In honor of Women’s History Month, this week we highlight women constitutional visionaries from landmark eras in our nation’s history—sharing the legendary contributions of women to the founding; the fight for abolition, the right to vote, and the 19th Amendment; the civil rights and equal rights movements; and more. Martha Jones, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, and Lisa Tetrault, author of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898, join host Jeffrey Rosen.
FULL PODCAST
PARTICIPANTS
Lisa Tetrault is Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898. She was also a historical consultant for the National Constitution Center’s exhibit The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote.
Martha Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and a Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020).
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
This episode was produced by Jackie McDermott and engineered by Greg Scheckler. Research was provided by Alexandra "Mac" Taylor and Lana Ulrich.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- The National Constitution Center, The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote exhibit
- Academy of American Poets, Poems by Phyllis Wheatley
- Abigail Adams, Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams
- Minor v. Happersett (1874)
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TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:00:00] I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center. And welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate. The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the constitution among the American people.
In honor, of women's history month, we review this week, constitutional visionaries from landmark eras in American women's history. I'm so honored to be joined by two of America's leading historians of the constitution and the women's movement.
Martha Jones is the Society of Black Alumni presidential professor, professor of history and a professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Vanguard: How black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. Martha, it is wonderful to have you back on the show.
Martha Jones: [00:01:00] Thanks for having me, Jeff.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:01:03] And Lisa Tetrault is associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of the Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848 to 1898. She was also a consultant for the National Constitution Center's exhibit the 19th amendment, How Women Won the Vote. Lisa, thank you so much for joining.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:01:24] Great to be with you.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:01:26] I'm so looking forward to this conversation and to sharing your light with We the People listeners. Let's begin with constitutional visionaries from the founding era and Martha you've identified Elizabeth Freeman and Phillis Wheatley as two of the figures you'd like to highlight, please tell us about their constitutional contributions.
Martha Jones: [00:01:50] Thanks so much again, Jeff. And I think that it is innovation for us to be forthright about the ways in which black American women really are from the founding shapers of the constitution, shapers of political culture. So thanks for this opportunity to introduce Elizabeth Freeman, who for much of her life was referred to as Mum Bett. Now, here we are in revolutionary year ... era, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Freeman is an enslaved woman in Western, Massachusetts. She is laboring in the household of one of the era's revolutionary luminaries and someone who, while not directly participating in the drafting of revolutionary edicts is nonetheless someone who is listening in, is hearing the sorts of debates that folks we've long associated with the founding are engaged in.
And we know that those debates are turning importantly on principles that we associate with the enlightenment universal ideals about the equality of all men, and we'll say parenthetically all women. And Freeman as she develops her own grievances with respect to her enslavement now is gonna draw upon those ideals especially those that are memorialized in the first constitution of the state of Massachusetts, where she lives. And she is indeed going to make the argument with the aid of a lawyer. She's gonna make the argument that those ideals about the equality of all men apply to her and in essence, override and render slavery in Massachusetts unconstitutional. And she wins.
And so this is a transformative moment for not only her own life but for the lives of the many enslaved people, still in the state of Massachusetts. And it gives us a sense of why those provisions in the declaration in state constitutions and more really are key for developing a radical anti-slavery critique in the United States. And Elizabeth Freeman is there on the ground, out of her own concerns and out of our own needs, shaping constitutional thinking in Massachusetts.
Now, if Freeman is thinking through the perspective of law and constitutions Phyllis Wheatley Peters, as we've come to know her because she marries later in life. Phyllis Wheatley Peters is an enslaved woman. Yes. A captive from Africa who is bought and lives in Boston, but Wheatley is working through the genre of the poem. She is a poet a prolific one. And when we probe her words we understand how she too not unlike Elizabeth Freeman, is thinking through and with those universal principles about the equality of all. And is using her pen to not only make a record of her own thought, but to engage with some of the eras, most consequential figures, including someone like George Washington. Her work will go on to be published and we still read it and teach it today.
