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thank you so much for this invitation it was it seems really appropriate that i would be giving this presentation in this institution because willard carpenter after all was one of the early supporters for women's rights in this community and for civil rights he was an agent for the underground railroad before the civil war and then after the civil war it was only through his philanthropy that the evansville christian home for unwed mothers first known as the home for the friendless was established in 1870. he named this institution after not himself which most people think but after emma willard who had in troy new york established the first institution of higher learning for girls in this country so i say to his ghostly daughter emma that she should maybe give him a break even if he didn't leave his fortune to her what i'm talking about tonight is the history of the women's suffrage movement in evansville and i've been able to compile this only because of the new technology that has digitized old evansville newspapers and you can get it online now through the evansville public libraries so i went back through 150 years of local newspapers and this is the story that emerges our suffrage movement here uh was slow to start the first reference i could find to it was in 1875 for a number of years our local newspapers had carried stories about suffrage activities in other cities across the country and even in other countries but nothing in evansville until this brief notice in the evansville journal on a cold snowy day in december that susie johnson was going to lecture on the topic at evans hall marble hall unfortunately we'll never know what susie said or how many people attended her lecture as it turns out she was an outside agitator a trans reader from detroit who had been brought to evansville by the newly organized society of evansville society of spiritualist spiritualism was a movement all across the country then and it supported women's rights so susie decided to talk about that while she was here unfortunately we don't know what she said because the newspapers made no further reference to it or to any other suffrage activity in this city for another seven years then in 1882 another outside agitator helen gugar from lafayette she was vice president of the indiana state women's suffrage association it had been organized 31 years earlier as one of the first statewide suffrage groups in the country helen came to evansville and tried to stir up interest among local women but again nothing happened and another four years went by and a third outsider came this time 200 women and a few men came to hear the speaker and this is what the daily courier wrote about it on may 30 1886 we learned from competent authority that the last week was made a memorable one in local history by the organization in our midst of a woman's suffrage association this will supply a long felt want the paper said evansville has struggled along for many years under all kinds of vicissitudes feeling conscious all the time that there was a certain undefinable something lacking i thought wow that's straight out of betty friedan a century earlier but then came the last sentence in that story who knows but an embryo female president may be trotting around in our midst in pandellettes and with a wad of chewing gum in her mouth sure enough who knows so that was the start of evansville women's organized battle for the right to vote as i said they were a little bit late in the game but at least we did eventually have our own suffragist and once in the battle they absolutely fought it evansville style no protest marches no picting no hunger strikes just very ladylike and i think perhaps that timeline and that response helps explain why it took more than 70 years for women to gain the right to vote in this country not all women were for it the editor of evansville's daily courier called it a remarkable peculiarity that despite all the many reasons women should want the franchise few initially were for it and today it's hard for us to imagine that but what the suffragists wanted was radical and few people are radicals one who was maywright sewell an indianapolis educator and social reformer who was internationally prominent for decades as chair of the executive committee of the national american woman's suffrage association organized by susan b anthony they were best buds it was may who came to evansville in 1886 and in a speech that lasted two hours the courier said she became rather hoarse but was interesting she convinced a group of local women to establish a regional suffrage association for what was then evansville's first congressional district and once organized this group wasted no time within a year it hosted a convention for the state association attracting 400 women to evansville to hear the keynote speaker who was susan b anthony she came to evansville twice that year and you will see no historic monuments to note that the courier called her long hour-long speech a masterpiece of logic satire wit and eloquence the courier said she was delightful and invited her to come back to indiana and whoop it up here anytime but when suffragists in in other cities did whip it up and were arrested for their peaceful protest our suffragists would have none of that instead they opened a tea room on main street and invited women to stop in and learn about the issues and listen to speakers most of whom were men our suffrages were respectable church women some of their strongest supporters were their ministers and on that historic day november 2 1920 when evansville women voted for the first time in history the courier reported it somewhat with biblical sobriety male and female he created he then and on tuesday they went hand in hand like animals into the ark into the polling booth the newspaper assured its readers that no