Elsie Hill Interview

Women's Suffrage Movement

60min, 1/4in reel

Hill discusses her education and how she came to be a women's rights activist.

1963

Herb Janick Papers, MS012

00;00;05;18 - 00;00;35;00
Elsie Hill
What is difficult to fix the year. Exactly. And that's why I went back and reread. I found a, my year in Rome in 1887 and eight, and the things I did and the context with women. Then when I was president, the first National Congress of Italian women in Rome, put into it by my sister who subscribe for my oddities, ticket while I was basking in the sunlight in the orange groves down in Sorrento with my mother.

00;00;35;02 - 00;00;55;12
Elsie Hill
after having been all winter in Rome, came home, and in May, was this thing happened. And I attended all these things and met Montessori and all these other women that were the leading feminists and the leading women in the professions of all Europe who came to celebrate with the Italian women their first national congress of Italian women.

00;00;55;15 - 00;01;25;28
Elsie Hill
And Leo the 13th was the pope and, their king, Victor Emmanuel. And the little baby was expected. And I saw the and of his sons, Princess Margaret, I mean, Queen Margarita, the Dowager Queen. Or they lived in the palace right over there. And the cappuccino monastery and catacombs are right here on Via Veneto. You came on the curving up this way, and there was Queen Marguerite.

00;01;25;28 - 00;01;49;10
Elsie Hill
And every afternoon I was used to watch them blow their trumpets while she came out and got in to go out for a ride behind your horses in the Villa Borghese, or somewhere. But here, with these women, the daughter of Labriola, one of the great criminologists of the world. And I went all winter to the, and classes class in criminal law.

00;01;49;10 - 00;02;15;12
Elsie Hill
The one of the great criminologist, who subsequently tolerated being made a senator by Mussolini because he wanted to keep on with his work, and Rico theory. And, I sat there and listened to his lectures. I didn't enter as a, you know, a person to be examined, but I was admitted as an auditor. I also visited all of the philanthropic institutions of Rome.

00;02;15;12 - 00;02;27;08
Elsie Hill
So they hospital this got all described in this book that I found the other night. And I thought, good heavens, this is the period Mrs. Thornhill wanted me to talk about. And I'd forgotten. All is.

00;02;27;11 - 00;02;54;27
Elsie Hill
Now, when did you arrive back in this country? Well, you see, I had two extended trips in Europe. One when I had passed my entrance examinations for their cert in 1900 and was then 17 the day I landed in Antwerp. And I thought it was marvelous. No fixed for me because of royal band in the square outside our hotel began to play.

00;02;54;27 - 00;03;17;18
Elsie Hill
The second Rhapsody on was this Rhapsody on Glass, which I had played at our commencement at the boarding school. two pianos we'd been, and four of us playing the piano. The second rhapsody unto us. Do you want to go get that? I sure did.

00;03;17;21 - 00;03;52;20
Elsie Hill
Our plan for that year in Europe was, made possible by my father and mother, who gave us each $1,000 and said we could stay as long as we could make the money loved. Fortunately, my sister had graduated from there, so, five years before in and 1895, I think, very and was a very good traveler, had been in Europe before and knew where to go and knew what she wanted to see.

00;03;52;22 - 00;04;10;29
Elsie Hill
She hadn't seen before, so that I was personally conducted to Europe. We landed in Antwerp. We went up the Rhine and across to Paris from Bonn.

00;04;11;01 - 00;04;41;26
Elsie Hill
And there we were in a French Huguenot minister's fountain. The two daughters ran the pass, and there were about 4 to 15 of us. it was a, girl from Londonderry, Ireland. There was an English girl with her governess from, somewhere in England. I've forgotten. There was a girl from the class in the south of France and two German girls and a few others.

00;04;41;26 - 00;05;38;05
Elsie Hill
Not not many more others. Not many others. And there I lived from, October until just before Easter, when we left and went direct third class, sitting up all night to night. So I think it was straight to Rome, where we arrived in time for Easter and had arranged to stay in the, a methodist upper class boarding school, right in the residential district of Rome, across from the palazzo of, the widowed Queen Margarita, and exactly opposite as the Capuchin monastery, with its walled garden and its catacombs, and the very swell new hotel on the right.

