Episode 11: Still Marching (Transcript)
Episode 28: The Torah at Her Fingertips
Claudia: I grew up in the dictatorship of Pinochet. For a long time we couldn’t go to marches because it was forbidden. Because we live in a democracy, we are marching because we can... we are bringing our daughters to this. For me, that’s amazing. We should cherish that very much.
[drumming sounds]
Crowd, chanting: This is what Democracy looks like.
Girl 1: This is what democracy looks like. This is what’s supposed to happen.
Woman 1: [Laughs] I mean this is all about what our first amendment rights are for, and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Woman 2: I’ve heard cheers for Black Lives Matter, I’ve heard cheers for clean water, I’ve heard cheers for abortion rights.
Man 1: This march is about basic respect, fundamental respect for other people’s dignity, for their bodies, for their selfhood.
Woman 3: I want this to be like the catalyst to get people moving forward... really making change. This is the first step.
Nahanni Rous: More than half a million people of all genders and all ages took this first step together. The day after Donald Trump was sworn in as president of the United States, crowds streamed into the capital city’s wide streets and National Mall for the Women's March on Washington.
[Theme music]
Nahanni: Welcome back to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. I’m Nahanni Rous. By now, we’ve heard a lot of stories about the march in Washington and the hundreds of simultaneous demonstrations across the country and around the world. Many of us participated. In this episode of Can We Talk?, we’ll relive the March... and... we’ll go back to where it all began: the first women’s march in Washington, over a hundred years ago. That march took place before women even had the right to vote.
[Footsteps, traffic noises]
Nahanni: The Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument is a historic brick house on Capitol Hill. It was built around the time the nearby Capitol dome was being finished more than two hundred years ago. It’s now a history museum, named for suffragists Alva Belmont and Alice Paul.
[Walking sounds, door opening]
Nahanni: Inside, a few women browse exhibits. I’m meeting Jennifer Krafchik, the Deputy Director of the museum and the National Women’s Party. She takes me to a room that’s dedicated to the suffrage movement.
[Ambient talking noises]
Jennifer Krafchik: This is a great gallery to spend some time in, because that’s all about the march, that panel over there.
Nahanni: The march she’s referring to took place in 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated. Black and white photographs show crowds of people filling the streets in downtown DC, women in white dresses marching in formation, and a picture of a horse-drawn float with a banner on it.
Nahanni: Would you mind just reading the float?
Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. “We demand an amendment to the constitution of the United States Enfranchising the women of this country.”
Nahanni: In 1913, women in ten Western states already had voting rights in some forms. Suffragists were making slow progress at the state level. Enter Alice Paul. She was from a prominent Quaker family in New Jersey, and had spent years working with suffragists in Britain. Alice Paul set her sights on a constitutional amendment. The best way to achieve that, she thought, was to get a lot of attention for the cause. She organized what turned out to be a very large march... at least for 1913 standards.
Jennifer: There’s a very famous story about Wilson arriving at Union Station ready to greet the crowds, and there were very few people there, because they were all down on Pennsylvania Avenue watching the demonstration of women.
[Archival music from 1920]
Nahanni: Five thousand women marched in state delegations and professional groups. They wore their finest clothes. Some rode on horseback. American women had never assembled in such numbers. Newspapers all over the country covered the story. The New York Times called it “an astonishing demonstration.” Many women were inspired and would later join the cause. But the news wasn’t all good. According to The New York Times, there were half a million spectators, and the women were beset by the crowds.
Jennifer: People were attacking them, throwing things at them, insulting them. There were a lot of people who were drunk, who were rowdy. The demonstration ends in sort of a riot and crowds converging on these women.
Nahanni: The Fort Meyer Cavalry had to be called in because there wasn’t enough police support. A few weeks later women testified about the riot at a Congressional hearing. Many said they were grabbed, their sashes were torn. There were ropes to hold back the crowd, but Maryland resident Cordelia Odenheimer, from Maryland, testified that people broke right through them.
Reader 1: I said very politely to a policeman, “Do you not think you could keep that crowd back?” He simply laughed in my face. He made no attempt whatever.
Nahanni: All the women testified that there were very few policemen, and that most of the officers they did see were laughing and jeering, right along with the men in the crowd. Agnes Jenks, from New Hampshire, brought her daughter and two other girls to the march. She said the crowd hooted at them.
Reader 2: They tried to grab their flowers away from them, and one man stuck his foot out and tried to trip up my daughter. There were two policemen standing together that were egging the crowd on to jeer. They made remarks, and one of the policemen looked as though he were going to take hold of these young girls.
Nahanni: More than 100 people went to the hospital that day. The Police Commissioner for the District of Columbia lost his job.
[Drumming, chanting, and singing]
Nahanni: In this enormous crowd, I notice only a few police officers, but unlike the 1913 march, the ones I see are friendly. One officer said it was the largest and most peaceful march he had ever seen. Another thanked my friend for participating. Instead of standing on the sidelines and making fun of us, men today have joined in. Like Agnes Jenks in 1913, I’m here with my daughter. She’s climbed into a tree so she can get a better view.