But it is a reminder that black women come to constitutional thinking to legal thought yes, sometimes by the formality of the courtroom but through many sorts of many sorts of genre, including poetry. We have to look for them beyond the texts of law documents and find them where they were. And Phyllis Wheatley is a wonderful example of just that.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:05:46] Thank you so much for sharing those inspiring stories with us. I was so struck to learn from professor Henry Louis Gates' book, Trials of Phyllis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and her Encounters With the Founding Fathers, that people were so skeptical that an African-American could have written such brilliant poetry, that the city of Boston held a trial about Wheatley could have written her own poems. John Hancock presided. They concluded that she did indeed write her own poems, but Thomas Jefferson was skeptical and continued to call her genius into question. It's an amazing story, and look forward to encouraging readers, to read her beautiful poetry and to learn more.
Lisa Tetrault, what figures would you like to add to the founding era and constitutional change? And of course, I'll ask you to talk about one of the most famous of them, Abigail Adams.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:06:40] Yeah. It's lovely to be with you and thanks to Martha for showing how many people on the ground themselves were part of this story that we often forget. And I'm just gonna add some more by way, not of the voices of the people on the ground, but by way of the words of John Adams, for a moment. He is writing with some of the other constitutional founders and they can't figure out what the voting ... basis for voting ought to be. And someone writes him and says you know, "Here's my idea." And John Adams writes back and says, "Wow, that's really interesting. I wish I had time to think about this. I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I'm creating this new government." And they are very clearly responding in this to the fact that there are lots of people on the ground insisting that they belong in the words of the constitution. They belong in the words of we, the people.
And so unfortunately, many of their names and many of their documents don't get recorded. They didn't win court cases. They didn't write books of poetry, but they were nonetheless on the ground insisting that we are part of the people and that clearly shaped their behavior and the concerns and the actions of the founding fathers, because we can see that concern in their letters, even if we can't see it in the documents left by people on the ground.
And so you have John Adams writing with James Sullivan and he would say, but let us suppose that the whole community of every age, rank, sex and condition has the right to vote. So clearly they're considering this at the time, there are people demanding that, which is part of why they're considering it. And then he will say later, we must have property as a requirement for voting. The same reasoning, which will induce you to admit all men who have no property to vote, ought to admit women and children for generally speaking, women and children have as good, a judgment and as independent minds as the women and men, or as the men who wholly destitute a property.
So we see again here, the sense that it wasn't just a foregone conclusion that not everybody was included. It was certainly heavily decided in that direction, but people on the ground are challenging that. And I also wanna point out here though, that when Adam says women and children have just as good a judgment, he is repeating another problem, which will constantly happen, which is that when he refers to women, he means white women and not the black women who were simultaneously part of this process or the other many immigrant women who are part of this process. So I would just like to give a shout out to all the nameless, forgotten people who on the ground were shaping this process. And they clearly did so through the letters of John Adams and every ... and all the other founders.
And those- those- those people who we've forgotten did have at least some people's voices who got remembered as Martha has already shown us some of them. And there's another, which is John Adams, wife himself, Abigail Adams, who is while men are off at the constitutional Congress. And as they're off at the- the founding of the nation and the declaring of independence and the Articles of Confederation women are home you know, the women of these men tending to all of the things that are keeping the nation going. They are holding down farms and running farms and providing provisions. And they understand at least these free white women, that they are also a part of this nation. They are building this new nation as it is taking shape.
And Abigail Adams will give voice to that as well. But it's her documents, of course, they get remembered given her stature. And she will say to John Adams in her letters where she's writing back and forth about all the business she's attending to, they clearly have an open political relationship where they discuss political philosophy, the ideas about government, how government ought to be founded. It's not that Abigail Adams is not part of this discussion. And she will say to John Adams, I beg you, you know, when you create your code of laws, men will be tyrants. So you must remember the ladies and not be as tyrannical as your British predecessors.
And people often laugh this off by saying, you know, John Adams writes back and says, "Ha, ha, ha, I cannot, but laugh at your suggestion." But she's quite serious. She will then write Mercy Otis Warren back and forth and say, "Can you believe he laughed?" And Mercy Otis Warren will write back. She's equally engaged in many of these questions about what shall the governance and what shall the equality of the new nation look like, and they continue to have this conversation.