00;05;38;08 - 00;05;59;07
Elsie Hill
And among the children in that school, where we stayed for some six weeks, I think paying our board there was a one of the teachers was a granddaughter of Joseph, the,

00;05;59;09 - 00;06;27;29
Elsie Hill
Garibaldi. And, a great granddaughter. And I became acquainted with her. Both of them and their great granddaughter came to America and lived in Greenwich. Later, when she was married. And she came up to my home in Redding for a weekend, once that under my baby carriage, which was still preserved as an antique. Then she took her little baby out to walk on the road to the woods there at that time.

00;06;27;29 - 00;07;01;11
Elsie Hill
But I that to him was a very great eye opener. Of course, to me to land right in the middle of Rome and at Easter I was in the Easter in the, in Saint Peter's. On Easter Sunday, I went to a the church where the I can't remember whether it was the Pope actually, at that time, did wash the feet of the people that were in the church.

00;07;01;11 - 00;07;36;23
Elsie Hill
And I went through all of the ceremonies that were incident to the celebration of Easter. And at the capital of the Roman Church, it was a world. Then I went to see all of the palaces and the art galleries during intensive, study of Rome. And then we went on in June to Switzerland, where, with my sister, who was a great pedestrian and loved it.

00;07;36;25 - 00;08;15;02
Elsie Hill
We walked with knapsacks, over the corner. Shadegg and the grocer shall a path at the foot of the young shall mentioned, I guess, snow capped peaks. And we stayed up there a week, right at the foot there by the bleach or the glaciers, you call it. And I later years felt it was a great indignity to the mountain called the young fellow that they tunneled up in the middle of it, and you could go up inside the tunnel and the elevator to look out the where I had respect, it was camped in a little alpine, chalet.

00;08;15;02 - 00;08;56;24
Elsie Hill
There with the tinkling bells of the goats, the sheep coming over the hills in great troops, you know. And then we went, walked down into my ring and and not heard Brennan. And then we went on up to on our way home after this spell and Switzerland in and, in the mountain working with knapsacks as we started out from Lucerne and by tram car and got up to the place where we left it, and we came back to Switzerland, after having been at Geneva, where, we saw all the great things at Bern.

00;08;56;27 - 00;09;29;01
Elsie Hill
And, when we had finished our Swiss stay, we went up to Holland, and my sister wanted to go and see the original Haarlem. So we went way out. from The Hague or Rotterdam or Amsterdam, I forgot, forgotten which fun it was, to actually went to Haarlem in Holland. And then we came home from there, the landed home in the middle of August, and everything seemed so strange to me coming back.

00;09;29;05 - 00;09;53;03
Elsie Hill
But one thing to see, and there all of my friends dressed exactly alike. It was a summer when they had floods, and you had to have a piece of land around the top of your hat. to match the fuller dress you wore. And it was seemed to be very regimented way that women were living. And I went back to boarding school.

00;09;53;05 - 00;10;22;29
Elsie Hill
For another year before entering, because my father had said to my sister that she need no longer go through the agony of trying to teach me geometry, but she and second nature, and she couldn't understand why I couldn't understand. And so he said, all right, we'll just go and see the the great sights around Paris. We went to the university and then, to France and the great cathedral towns on Thursdays, which is their holiday.

00;10;22;29 - 00;10;53;28
Elsie Hill
And I'd seen all that, you see. So I had to come back and do four courses in the boarding school. It was a year later, and I should have been at Vassar because of that. But I felt that the year in Europe was better than almost as good as a whole college course to me, because I had an insight into the way men, reacted to women and I constantly compared our men favorably with the general attitude of, men to women in Europe.

00;10;53;28 - 00;11;37;02
Elsie Hill
But as I grew up later, coming back to this country, I learned that. And you scratch the surface and the actual position of women, when you did scratch the surface here in this country was a European situation that we had inherited from the legal system that was enforced in effect in England and which was the foundation for interpretation of Ireland and the expansion of the English legal system, so that I felt much ahead of many other women many times during those years in college and when that first came out.

00;11;37;02 - 00;12;04;03
Elsie Hill
But still, I wasn't interested in, women. And it was after I was out of college. What year was that? I graduated in 1906, at first there, and that was the year that Susan V Anthony died. I never saw it. I didn't know anything about it, particularly because the trustees of that there during my period in there as a student before it was four years passed and a prescribed course in Maine.