Nahanni: Can you see from up there? What can you see?
Shalvah: Maybe a quarter mile from up here.
Nahanni: And full of people?
Shalvah: Yes, there is no space where there is nobody.
Nahanni: I think I want to come up there.
Nahanni: Here I go, microphone and all.
Nahanni: Shalvah, I’m going to interview you in the tree, ok?
Shalvah: Ok.
Nahanni: Can you tell me your name, please, and where you’re from?
Shalvah: You just said! My name is Shalvah Lazarus and I live in DC, and I am your daughter. I’m 9 years old. I think that this is just amazing and I’m so glad to be here. [Sighs]
Nahanni: From our perch in the tree we watch an ocean of pink hats. Thousands of homemade signs float like buoys on the pink sea. I have never been in a crowd with so many women.
Nahanni: Do you think it’s important for men to come to a women's march?
Shalvah: Yes! So that it proves that not only women support women. Because if only women support women, then it would be like you don’t care about anybody else, you stand up for yourself and that’s it. But since there are men here, it shows that they care about us, too.
Nahanni: Shalvah’s friend climbs up to join us. She’s the daughter of the Executive Director of the Jewish Women’s Archive, Judith Rosenbaum.
Ma’ayan: I’m Ma’ayan Zimra Rosenbaum. I’m from Boston Massachusetts.. I turned 10 the day after the election. It’s been really stressful because you know, if you see people like 20, 30, 40 years older than you being so worried, you know that’s my cue to be worried. But I think even though we have someone not so strong leading America, I think that if we take action and resist, then we can make a big change.
Nahanni: And what does it feel like to you to be here?
Ma’ayan: It feels amazing because you know that you’re one of the many who believes in what’s right. This is a historical moment, some people are saying that it’s the biggest Washington march ever, and I feel so honored to be a part of it.
Shalvah: I actually led a bunch of cheers, and Ma’ayan too. Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like!
Nahanni: And what does that mean to you?
Shalvah: That means that this is what democracy looks like. This is what’s supposed to happen. If something’s not right, you make it right.
[Girls leading the chant: This is what democracy looks like.]
Nahanni: If the area right around our tree shows what our democracy looks like, it’s showing us a very diverse group of people. I talk to an Indian-American woman who works for the federal government, an African American woman with a passion for media analysis, a grad student originally from Mexico who’s studying why girls don’t gravitate toward science, a white woman who’s a computer programmer, an immigrant from Spain, here with her teenage daughter, and a rabbi originally from Chile, who grew up under a dictatorship where public demonstrations were forbidden.
Nahanni: This diversity shows how far we’ve come. The 1913 suffrage march took place in a racially segregated city. The suffragists were marching for equality, but that principle only went so far. Back at the museum, Jennifer Krafchick describes the racial dynamics of the 1913 march.
Jennifer: African American women were being asked to march at the back of the parade in order to make sure that Southern contingents of women would still march in the demonstration. And there’s a very famous story about Ida B. Wells who was an abolitionist, she was a suffragist, she was a journalist. And she very famously steps… says, no I’m not going to march at the back of the parade, and joins her Illinois delegation.
Nahanni: A grainy, black and white photograph shows Ida B. Wells marching with the Illinois delegation. She and the other women wear matching white hats and scarfs and carry white flags with stars. The Chicago Daily Tribune published this photo along with an article about the march. But the African American delegations who marched weren’t even included in the written program, as if they were being erased from history.
[Crowd sounds, singing This Land Is Your Land]
Nahanni: I approach two older women sitting together on a granite curb, sharing a blanket. One is black and one is white.
Jan Dyktra: I’m Jan Dyktra and I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Paula Means: And I’m Paula Means, from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Nahanni: What do you both do for work, or how do you both spend most of your...
Jan: I’m a retired Presbyterian Pastor.
Paula: And I work for a Presbyterian church, I’m the missions director.
Nahanni: And you traveled here together?
Jan: Yes, we did, on a bus with 53 other women.
Paula: I’ve never participated in a march before. Always watched from afar on television or whatever, and thinking boy, I wish I’d been there, and now I am and I’m so glad I am.
Nahanni: What do you think is the message of this march is, or the goal of the march?
Jan: I do think the message is, not only equality, but justice for women.
Paula: Well, and I think that what’s coming out of this march is showing that women do count, our voice does count.
Nahanni: We talk about the history of the 1913 suffrage march… the way white women made the black women march in the back of the parade. Paula says it’s essential that in 2017, the organizers of the march, the speakers, and the crowd reflect America’s diversity.
Paula: I do believe there’s been progress. Has there been enough progress? No.There should not be the level of racism that there is. There’s such a lack of understanding between cultures and that is what is feeding the kind of attitude that our new president has, and he is completely unwilling to understand the differences in culture and to see the value in having diversity at the table.
Nahanni: Before the march, some of my friends were worried that we didn’t have a unified message, a single demand, like the right to vote. But when I look at the diversity of this crowd, the array of concerns, the thousands of handmade signs... this is exactly the right message. Everyone here is speaking in their own voice, but uniting in a desire to be together and to do something. I believe this is the beginning of a movement.
