On August 18, 1920, after much hard-fought struggle, 36 states ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. This year and in 2020 we celebrate the determination of suffragist women in fighting for themselves and their posterity. For myself–and many others, I am sure–it is unthinkable to try to imagine where this country would be today without them.
I recently visited the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument to see how American suffragists bettered our country. (For those of you with long memories, it was known as the Sewell-Belmont House from 1972 until 2016. The organization is a long-time collaborator with the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) It vividly illustrates how important it is for us to remember our history and the work it took to reach where we are today. I enjoyed every second there.
The Belmont-Paul House, as it is more simply known, has stood on Capitol Hill for almost 220 years. It is a stone’s throw away from the Capitol itself. In 1929 the National Woman’s Party (NWP), an organization integral to the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment, bought the gracious brick house on Maryland Avenue and Second Street NE to use as headquarters. Today it is home to the NWP’s collections and its exhibit detailing the fight for women’s suffrage.
Two floors of exhibits offer myriad opportunities for people, especially young people, to engage with the material.
One circa June 1917 banner framed in the hallway declares “THE YOUNG ARE AT THE GATES.” This draws on a longer passage by NWP member Lavinia Dock with which reform-minded youths today may well identify.
“What is the potent spirit of youth? Is it not the spirit of revolt, of rebellion against senseless and useless and deadening things? Most of all, against injustice, which is of all stupid things the stupidest? …The old stiff minds must give way. The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on. The young are at the gates!”
The passage first appeared in The Suffragist a week before the first pickets protested in front of the White House to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support the Amendment. (They were arrested for their efforts.)
Given the variety of clever and effective tactics suffragists used to gain the right to vote–lobbying and petitioning supplemented by publicity stunts such as parades and pageants–there’s no doubt they would have used social media if they had it. The exhibit’s selfie-ready mirrors with inspirational leadership messages on them might seem contrived to us, but upon further reflection, they are completely in the spirit of the ahead-of-its-time publicity savvy of the women’s suffrage movement. They give the Belmont-Paul a modern touch and remind us that the fight for equality is not yet over.
Despite all the important work done by the NWP, the exhibit notes what we recognize today was one of the organization’s shortcomings: its lack of diversity. The NWP “like other women’s organizations of the time… was comprised of predominantly unmarried or widowed white women from middle or upper class backgrounds,” reads one panel.
The exhibit panels on the fight for ratification are standouts. After all the strategy and hard work, luck played a part, too. In Tennessee, ratification was deadlocked in a tie vote. Then Febb Ensminger Burn sent her son, General Assemblyman Harry T. Burn, a letter in which she wrote, “Hurrah and vote for Suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt.” With the letter in his pocket, Burn changed his vote; the 19th Amendment was at last added to the Constitution.
Historic houses transformed into museums provide us visitors with a powerful sense of what it was like to be in these places in their heyday and they do it in a way that few other museums can. As we prepare for the centenary of women’s suffrage, Belmont-Paul is a must-see.