00;12;04;03 - 00;12;29;01
Elsie Hill
We didn't have majors. You had some choice of electives, but you didn't run through college with a major. I came in, you see, with a I came in to sophomore French because of my years in Paris, studying French thoroughly, fundamentally through with this daughter of the old Huguenot who was the teacher and her sister was the housekeeper.

00;12;29;01 - 00;12;54;16
Elsie Hill
And we had one servant in the house, and who was there every day and lived there and went at dawn to market. She brought groceries home in bags, the way some people have to do now, still in that country. Most of it seems to me I have to, unless I get a taxi. But I mean, the the hard work that everybody did in, in, in Europe at that time.

00;12;54;18 - 00;13;23;24
Elsie Hill
Incidentally, the I lived right in the, the, this house and it was Al Henry just outside the gates of Paris and, in a very nice neighborhood of the successful, distinguished artists with their studios and around the corner from this walled garden where we had tea every afternoon and, you know, mild weather, with a kiosk out there.

00;13;23;27 - 00;14;08;00
Elsie Hill
The kiosk, you know, is a they have a kiosk for the newsstand outside a roofed in sort of a summer house. we were just around the corner from the palatial Rothschild stables for their horses. Marvelous horses that the Rothschilds owned. But it was a beautiful neighborhood out in nature, saying that my husband later many years at the time of the First World War, when he went in with the French, he put up because he'd been a the old army, in the Philippines, he put up the first American field hospital in the world, Bologna, which was brought over there along the before we went into the war, you see.

00;14;08;06 - 00;14;30;21
Elsie Hill
So the they used to send, as always, meant a good deal to my sons. And I went back to it when I went back in 1907 and stayed a couple of weeks in Paris and took the trouble to go out to see my old teacher, and she was so enchanted to see me. She said, you know, so few people ever come back to say that they appreciate it.

00;14;30;24 - 00;14;50;03
Elsie Hill
Well, I must say, I went to great lengths to get out to this suburb. Not the same one, but another one to find her and to tell her that all my life I had felt that she has so enriched it by their scholarship in the way they taught us French, history and French language. I mean the the study of it.

00;14;50;05 - 00;15;10;04
Elsie Hill
And it starts at the age of 17 and get that and then go on and then come back to Paris and live in Paris again, and then come back afterwards. After I was married to, on the coast of Brittany, having a French household in a town where we the one of the 1 or 2 American families, you see it's.

00;15;10;06 - 00;15;35;12
Elsie Hill
And then in the official life with my father, where there were foreigners with whom you had to speak French, it was a wonderful thing to get such a thorough study of French. And then I taught it for six years in the Central High School in Washington, when, I had become wearied with official society. And also there was a temporary one of these ever recurring, depressions.

00;15;35;12 - 00;15;59;17
Elsie Hill
And I felt that there. So there was some worry on my father's part for something that he'd saved for saved by. But to and he also was defeated the next year and but came back to Congress that I should go out and use this French that he wanted me to learn, or what I'll be doing is fair to take care of myself as anything happened.

00;15;59;17 - 00;16;26;19
Elsie Hill
Although he did plan and mother planned, they worked together to provide for the children that they brought into the world, and also given the very fine education and, and for them to be provided and not be dependent upon the community to see, that's it. His father was a methodist minister, and, suffered paralysis of the throat so that he could no longer continue to be a methodist minister.

00;16;26;19 - 00;16;54;18
Elsie Hill
He simply had to retire. And that was very difficult to emergency to meet. And that was why my father, couldn't go back to college after he came out of the Civil War as a very young man, and why he had to live on such spare things when he was in Yale. We have these little diary in which he seems to have recorded mostly the purchase of peanuts and apples.

00;16;54;18 - 00;17;31;17
Elsie Hill
And I don't know whether he lived on peanuts and apples. It makes a very good nourishment, of course, if you have a drink of milk solids and whatnot. But the when you were in Europe the second time was, what was 1907 and eight was just the beginning of your interest in, women's rights. Well, of course, I was conscious of of the European attitude towards women when I was there at 17 because, you couldn't go especially a blond, person as I was, couldn't go out on the streets alone.

00;17;31;17 - 00;18;02;04
Elsie Hill
The girls couldn't go out on the streets alone in either Paris or London or Rome, because of the, general. they didn't have the freedom of going out alone. By the time of 1908, it had greatly developed, beyond what it was in 1900. And when I went back and it was in Paris in 1926 at the, at the at an international congress of women.