divorces had been filed as a result of women gaining the vote i love this story i think it speaks of this community and it's been such fun researching it for our celebration this year of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment but um to put the local story and context we have to start at the national level and at least paid a tribute to that band of revolutionaries who started it all the instigators were long-time abolitionists the quaker preacher lucretia mott her friend elizabeth katie stanton sojourner truth susan b anthony carrick chapman cat and the impatient alice martin stanton had met each other when they were delegates to the first world anti-slavery conference in london in 1840 and when they arrived there the male delegates would not let them participate in the discussions because they were women well they were incensed and they decided that they should organize another convention this one focusing on women's rights and eight years later it happened in seneca falls new york in 1848 the women there spelled out their grievances in a declaration of sentiments part of which i've shown here and you will notice that some of their issues we still face equal pay for equal work equal standing in our churches and isn't this last one interesting today in this metoo moment but even liberal newspapers of that day said the women at seneca falls had gone too far one said it was the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity well that convention launched the women's suffrage movement in this country but it was not the beginning of the women's rights movement that had been going on for years including a quarter century earlier just down the road from evansville in the experimental utopian society in new harmony women there had a voice and a vote in their civic affairs they formed the first women's club in this country and robert dale owen who came from scotland to help his father establish the new harmony experience in 1825 quickly became a leading national advocate for abolition and for women's rights owen was a radical of the most profound sort in 1827 he and fanny wright who was perhaps the most controversial social reformer of that day began co-editing the new harmony gazette and later a newspaper in new york city in which they advocated for such radical ideas as the end of slavery universal suffrage liberal divorce laws free public schools created such controversy and then in 19 in 1830 owen wrote and published the very first birth control book in the united states i could just there's just so much more to tell about this remarkable man but i will just add that hoosier suffrage has honored him at a huge banquet in indianapolis following the first indiana constitutional convention in 1850 51 where he had successfully sponsored a landmark bill providing at least some property rights for married women in this state owen was not at seneca falls but his influence certainly was there and one would hope think that some of it trickled over to evansville but i can assure you that our suffrages were not radicals of the most profound sort local history books written by men make no mention of them to track them down we go back through the old city directories of that day they are identified in the newspapers only by their husbands names so we tracked them down this way and we learned that evansville suffragists were evansville's elite white upper-class women the wives and doctors of this city's leading businessmen bankers doctors lawyers lucia blount appears to have been the local instigator and she too was sort of an outsider lucia was the college-educated daughter of a prominent kalamazoo michigan family she came to evansville as the bride of henry blount the very wealthy owner of evansville's one of its largest industries of that day blount plow works lucia imported to evansville a lot of outside ideas she founded our first book group in this city the ladies literary society that did serious studies of shakespeare and other cultures she hosted the estate suffrage leaders when they came to evansville to try to get things started and she would hold parlor meetings in her home to bring in the influential women to hear these speakers there's no indication that our suffragists were abolitionists were probably too south for that but they were leaders in the local temperance movement which was very big at that time one also was the founder of what became our humane society the treasure was banker will warren women were not allowed to be in charge of money in those days not even suffrage money and their chief activity was the only political activity they could engage in circulating petitions and lobbying legislators for the right to vote in municipal elections this is something that's not very well understood about the suffrage movement as the recent presidential election has acutely reminded us the united states constitution gives states broad authority to set their own election laws so unless there was until there was a revision in the federal constitution these women had to go to their all-male state legislators state by state to seek to petition for any voting rights and most in initially petitioned just for partial suffrage some started just asking for the right to vote in school board elections by 1886 when evansville women became involved finally women in 12 states had already won school suffrage this is a map of 1919. women and the young in the young and sparsely populated western states had the most success women in southern states and indiana had the least success voting rights for women were just a hodgepodge across the country whether they could vote at all who they could vote it for when they could vote and a side note here i think is it's the same state-by-state process today that the nra is using in its fight for gun rights that anti-abortion right to life groups have used for the last past sin half