So what I wanna point out is this was a very robust conversation that did not only involve white men.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:10:55] Thanks for reminding us of the important relationship between Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, whom John Adams called the poetical genius of the revolution and that friendship of those two great women and John Adams was central to the constitutional understanding of the founding. Let us turn now to the abolition and antebellum period and among the figures that you've highlighted, Martha Jones are, Jarena Lee, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. Tell us about them.
Martha Jones: [00:11:30] Well, that's a wonderful because I think it really does help us appreciate the many positions from which black women come to the question now of the new nation yes, governance, yes, rights, yes, political culture. And all of these women in their own way that you've invoked remind us that black women too need a political philosophy. They need a point of view that will ultimately undergird their organizing that will ultimately undergird their activism. And Jarena Lee who in the earliest decades of the 19th century is an itinerant preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church is someone who after many, many miles and many, many years on the road in the pulpits under the trees, in the Grove and more bringing converts into her denomination sits down in the 1830s to write a memoir.
And here we learn about how her thinking has developed about her position. Her ideas are very much a starting point for the view we refer to today in academic speak is intersectionality, which is to say, Jarena Lee, as someone who is thinking through the problem of her own life's ambition as inflected by racism and sexism simultaneously. And her struggle to win a license to preach, to win formal authority within her denomination is a starting place for the development of this political philosophy that will be taken hold of by dozens and then hundreds, and then thousands of black women Christians across the 19th century. But will also spill out into the secular realm is black women are contemplating their place in the political realm.
You mentioned Harriet Tubman. And I think if Jarena Lee's an example of a woman born free, but under constraints circumstances in the North Tubman now is born enslaved on the Eastern shore of Maryland. And her coming to political consciousness is also a part of our story. Why? Because Tubman is not only remembered for her extraordinary heroism in bringing many, many enslaved people from her community to freedom at great risk when she might have just stolen her own freedom and stayed in the North.
But she's a reminder that enslaved women too understand the institution of s- slavery have developed their own critiques of slavery, like Elizabeth Freeman in Massachusetts, right? Framed by a set of ideals while oftentimes kept from enslaved women in their lived experiences are certainly framing and fueling the work of someone like Tubman, who once she does secure her own freedom, is there in the midst of an abolitionist scene in which those ideals are being held up, tested, used, in fact, to challenge the institution of slavery.
And so again, it is a reminder that while Tubman herself does not leave an extensive written record, we can understand from what she does the way in which her efforts, but frankly, the efforts of hundreds and thousands of enslaved Americans over the course of many, many decades are pushing on the constitution challenging Americans in high places to indeed confront their own understandings, their own sense of the limits and the possibilities of the constitution. Is the constitution a pro-slavery document or an anti-slavery document is the kind of debate that someone like Harriet Tubman um, forces onto the table.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:15:43] Lisa for the abolition and
and antebellum period, you've called our attention to Lucy Stone, Angelina Grimke and Mariah Stewart. Please tell us about them.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:15:50] They will also be part of this foment of people who are left out of the, of the founding and who at the founding, and still now we're insisting that they must be included in its promises and in its guarantees and in its governance. And I'll start with Mariah Stewart just to join with the laureus women that Martha was talking about. And she's a free woman in the North um, lives in Massachusetts and is not elite. Um, She will be one of the first women to begin giving important political speeches about the condition of African-Americans in the North. And also about the plight of African-American women themselves. She will be the first to speak before a mixed sex audience, which at the time was considered quite scandalous. They were ... was ... those audiences were called promiscuous.
And one of the things she points out in her very powerful political oratory is that you can have words on a paper that promise one thing, and you can let me into those words on a paper, that one thing, like freedom, but unless you invest it with meaning, the words don't mean much. And she will essentially say, you know, we are free here in the North and I'll tell you what our condition is not much better, right? I ... your- your talk about slavery, you know, is one manifestation of the kinds of racism that African-Americans live under and- and tell that racism is eradicated. Your words don't mean much. And I hear the echoes of her today, sort of thinking about the ways in which we can have laws, we can have words on paper, but until we invest those with life and meaning and truth they're pretty hollow words.