[Archival music]
Nahanni: The 1913 march was only part of the suffrage campaign. Winning the right to vote took seven more years, and an army of women. They lobbied, wrote letters, gave speeches, taught each other how to organize. They worked in two main camps and didn’t always agree with each other’s tactics. In hindsight, it’s clear that the combined effort tipped the balance. One group lobbied state by state. This required friendly relationships with lawmakers. The other camp worked hard to keep themselves in the papers and to be a thorn in President Wilson’s side.
Jennifer: So in early 1917, a deputation of about 300 women goes to see him, and they are turned away. And the next day, they begin picketing the White House.
Nahanni: Suffragists picketed all day every day except Sunday, for all of 1917 and more sporadically in the following years.
[Music: Johnny Get Your Gun]
Nahanni: In April 1917, the United States entered World War I.
Jennifer: So at that point, this sort of benign action by these women starts to be seen more as an unpatriotic action so they start getting some pretty negative attention.
Nahanni: Their banners also become more inflammatory. President Wilson was talking about fighting for equality and democracy overseas. The suffragists wanted it at home, too.
Jennifer: They would call President Wilson “Kaiser Wilson”… They would quote his speeches... so he’s making a lot of speeches at the time about democracy abroad and the importance of equality and those kinds of things, but he’s not fighting for it here in the United States. So they start using those words against him.
Nahanni: Five hundred picketers were arrested on charges of obstructing traffic. Many, including Jewish women like Anita Pollitzer, served jail time. Alice Paul and others staged hunger strikes in prison and were force fed. One night, 40 women were arrested, beaten, and injured. One woman’s arms were chained above her head all night. Photographs show women staggering out of prison the next day, held up by other women. Public opinion began to shift.
Jennifer: You see it in a lot of newspaper articles from the time where it goes from condemnation of these women and unpatriotic acts and that kind of language, to “What is this administration allowing to happen to our nation’s women?”
Nahanni: That same month, New York became the first Eastern State to grant women the right to vote. The balance tipped. Political organizing at the state level plus the pickets and arrests in Washington had turned the tide.
Jennifer: So I don’t think you could have had one without the other. I think both were imperative and both were critical at that time, to making 1920 happen.
Nahanni: In 1920, Congress ratified the 19th amendment, enshrining women’s constitutional right to vote. But even that was not the end of the story. In practice, Jim Crow laws barred African American women, and men, from voting in many parts of the country. It would be another 45 years before the federal government banned racially discriminatory voting laws. The Supreme Court has recently begun to chip away at some of those protections. Jennifer says people need to know the history of how women got the right to vote.
Jennifer: They weren’t granted the right to vote, they weren’t given the right to vote. They won it. And they fought for it. We in particular feel it’s important to share this history and encourage young women to learn this history good, bad, and ugly so they know what’s at stake for women every day.
Nahanni: Before I leave the museum, I take a look at one last exhibit. It’s a full length mirror. I’m looking at myself. Written on the mirror are the words, “I stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me.” With that message in mind, I march out the doors of the museum-- out of history and into the present.
[Footsteps, opening door]
[Sound from the march]
Nahanni: Thousands and thousands of women are walking, singing, chanting, holding signs, holding hands. Standing to one side, my daughter notices a woman who looks like she came from another time. Kayla Malone is dressed as a suffragist.
Kayla Malone: I mean, I’m just wearing a long black skirt, um, petticoat, gloves cause it’s a little chilly, white sash, straw hat. My pin says “votes for women” my sash says “only forward, women fight.”
Nahanni: If the idea is to go forward, why dress to embody the past?
Kayla: I think that if we forget our history we are doomed to repeat it, you know, as they say. So I thought this outfit would be perfect to represent that we’re still marching and we’re going to continue to march.
[Sound from the march]
Nahanni: My daughter and I fall into step and join this steady, joyous, angry, determined river of people: more than half a million here and millions more across the country and around the world... I think about Alice Paul, Ida B Wells, and Anita Pollitzer… and so many more women of the past, who marched this same route. They organized, lobbied, picketed, and went to jail... so that we would have the right to vote. Now how will we use our voice and our power? After women won the right to vote Alice Paul reminded the suffragists that the fight for equality was just beginning.
[Theme music]
Nahanni: Thank you for joining Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Judith Rosenbaum is the Archive’s Executive Director. Ibby Caputo edited the script. You heard the voices of Lisa Feld and Rachel King. Our theme music is by Girls in Trouble. We also heard a suffrage march composed by Zena Hawn and recorded by the Victor Military Band in 1914, and a 1918 recording of Enrico Caruso singing Johnny Get Your Gun.
We’re looking for sponsors for Can We Talk?! If you like our podcast, please make a donation at jwa.org.
JWA is collecting stories for a project called #JWAmegaphone. If you were recently part of a women’s march, please share your story with us at jwa.org/megaphone.
I’m your host, Nahanni Rous. I’ll see you again next month.
[Music fades]
