're standing on top of this system, which is made up of these people being allowed to vote. As soon as there's a seismic shift, you get redistricted or, you know, the franchise is extended. Well, that's going to change the fundamental math. And maybe you won't get as many voters now. And when you see today,

Republicans and Democrats trying to expand the franchise or restrict the franchise, they're trying to win those battles. They're trying to say this is better for us if we have more voters. This is better for us if we have left less voters. I happen to think that everyone should be allowed to vote apart from that. But that's the reason it's politically different. That's why, for instance, Election Day isn't a national holiday because you've got the politicians saying, well, that'll change who votes if Election Day is a national holiday. So imagine how big a shift it is to suddenly have half, twice as many people voting. Like they must have been like, we don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

makes me realize that it's not just the Republicans who are opposing an expansion of not just the franchise, but of voting energies. You know, these established Democrats throughout New York State, in particular, they know, they anticipate they're going to have trouble holding on to their seats. And a lot of them do. So you are quite right. It is not any one party. It is established political power that is not crazy about infusing energies into the franchise. Yeah, because they might they might get voted out. I mean, it's it's self-protection. It's it's a little it's cynical, but you understand sort of why the cynicism happens. Yes. Well, yeah, I, I'm one for forgiving historical characters for their sins, but not this one. And for forgiving this one.

Okay, well, my last question for you then is, how did the addition of women to the franchise change American politics? You said it took a while. What were the changes that happened? Excellent question. Well, in the first few years, politicians expect women will vote in a block. And so in the first few years, they bring women onto their tickets. They pass just very few federal laws. There's a federal law increasing welfare benefits to women and children. But certainly by the third election, by 28, and maybe even by 24, it is clear that women are not voting in a block.

And let me also add to this, it's hard to tell how many women voted. You know, when you want to say how many black people voted or how many working class people voted and how they voted, by race and class, people live in different districts, but they don't live in different districts by gender. They live with each other. And it is not until we begin to have exit polls in the 40s that we even have a chance. Only claims about how women are voting are based on prejudice. Prejudice and also the fact that in the next three elections, 2024 and 28, conservative Republicans are elected.

Now, even then, our best guess is something like two thirds of eligible women voted, which made them, I don't know, voting maybe 50 percent of. Anyhow, less than the male electorate. I don't know, voting maybe 50% of, anyhow, less than the male electorate. I don't know the numbers. Men are never blamed for these three conservative presidential elections. Just women. In my mind, this is something that, you know, it's like the Karen meme.

It's as if white men bear total responsibility for racist upsurge. It's the police. Or for electing Trump. Are there not white men in this world? So that said, the number of women in Congress peaks at about maybe eight during that decade. OK. There's only one suffragist, a woman named Ruth Hannah McCormick. That's McCormick of the Chicago Tribune, McCormick.

And then as soon as she's elected to Congress, she decides she wants to get into the Senate. So she's trying to get in the Senate in 32, but she hits two barriers. One is the depression and the other is the objection of Republican powers who say that the election of women in a Senate will ruin the Senate.

One woman gets elected to the Senate in the 30s, a woman named Hattie Carraway, who's from Arkansas, and is there. She's a new dealer, and she's replaced by J. William Fulbright. And it is not until, of course, Margaret Chase Smith in the 50s that we get a second woman in the Senate. So as many of us know, the numbers of women in Congress and the Senate do not begin to take an uptick until the 90s. Let me go back to women voters. There are a lot of claims that women vote more conservatively than men, that they vote like their husbands. But starting in the 1970s, we know that women start to vote more liberally and more democratically. And the process is called the gender gap in voting.

And with small changes, that has remained the case to this day. Certainly, it made the great difference in voting. And with small changes, that has remained the case to this day. Certainly, it made the great difference in 2018. Women elected Clinton. Obama had a wider coalition. So it took a long time for women, you know, even at its height, and it was an enormous movement, even at its height, I'm making up a number, maybe 1% of women were involved in the suffrage movement, just tiny bits. changed their understanding of themselves as political actors. And that took a long time and several upheavals. Oh, I want to add one other thing. Please. I personally, again, it's hard to get statistics,

but I personally think that the addition of women to the electorate in 1920 plays a role in the upheaval of 1932, which brings a totally different Democratic Party into power. Oh, okay. We know that there is a group of women. they're not elected, but they are policy advisors grouped around Eleanor Roosevelt. And they make a tremendous difference in the New Deal. They're responsible for a lot of the social welfare legislation we associate with the New Deal. So I personally think women voters may have made or played a role the ratification of the amendment, you know, Francis Perkins, the first female cabinet secretary, was only a decade later. We do start to see that movement piece by piece. It just takes a lot longer than maybe a lot of people then would have thought.

Perkins was herself, had done an apprenticeship in the suffrage movement and let me point out that after Perkins it's not until Carter that the second woman becomes a cabinet officer really? it took that long? she's the housing person, I can't remember her name oh, under Carter.

Yeah. That's okay. No one ever remembers the second. We're all about the first. What lessons do you think we can take away from the suffragist movement? I mean, on the one hand, it's an inspiring movement that took so many women working together for such a long period of time at the second time at this, you know, on the other hand, excuse me there were these, you know, flaws. There's there's racism as you're talking about in the history of the movement. There's there, the changes that it brought about were much slower than we,

than we maybe would have liked. How do you, what do you think we can take away from it by looking at it? All right, let's take three things. One is the importance of coalitions and that's a negative lesson okay the unity of all well of all women and then of all citizens of good hearts secondly i don't usually say this but in the aftermath of the death of John Lewis, who never, ever lost his faith in the vote, and who almost gave his life, and honor of John Lewis, let us say the vote is the essence of American democratic power. And third, we must persevere. These women went through three generations just to get the vote and another three to make use of it. And so we should not get impatient. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on to talk

to us about it today. Let's do it again, Adam. I would love to do it again. I'm there for you. Well, thank you once again to Ellen for coming on the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. If you did, please leave us a rating or a review wherever you subscribe. It really, really, really does help us out. I'm not fucking around here, folks. It really does make a difference to the success of the show. If you just open that podcast app and give us a little five star and write a few words about the show and why you like it. I want to thank for our show today, our producers, Dana Wickens and Sam Roudman, our engineers Brett Morris and Ryan Conner, Andrew

WK for our theme song. I have been Adam Conover. You can find me online at AdamConover.net or at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media. Thanks so much for listening and remember, stay curious. that was a hate gun podcast