And I would go next to Angelina Grimke who herself comes from an enslaved ... She herself as a free white woman. But born into a family that owned slaves in South Carolina, will go North with her sister, Sarah, to try to find what is the right path to God in the midst of a wave of religious revivalism in this era. And will come over the course of our time to realize that she must also speak against slavery, but she will also always understand in a way that much of the white women's rights movement that will proceed from this, that this has to be, she's one of the white women who insist this has to be also about recognizing the humanity of black women. And she will say that over and over again in her speeches. And she will say to white women fighting slavery until you look into your own souls, and you think about whether you recognize your black sister as a sister, then you've got work to do before you go attack the word of slavery.
So I also think of the white women who tried to live up to the intersectional promise that black women were calling for. And I think sometimes we forget the white women who were involved in that project for a very, very long time. And I would think of Angelina Grimke as one of those people. And then lastly, Lucy Stone comes out of what will be more conventionally known as, you know, the Women's Rights Movement, which is really just a women's rights movement of this era. And she will be interesting moving forward because she is as ... an incredibly important abolitionist and women's rights speaker. She will start to question a lot of the founding documents and argue that they were written in favor of men, including the Bible. But she will not be present and is therefore forgotten at another moment in the same so-called women's rights movement where some women meet in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, a little tiny Hamlet in the, in the Finger Lakes.
And they will hold what is considered to be the first women's rights convention in the US, but it's not the beginning of women's rights activism. And I think much of what we've talked about today is underlining that point. But at that occasion, they will rewrite some of the founding documents and they will say rather than listing a bunch of grievances against the King and the declaration of independence, they will ... those grievances against man. And they will rewrite that document to say all men and women are created equal. And and the thing is that story is such a bigger story of a kind of constitutional challenge that women will issue to that, we can't just narrow it to the story of Seneca Falls.
And Lucy stone is one of the people that we forget. Who's also part of that challenge, but wasn't out that very hastily called really local impromptu convention, but was very much part of this movement. And she'll be quite interesting as we get into the post-war period in terms of her constitutional analysis. And we can talk about that next.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:20:00] Well, we turn now from the abolition to the Women's Suffrage Movement, of course, the two were closely connected as both of you have noted. One vivid de- demonstration of the connection comes from a famous quotation from Sarah Grimke, Angelina's sister, which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg often quoted. And that of course was, but I asked no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they ta- ... will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright. Powerful words. And Martha Jones, please tell us about the Women's Suffrage Movement. And in particular, some of the figures that you've highlighted, including Mary Church Terrell, Hailey Quinn Brown and Ida B. Wells.
Martha Jones: [00:20:48] Well we've we fast-forwarded to the not only the years after the civil war, but to the latter years of the 19th century, out of the debates that follow the war has emerged a factionalized scene in which American women and some men have organized into suffrage associations. But for the African-American women about whom I write, the suffrage associations will turn out not to be the most accommodating the most suitable places for their political activism. Black women will continue to work importantly on political questions through their church communities. They will begin to develop a club network that- that begins in the relief work that black women are organizing to do during the civil war. That network will continue to be a place for black women's political organizing. That along with the rise of historically black colleges and universities I think all brings us to a remarkable moment in 1896, when as women who have organized under the banner of women's suffrage have created a new consolidated national association. African-American women come together to create the national association of colored women's clubs.
And here enter figures like Mary Church, Terrell Holly Quinn Brown, Ida B. Wells, and many others who we associate importantly with the building of this black women's political organization, an organization that will be 300,000 plus women strong by the eve of the First World War. But one question might be why does someone like Mary Church Terrell educated at Oberlin a teacher in Washington DC and educational activist. Ida Wells. I'm a journalist great anti-lynching Crusader, Harley Quinn Brown and a professor at Wilberforce University an AME church activist. Why did these women need to come together to create their own association? Well, even in that brief sketch, I think you can hear about how wide-ranging, how multifaceted their political concerns are. And the National Association of Colored Women creates the sort of institution that permits them to continue to work. Yes. On women's suffrage.
Terrell will be among the most strident of black women's suffragists in the years leading to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, but she is as passionate for example, about winning anti-lynching legislation in Congress. These are women who need a more capacious space in which to realize their politics and over time, we'll also very deliberately carve out a space that is not animated by, framed, by informed by anti black racism. The anti-black racism that will, I think too often animate the Women's Suffrage Movement and the campaign for the 19th amendment going forward.