century to eat away at roe v wade in the absence of federal laws or constitutional rights it's state by state by state that these battles go on you will also note a close look at this map shows that most of the all-male state legislatures were willing to give the women some voting rights except the right to vote for state legislators our hoosier legislators turned a deaf ear year after year indiana women first petitioned for suffrage in 1854 and repeated that a appeal for 66 years before finally winning in 1920. another factor in why the suffrage movement took so long is that it was not happening in a vacuum from the mid 1880s to 1920 the united states was almost in constant upheaval there was the civil war then reconstruction the industrial revolution massive immigration which was as controversial then as it is now prohibition world war one so women and their plea for the vote had to compete with all these things for a priority on the national agenda and they just did not come in in first place so it had to be frustrating to be a suffragist and the movement just peaked and waned and picked and wayne and for about a decade here after about 19 1893 i could find no record of any suffrage movement here but in that time a new generation of women emerged more educated and less restrained by the old social codes because of the work their mothers had done and this was the start of the great progressive era evansville and all of indiana had this highly organized federation of women's clubs led here again by the upper white middle middle-class wives and daughters of prominent men they were they felt very accomplished and ready to achieve things jobs weren't open to them so they went to work on this community among them was elizabeth bessie lowenstein surely one of the most remarkable women in evansville's history some of you may have known her granddaughter the late susie nicholson who i thought was going to become the first female mayor of evansville when she moved out of town you also might have known some of the other suffragists artist florida eichel who had a prominent role in our museum's history musician flora fain a faculty chair at ue is named in her honor emily orr clifford the first woman to serve on the evansville college board of trustees and founder of the first conservation movement in evansville dr francis hankins one of the city's early female physicians bertha eric a doctor's wife and president of the washington temple sisterhood the jewish community was very active in in the suffrage movement here irene erbacher founder of evansville's first theater group and founder of the women and children's service school teacher edith baker and rose heilman sister of a former evansville mayor together these women built what became the cultural and social welfare infrastructure that serves our community today they founded evansville's visiting nurse program the baby's milk fund the ywca the first day nursery for children of working mothers the first nursing home the museum the musicians club baini camp tb hospital tb was a major killer then with albion fellows bacon they campaigned for housing reform tenant reform child labor laws the list just goes on and on and they've just sort of been omitted from local history so these accomplished women were more than up for a challenge when the newly reorganized women's franchise league of indiana invited them in 1913 to become part of a new suffrage strategy their goal now was to gain the vote by organizing a mass campaign for revision of indiana's state constitution their approach was really sophisticated in this day when we didn't have any of these means of mass communication that we have now they developed a leadership training program they had classes on organizational skills on how to speak in public on how to write and circulate petitions they trained evansville suffragist to go out through all the surrounding towns and farm communities and recruit women there to form their suffrage groups and circulate the petitions and lobby the legislators and of course some men opposed them our chamber of commerce refused to let the suffragist use one of its meeting rooms for a number of years but a group of seven prominent men formed the men's league for women's suffrage in vandenberg county and gave strong support its president was george clifford who at the time was also working to bring morris hill college to evansville george was a big advocate of women's rights and gave frequent pro-suffrage speeches all through th area attorney paul schmidt was the vice president he gave lessons for this to teach the suffrages about uh the state constitution and structure of state and local governments rabbi max mera was one of the founders as were several protestant ministers but notably no catholic priest eventually 56 men belonged to the group and they supported the women's goal which was social reform this was the suffragist platform in indiana in 1914. these are the reasons women wanted the vote and they knew that they couldn't they couldn't achieve these reforms unless they first gained the power of the ballot well by then the suffrage campaign nationally had split into two factions one was the big two million member national american woman suffrage association founded by elizabeth katie stanton and then headed by carrie cat chapman they believed that any militant action would backfire on their cause the younger smaller more impatient 50 000 member american woman association was led by alice paul who had spent a number of years in england working with the very militant british suffragettes and she worked to get more militant action here it was alice's group that picketed the white house harangued president wilson and other congressmen and were arrested jailed and tortured the evansville suffragist didn't approve that at all our ladies said publicly that they did not approve of alice paul and her silent