Chapter 1 | Part 1 | The Vote | American Experience | PBS

[Applause] fifty years ago today in the 19th amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote this anniversary they mother took minority of women's lib relations was on the streets [Applause] so remember man if you come to work tomorrow and your secretary refuses to do the filing and then go home and find that your wife is refused to do the cooking don't blame them remember you gave them the vote fifty years ago [Music] it had been the opening act in what proved to be an epic struggle for equality a crusade carried out by millions of women over the better part of a century to secure for themselves the right to vote and thereby participate in America's democracy to be disenfranchised is to be told that you do not matter because the right to vote is about the power that governs your possibilities the right to vote is the heart of democracy and if half of the country doesn't have the right to vote you're nowhere near being a democracy what we would go out canvassing and the men would be terrible to them so you're trying to wear the pants in the family and this is male territory and how dare these women begin to come in and make a difference this struggle is going on at the same time that the nation is resolving the Civil War so to introduce women is to disrupt a political culture that is built on exclusion that is built on the notion that politics is a white man's business it's a civil rights battle we don't think of it like that but it truly is a great civil rights battle suffragists have to change the idea of what women's role in society will be what is her claim on citizenship the textbooks when I went to school said women were given the boat we were given anything we took it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] On June 29th of 1909 a 24-year old American student named Alice Powell made her way through the streets of London and joined a contingent of some 200 other women headed for the houses of parliament [Music] mice there they plan to insist on an audience with the Prime Minister and press him for the right to vote a fundamental exercise of citizenship known as suffrage that was then denied to women in most of the world's democracies the right to vote is fundamental [Music] the key ingredient in letting people have equal voice and equal power it gives you a way to protect yourself and the opposite of it not having the right to vote and some political sense leaves you helpless when Alice Paul had arrived in England two years earlier she'd had no thought of joining the crusade for women's suffrage she'd come as she put it to see something of the world and had enrolled in a graduate economics class at the University of Birmingham the first woman ever to do so then one day on campus she'd spotted a notice about an upcoming lecture the name was one she knew Christabel Pankhurst along with her mother Emmeline was a co-founder of the women's social and political union Britain's notoriously militant suffrage organization Alice Paul had followed the pancreas with her mother in the newspaper they were getting a lot of newspaper coverage in America and a lot of people were excited about what they were doing things that were so controversial that American woman could not imagine them happening in America there have been folks in the House of Commons since the 19th century in favor women's suffrage but there's no real kogas taking place and so in anger at this political stagnation they actually start doing things which will get them sent to prison they started with mass demonstrations demonstrations of ten twenty thirty thousand people demanding the right to vote there were passing out pamphlets on the street they were standing on literal soap boxes on the street corners of London and explaining why women deserve the right to vote at the time standing on a soapbox on a street corner was something that only men did they would go to political meetings and they would interrupt politicians which was considered extremely rude and they were literally dragged out of these meetings nothing like this had ever been done before the idea was to really get enough attention in order to draw the members of parliament but also the public into the cause of suffrage so aggressive were the women of the Pankhurst army that a British journalist had concocted a twist on the term suffragists to identify them derisively dubbing them suffragettes ridicule is one of the great weapons against women's assertion and that's what was going on with calling suffragists suffragettes it minimized them it turned them into a small version of what they were no amount of mockery in the press however had prepared Alice Paul for what happened at Christabel Pankhurst selector there were lots of male students from the University of Birmingham there and they were in hooting and hollering and singing songs and throwing things someone threw a mouse a dead mouse and it was total pandemonium Alice witnessed Christabel Pankhurst who was no slouch on the speaking platform essentially being shouted down being unable to speak Paul would remember it as a turning point I became from that moment very anxious to help in this movement you know if you feel some group that's your group is the underdog you want to try to help it's natural and when I saw this outbreak of hostility I understood everything about what the English suffragists were trying to do [Music] Alice Paul was a Quaker [Music] Quakers believe that everyone is equal in the eyes of God regardless of gender regardless of race regardless of religion Quakers believed in educating boys and girls equally and so she had never experienced the reality of inequality and she began to realize that there was a whole other world out there where women were not necessarily treated equally some months after the lecture Paul had written to her mother back home in New Jersey I have joined the suffragettes now she was marching with them to Parliament to demand for British women the right to vote [Music] Emeline Pankhurst leads the deputation up to the gates of parliament and suddenly they're stormed by police [Music] women are thrown to the ground in their trampled the scene was one awful nightmare the police grabbed the suffragettes by the throats and threw them flat on their backs over and over again finally when the police could not drive the women back or control the scene the suffragettes were arrested [Music] in all 112 women were hauled off to the police station have fainting when observed and their clothes torn to pieces Alice Paul was among them it was the first time Paul had been arrested but having become as she said a heart and soul convert to the cause of woman suffrage a cause now reaching its crescendo this arrest would by no means be her last you

Channel: American Experience | PBS

Views: 49,998

Keywords: suffrage, suffragist, suffragette, the vote, women's right to vote, right to vote, enfranchisement, 19th amendment, protest, political movements, civil rights, feminism, constitiution, us constitution

Id: yQL_CQdEfYk

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020