So those are the women who are suffragists who oftentimes don't enjoy if you will the moniker of suffragists. And I worked with students last year in conjunction with the Wikipedia Foundation to go in and to edit the Wikipedia entries for these women to ensure that the word suffrage and suffragist and women's votes were part of their expressed biographies, because they don't organize expressly under the umbrella of suffrage. We ... some historians had mistakenly thought that they were indifferent to that cause, but to the contrary, these are women who are deeply committed to winning women's political power generally in women's votes in particular. And, ... but they do so under the auspices of their independent organization.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:24:49] Fascinating. Thank you so much for calling attention to those stories and what an important project to emphasize their central contribution to the suffrage movement. Lisa, some of the figures you've highlighted include Victoria Woodhull and Virginia Minor, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee and Gertrude Bannon tell us about those and others.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:25:11] Yeah. The anniversary of the 19th Amendment has just come and gone. As we know, as we all gathered at the Constitution Center to Mark that occasion but one of the really interesting things that happens after the American Civil War is that the constitution starts to for the first time be a piece, be a document, be a governing charter that people think they can use to regulate voting.
And what's shocking to most people is that they think that the constitution is where voting is regulated. And that in fact, the constitution is what grants, the so-called right to vote. And in fact, that's not in the constitution and still to this day is not in the constitution, but freed people's demands for voting and other people's demands for voting mean that for the first time, in- in the aftermath of the war in the 1860s, Congress has a debate about the voting rights of citizens. And the 14th amendment will be incredibly important, it will make African-Americans citizens it will make birthright citizenship, which will mean that people now who are born in the United States, even if they are Chinese-American or if they are other things can become citizens of the United States. And- and that will kick off a whole new wave. Those reconstruction amendments which established the 13th, establishing emancipation, the 14th citizenship equal protection under the laws in due process.
And then the 15th, which we think of as black voting rights are male ... black male voting rights will create such a sea change in constitutional governments that will ... it will have a profound effect on all of the kinds of agitation that people will engage in from from this moment until the present.
So much of the women's rights victories, civil rights victories are all built on these three reconstruction amendments and particularly the 14th. But I wanna go to the 15th which is blackmail voting, and this will shift the ... but it's ... it really what it says is you can not discriminate in voting on the basis of race. Okay. So states who still govern voting are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. And so many, many black men begin voting, but all those states also still say that you have to be male, so many black women and many other women's do not begin voting. But so what they do is try to press for some of them anyway Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony say, you know what? The constitution has just changed it now can govern the voting of citizens. And we should press for a 16th Amendment to enfranchise women.
And Lucy Stone, and we talked about a minute ago, we'll argue no, that's unconstitutional. And she will support a state's rights approach where we go through all each individual state and wipe the word male not through one big sweeping constitutional amendment, but through a ground game. And I just wanna point out that inside the suffrage movement, the White Suffrage Movement, that kind of mainstream movement, we often talk about a difference of strategy, but we don't make that strategy a constitutional debate, which it absolutely was. It was a debate about what part of the constitution and what part of governance allowed the regulation of voting.
So I just wanna insert here that suffragists themselves are engaging in a robust conversation, white suffragists about who regulates voting and what is the Constitution's role in this. And they don't agree. Lucy Stone will say, you can't use a federal amendment. Then as this debates going on along comes Victoria Woodhull and Virginia Minor two fascinating figures, Victoria would hope you will be the first woman to run for president in 1872. She is a free lover, a sex radical, opens the first Wall Street brokerage firm speaks to the dead as an occult figure.
And Virginia Minor who's you know, an ordinary suffragist on the ground in Missouri will basically say, you know what, the 14th and the 15th amendment already enfranchise women. And they'll pioneer a new strategy whereby if you can't discriminate and voting and it is a right, and we are citizens, then you can't discriminate voting. And what's interesting is this will go all the way up to the United States Supreme court, it's called the new departure. And the Supreme court will declare in Happersett v Minor that voting is not a right of citizenship. It is not in the constitution and it does not bear upon the rights of citizens.