sentinels and this was really hard um thing to swallow for courier report reporter laura hostetter who would rather they had been at least a little militant as she wrote in her club women's news down here in the southwestern indiana pocket conservativeness is almost a religion suffrage leaders lead gently for certain ostracism based on horror follows any near militant advocacy of progressive principles some of us can relate to that today when suffrage leaders across the country staged marches on national suffrage day in may 1914 our suffrages wouldn't do that declaring we are not militant they opened their tea room it was in the front lobby of williams photography studio at 206 main street the courier said on opening day it was either a great curiosity or a great success because it was thrown by people george clifford was the speaker to finance their work our suffrages sowed chocolate kisses at county fairs and they had annual melting pot events where the members brought in old pieces of of silver or broken earrings or whatever and then cashed those in for money but not militant this is one of the few pictures that local newspapers carried of any suffrage activity i don't know why they just did not photograph these women in any activity but at any rate soon there were these suffrage groups organized in all the area towns and it did pay off in early 1917 at long last legislators acted the indiana house and senate approved a partial suffrage bill granting women the right to vote in municipal elections school board elections and special elections including the referenda on prohibition which was really big all those years of victory and the excitement was just palpable suffragist went to work registering thousands of hoosier women to vote eighteen thousand women in vandenberg county were registered to vote almost forty thousand women in indianapolis and these women knew what they wanted jobs a voice and local government they were ready but it was all for naught two men in indianapolis filed lawsuits and won the indiana supreme court just days before the election ruled that the law was unconstitutional on grounds that the legislature was without authority to grant suffrage to women because the state constitution stated clearly that quote suffrage in indiana shall be limited to males of age 21 and older and that was just the last hope for reform in indiana so our suffrages uh switch their uh focus to the national lobbying efforts for a revision in the federal constitution again going out and circulating petitions and and lobbying legislators then during all this activity the united states entered world war one and a fascinating thing happened suffrages here and across the country except for alice paul's militant group set aside their suffrage work to help support the war and this is so interesting i always thought that the rosie the riveters of world war ii had been the real trailblazers the women who entered the workforce in mass for the first time not true it was the women of world war one with men off to war employers here and across the country hired women in jobs that had never been open to them before a female elevator operator was front page news the this newspapers were filled with stories about women going to work in every local industry in every office doing things they'd never been able to do before bessie lowenstein and other suffragists took leadership roles in selling the victory war bonds an amazing 140 local women volunteered as red cross nurses going to the battlefront in that war women who'd never dug a worm went to work in the farms and victory gardens and in the process they shed their corsets and never put them on again it was a fashion revolution women did wear their pants and and got calls from police about it they shortened their skirts top stopped wearing hats and some joined the military in 1917 19 year old pearl chanley of evansville was one of the first five women in history to enlist in the united states marine corps which along with the army and navy had never accepted women before pearl was a graduate of lockheed college here and was well qualified for the military secretarial jobs that she filled uh it was such a massive change and so at the end of the war there was no going back women had gained a financial independence they had gained confidence in their own abilities to achieve something and they could rightly claim that america's women had helped win the war his some historians say it was that that it was women's support for the war that became their winning argument for the right to vote other historians credit alice paul's militant group for shaming congress and the president into action after many of them were jailed and tortured and force-fed because of their peaceful protest i think maybe it took both approaches at any rate it happened after the war congress adopted the 19th amendment on june 4 1919 sending it to the states for ratification some states acted immediately our neighbors illinois wisconsin and michigan on june 10 ohio on june 16 but even kentucky was before indiana we were the 26th on january 16 1920. the amendment became law on august 26 1920 after tennessee became the necessary 36th state um to approve it that happened by margin of one vote by a young legislator whose mother told him what to do this is it the amendment exactly is written 42 years earlier by susan b anthony and introduced in congress first in 1878 after that the suffrages quickly organized as the league of women voters went out again and re-registered all those thousands of women to vote taught them how to use the voting machines men were convinced that women would never be able to figure that out and then went to work on reforms and some reforms came quickly within months women were called to jury duty for the first time the evansville police department hired female beat cops the first women trustees were appointed