And so, you know, very early, these women are testing the limits of what the constitution allows and doesn't allow. And then what I wanna point out is that the numbers of women who will go on to test those things based on their own identities, because much of this is identity-based, right? What- what criteria can you meet? What state requirements, what- what what citizenship, and I wanna give a shout out to the new work by Cathleen Cahill, Recasting the Vote, where she talks about the indigenous and Chinese and Latinex women who are also pressing the limits of the constitution. And Mabel Ping-Hua Lee is going to be doing this arguing for citizenship and her inclusion in those promises as well.
Gertrude Bannon and [inaudible 00:31:19] and indigenous women who are always gonna have a very mixed relationship to their inclusion in those constitutional promises, because that means colonization. And many of them are like, I don't want your constitutional promises, I want you out of my land. So that will be an ongoing debate inside indigenous communities as well.
So I just wanna point out that the- the reconstruction moment creates a new constitutional moment in the United States with those very profound three amendments that will shape the activism of people to come, who will draw upon and try to creatively breathe life into those amendments and will transform them far beyond what the people who wrote them intended.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:30:13] Well, we now turn to the 20th century and to our final movement, which is the Equal Rights Movement and the movement for black women's voting rights. And here, some of the figures that you've highlighted, Martha Jones include Pauli Murray, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash, and Shirley Chisholm. Tell us about those.
Martha Jones: [00:30:36] A part of this story. Now turning on the 15th Amendment from 1870 and the 19th Amendment from 1920 for African American women, the question is what is the force of these amendments, if any, in their political lives and the lesson out of the fall of 1920. And that election cycle is that when black women look out across the national landscape, what they know is that too many of them remain disenfranchised now. By state laws that poll taxes literacy tests, understanding clauses, grandfather clauses, that are gonna continue to keep them from the polls as they have kept black men from the polls in many places since the 1890s. And that intimidation and violence on and around election day persists. Nothing in the 15th and 19th Amendment curbs, these facets of voting rights. And in fact, they come to define voting rights for too many black Americans.
So here black women after 1920 are left, if you will, to build a new movement for voting rights, and it is a movement they will build alongside African-American men, much of it importantly associated with the modern civil rights revolution, whether it's the NAACP legal campaign that is using the constitution to defeat grandfather clauses, using the constitution to defeat whites only primaries. Amending the constitution to render poll taxes now no longer enforceable in the United States, there is that facet of the campaign. There are those facets of the campaign, which pull on a longstanding tradition of engaging the ground game of American politics, right? Testing, pushing the limits, isi- ... insisting as Lisa Tetrault alluded to, insisting on breathing life into the 15th and 19th amendments by turning out in every election cycle, attempting to register, attempting to cast ballots, sometimes casting ballots, joining the Republican party and moving the needle.
But- but by the time we get to the 1940s, we- we, in a sense, right? Fuse this story that as turned or has been framed up into this point in our conversation is one about the struggle for women's political authority, women's political power rights, and the right to vote. Now, fuses with that movement that we come to call civil rights. And so by the 1940s, we have the emergence now, yes, of legal architects, like Pauli Murray, who will reframe that intersectional critique that someone like Jarena Lee had been working on in the early 19th century as the problem of Jane Crow, right? That intersection of women's oppression and black American oppression that works in very specific ways in the life of someone like Marie, an activist of the left turned lawyer, turned litigator civil rights activist turned Episcopal minister before her life is done. It's an extraordinary lifetime.
But she brings into focus for this modern civil rights moment, the ways in which it's impossible to pull apart concerns of race and concerns of gender as this movement develops.
Diane Nash, the great architect behind the scenes of this movement, mobilizing the foot soldiers that are essential. Again, not only to insisting on what the constitution has promised, but extracting, right? Out of Congress legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that indeed give teeth, right? To those constitutional amendments that had too long been left on the sidelines as black Americans wage struggles for quality.
Fannie Lou Hamer reminds us that we are in the midst of the 20th century. And the technology has changed for how it is that American women are going to wage their struggles, how they're gonna bring their struggles into the lives of ordinary Americans. And Hamer understands the television camera. She understands how to use the national media, that ability of television to broadcast the voting rights struggle of black Americans into living rooms across the nation. She does so very dramatically at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. And folks can watch that, it's eight minutes on YouTube. That is absolutely riveting, but it is an illustration of how Hamer, who is an organizer and an architect of voting rights advocacy in Mississippi also understands that this is a national movement. And that if Congress is gonna be moved, if Lyndon Johnson is gonna be moved, she's going to have to get her message into the hearts and the minds. It's an old abolitionist ploy, but it is an effective one, and Hamer understands that.
Let me just briefly, not forget Shirley Chisholm, because Chisholm is going to bring us now into those extraordinary scenes that unfold in the wake of the passage of the Voting Rights Act. If black Americans have known for decades that the 15th and the 19th Amendment needed teeth in order for them to actually realize the promise of those amendments. Now, Chisholm is going to breathe life into that Voting Rights Act, first by running for Congress and being the first black woman to be seated in Congress in 1968. But I think as importantly, 1972, four years later, Chisholm is going to run for ... vie for the Democrats nomination for president in that year.
Now, I don't think Chisholm precisely thinks she's gonna win the nomination, but that's not the point that she is an organizer. And she understands that her candidacy will ignite, help to ignite a newly empowered black electorate that the Voting Rights Act has made possible. And indeed it is in Chisholm's very being, it is in her charisma. It is in her eloquence, it is in her commitment that millions of black Americans come to presidential politics, wholly a new.
One of the last things I'll leave you with is that it is Shirley Chisholm in 1972, who launches the political career of a young newcomer to politics in that year. And that is today's representative Barbara Lee in Congress. Barbara Lee begins her political career as a volunteer for Shirley Chisholm. And if we've done nothing else in this conversation, we've, I think made the case that this is a story across many, many generations, women handing to the next generation, preparing the next generation, bringing in the next generation. And Shirley Chisholm does that with extraordinary force.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:38:14] Thank you so much for emphasizing in such an inspiring way, the intergenerational aspect of the stories that we're telling. And Lisa Tetrault, maybe you can complete that intergenerational story by emphasizing the connection between the 15th and 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act in the, and- and the fight for women's equality in the courts. And in particular March 15th was the birthday of justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we lost recently. In honor of her perhaps you could tell us about some of the women that she cited as an inspiration for her work as an advocate, including Alice Paul and Pauli Murray.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:38:56] Yeah. So to go back to the constitution, right? There's these three founding amendments or these three reconstruction amendments, which many people call the second founding of our nation, will be the amendments along with what will become the 19th that people will draw upon. And the 19th Amendment passes and was ratified in 1920. And it says there may be no discrimination in voting on the basis of sex. That means that all of the other obstacles that have recently been thrown up the ground level, remember there's this state state federal dynamism poll taxes, literacy tests are not cleared by the 19th Amendment. And so many people still snared in those things can't vote. So those women will come to the main Alice Paul who's one of the leading suffragists, you know, known for being so-called radical. I would say militant is probably a more apt word and say, we still can't vote. Let's keep this voting fight up. And Alice Paul will say, "No, it's not my fight. I w- women have won the right to vote." She clearly is coating women as white. But she will take the logic of the 15th, which has become the 19th amendment. And she will try now to extend it into the equal rights amendment.
And she will say, okay, if we may not have discrimination in voting on the basis of race in voting, if we may not have discrimination in voting on the basis of sex, let's create an amendment that says we may not have discrimination at all on the basis of sex, right? Not just in voting, but at all.
And she will in 1923, go to Seneca Falls and unveil the Equal Rights Amendment as the next big phase of the women's movement, right? Which again is a women's movement, but they like to claim it. And what you will find is that gets nowhere as we know, that has never still been ratified. And so both African-Americans and white women and black women, and lots of other folks are casting about for a constitutional way to claim their equality. How do they get their equality legally protected, right? The equal rights amendment didn't work, and people try to breathe that kinda life into the 19th amendment, but it won't go anywhere. The courts keep striking it down. No it's only limited to voting. You can discriminate on the basis of sex in any way you want, because you should, because men and women are different, right?
And so ... and there's also this sense from Plessy v. Ferguson and at the end of the 19th, that you should also have a separate arrangement for African-Americans and whites, because they're different, right? But it's equal to have these separate arrangements and what all these people will come about and try to argue, including all the people that- that Martha's talked about, and then I'll add here are basically arguing, no, that is not equality. This separate treatment is not equality. We must break down this separate treatment.