to this library board that included suffrage leader bertha eric irene erbacher and nancy hitch long time suffrage leaders were the first women appointed to the local school board they had been trained for leadership this shows the the turnout as many women as men turned out uh to vote in that election but it was another nine years before evansville had its first female candidate for mayor susie van orman susie carried a broom through her campaign to sweep the dirt out of local politics in which her husband had been involved for a long time she only gained 647 votes in the primary and was out of the race not until 1945 what 25 years after women gained the right to vote did evansville send its first woman to the legislature irma served one year in the legislature came home and became the first woman elected to the evansville city council had already served 12 years on the school board and today no one has heard of this woman the second woman we sent to the state legislature elsie barning she was she served six terms at age 61 while running for her fifth term she earned her high school diploma through a correspondence course elsie was the legislator who introduced the bill that allowed women to work as bartenders in indiana here is a list of evansville women first in politics as you can see where we're still making history while compiling this data i was i was kind of stunned to realize that vanita becker in 1980 was just the third evansville woman elected to the state house of representatives and in 2006 became the first and still the only evansville woman ever to serve in the indiana senate judge mary margaret lloyd is the first and still only woman ever elected to as a judge in vanderburgh county that was in the year 2000 80 years after women gained the right to vote we still have not elected a female mayor we have never elected a woman to congress from this eighth district but um still i suspect that susan b anthony and her cohorts their ghost may have danced a little jig this last week when this country elected its first female vice president it was so symbolic that our that this woman uh was our first black woman to hold that office because the whole movement had started by abolitionist the women's movement is and always has been a civil rights movement and that battle has been led by women in evansville as well as by women in birmingham and boston estella moss was one here and she has really been an inspiration to all of us who've known her when searching through all those newspapers i was not able to find any record of inclusion of african-american women and the local suffrage movement none was ever reported what the local papers did show is that evansville was a very racially segregated city with very ingrained southern racist attitudes and customs in the early 1900s there was a mass exodus of blacks from evansville after a race riot here in 1903 left 12 dead and 25 wounded national guard troops have been called in for almost a week to restore order after a crowd of whites had rampaged through baptist towns seeking vigilante justice over the shooting of a white policeman one who stayed was sally wyatt stewart one of the most remarkable women in evansville's history she taught school here for 50 years she led national not just local but national efforts for civil rights and racial equality sally was president of the forty thousand member national association of colored women she was founder of its nationwide organization for girls led efforts to establish the first day care center in evansville for children of african-american women who were in the workforce far before most white women were she worked hand-in-hand with albion fellows bacon on housing reforms and to establish bani camp hospital to make sure there was award for for black patients one of her students bettiola eloise forsten became a national leader in the suffrage movement by african-american women bettiola spent much of her childhood in evansville and graduated from the local black high school clark street high in 1910 then she returned to chicago her hometown and became vice president of the alpha suffrage club the first black women suffrage association in the country she also was a poet and became one of the first african-american people in the midwest to write and publish a book tragically she died of tuberculosis at age 26 in 1917. the eulogy at her funeral was read by ida b wells the perhaps the most prominent african-american suffrage and civil rights leader of the day importantly indiana never adopted the kind of jim crow laws enacted by southern states to deny african americans and poorer whites the right to vote although one hoosier legislator did unsuccessfully propose a poll tax on women the jim crow laws were finally outlawed by congress with the voting rights act of 18 1965 but now some states are imposing new kinds of laws to deny people the right to vote the battle for equality goes on one final note we're all aware of the impact of the supreme court's roe v wade decision in 1973 but largely underready rated is the impact of the title ix education act of 1972 barring discrimination against women by schools and colleges receiving federal aid this law is wildly misinterpreted as having an impact on athletics in schools what it did was open up the professional schools to women for the first time it was a civil rights law and it's been women's fast track not just to equality in education but to entry into the professions law medicine accounting all of them it was sponsored in the house by patsy mink of hawaii the first woman of color elected to congress and it was sponsored in the senate by our own senator birch bai of indiana his work in congress has made an enduring difference in our lives and i think we can say today that birch buy was a radical of the most profound sort otherwise we're still making history and we all know what's still at stake