And so they're casting about in the constitution for a basis for arguing that they must be equally treated, right? And what these ... what they ... what both the civil rights movement, and the kind of ... if we think of kind of the white women's rights movement or white women's rights activist, well, he sees upon eventually as the 14th amendment. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg often gets the credit for inventing or not inventing, but getting the court to accept the fact that the- the 14th amendment, which says we must have equal protection under the laws, means that you cannot differentially treat men and women.
And but the thing is it's really an idea that's pioneered before Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It's pioneered by a black woman, by Pauli Murray whose biography Martha Jones just gave us. This idea that we can apply the 14th amendment, both to the idea that there must not be differential treatment because that is unequal of African-Americans. And there must not be differential treatment across gender because that is unequal. And so Ruth Bader Ginsburg will and sort of pick up on this idea that Pauli Murray pioneered in which the great justice the lawyer then turned justice, Thurgood Marshall will use in Brown V Board, right? The 14th amendment, this is not equal treatment. And then this will go on to undergird, all kinds of decisions going forward.
And Notorious RBG will use the 14th amendment to get the court to for the first time to recognize that differential treatment according to sex is in fact not equal. It's not different but equal in the words of separate but equal in the words of Plessy. And she will, of course be citing all of the women who came before her, although she forgets a number of people. But she will cite Pauli Murray and others as the, you know, the generations that gave her the thought, the intellect, you know, the intellectual legacy and the the creativity to come up with a way to challenge the court.
And then I just wanna throw out that as RBG breathed his life in the constitution into the 14th amendment may not be something that discriminates on the basis of sex. We think at the pioneering of a new idea called the right to privacy through the 14th amendment and the 9th amendment, which will undergird going forward all of the decisions about reproductive access to abortion and to birth control and to gay rights and to all kinds of other things. So and that will be pioneered by people like Estelle Griswold and James [inaudible 00:46:15], and Jane Roe, and you know, Norma McCorvey who will then breathe life into this as something that must also support the when ... the right of women to their bodies.
So we just ... there's, the 14th amendment is such a critical piece of how all of these strategies that people have had for centuries finally find teeth in the constitution. And then in the courts. So it's ... the 14th amendment really becomes pivotal to this story. And there is a really, if you want to learn more about the 14th, I would recommend you watch the new great series on Netflix by Will Smith called Amend, which is all about the 14th amendment. And Martha and I both made cameo appearances in that.
But I guess what I want to undergird here, I, I've gone on too long, but what I wanna undergird is that these fights all start to try to leverage the constitution and the 14th amendment in order to breathe life into the things they've been arguing for forever, but could not use the original constitution to accomplish.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:44:43] Thank you so much, Martha Jones and Lisa Tetrault for a wonderful discussion of the inspiring women who transformed the constitution and made real its promise that all people are created equal. Dear We the People listeners, please learn more by reading Martha Jones and Lisa Tetrault's books, including Martha Jones' Vanguard: How black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. And Lisa Tetrault's The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement. And of course read the primary documents, the sources of the inspiring women who we have talked about today. Martha Jones and Lisa Tetrault, thank you so much for all the light you've shown, and thank you so much for joining.
Martha Jones: [00:45:29] Thank you.
Lisa Tetrault: [00:45:30] It's been great to be with you as always.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:45:34] Today's show was engineered by Kevin Kilbourne and produced by Jackie McDermott. Research was provided by Mac Taylor, Angelys Torres and Lana Ulrich. Please rate, review and subscribe to We the People on Apple podcasts and recommend the show to friends, colleagues, or anyone anywhere who is hungry for constitutional illumination and thoughtful debate and who isn't.
And always remember that the National Constitution Center is a private nonprofit, we rely on the generosity of people from across the country who are inspired by our nonpartisan mission of constitutional education and debate. Thanks so much to those of you who've been giving $5 or $10 just to signal your support of the mission, and please join the National Constitution Center family by becoming a member constitutioncenter.org/membership or giving any donation at constitutioncenter.org/donate. On behalf of the National Constitution Center, I'm Jeffrey Rosen.