00;18;02;04 - 00;18;33;23
Elsie Hill
You see the first the Congress of women in 1908 that my sister entered me, as an auditor. She was already a suffragist, and I was not I thought I was more advanced, and she and I didn't realize exactly what was the whole thing involved. That's something that you can learn in the beginning. If somebody really opens it up to you, then as long as you find it because of your sex, anything can be that is normally human.

00;18;33;25 - 00;19;00;20
Elsie Hill
When looked at, from Mars, let's say an adult educated citizen who was competent to do something and was interested to do something, if if you are barred in any field solely because of sex, not because of incompetence, then your whole status is inferior.

00;19;00;22 - 00;19;28;22
Elsie Hill
You have. And one and one of the finest statements I ever heard to that effect was by this very distinguished science ist, who was the head of the government hospital for the mentally ill in Washington, just outside of Washington. They now have several thousand people there. But this was before the before the, terrific influx of the wrecks of our wars.

00;19;28;24 - 00;20;06;09
Elsie Hill
Mental wrecks had come to them. And he spoke one Sunday afternoon at our regular Sunday afternoon meeting at the National Women's Party headquarters that we now occupy on Capitol Hill. on the whole question of equal rights. And he said he was for it because no, scientifically speaking, no individual is like any other individual. And each individual has tastes and talents and abilities which should have expression.

00;20;06;09 - 00;20;40;18
Elsie Hill
And if which you, frustrate, you are depriving not only the individual of expansion, but you're depriving society of a contribution from the individual, which is unlike that of any other individual in existence. Because basically no other individual matches. Identical twins, even as different as personalities. there were three sets of identical twins in my class at other, and their mother finally said symptom.

00;20;40;21 - 00;21;07;24
Elsie Hill
no, it was a daughter of one. And the mother finally said, set the one twin to one college and the other to the other because she didn't want to become more identical. I felt it was. And there was a pair of identical twins in 19 four. Beautiful girls. but one was healthier than the other. And there was always that pool between the capacity of one and the capacity of the other.

00;21;07;26 - 00;21;36;27
Elsie Hill
Well, now, that is true with regard to sex, disqualification and sex. discrimination that the individual can't go to capacity of expansion and talent and the society loses and this. Great. So I just put that to us one afternoon to a group of about 50, with a blizzard going outside. And he had come all the way over Government Hospital.

00;21;36;27 - 00;22;13;03
Elsie Hill
And the presiding officer was Mrs. Harvey Wylie, the widow of the Pure Food Man. When was this? Well, I can't tell you. It was sometime in the 20s. The late 20s. Because we didn't get into those headlines and that man is dead. But I've heard that from others who are scientists and who are great lawyers. Like. Mrs. Harvey while he was still living and working with us now in Washington, this is, April of 1963.

00;22;13;06 - 00;22;38;19
Elsie Hill
And, and you heard, when I was teaching at the Central High School, you see, she was in the Library of Congress at that time and had not married Harvey Whaley. And I knew him at the French club. The presume they appreciate the ridicule, which often gave French places. I took part in.

00;22;38;22 - 00;23;12;22
Elsie Hill
In 1978, I spent the winter in Rome with my mother and with my sister, teaching in this Methodist school opposite the cappuccino, and my sister, who is already emancipated in her head. And it didn't wasn't conspicuous. She was much beloved by all the children and, lovely person who had graduated in 1895 at their soon she had entered me as an auditor in the first national Congress of Italian women.

00;23;12;24 - 00;23;50;15
Elsie Hill
held in Rome, in the then unfinished Palace of Justice. I was down at Sorrento, quite ignorant of what she was doing for me and with me in what has really been a great, landmark in my life, because, I never heard of a lot of things that were discussed at that point. Although I had had an excellent college education and prep school education and was with intelligent people, educated people, that at that Congress, because it was the first national congress of Italian women.

00;23;50;18 - 00;24;41;07
Elsie Hill
it they had as guests of honor, really to help them celebrate the leading figures in all fields of endeavor where women had, entered at that time, all kinds of reforms, French women, English women. I remember the, the, the British women who came down, but Montessori, Montessori who was a physician and, and a scientist and who, evolved the Montessori system, which was then being, not exactly tested, but practiced in a palace in Rome, at the home of an a Boston woman who had married of Italian title.

00;24;41;09 - 00;25;17;09
Elsie Hill
And I became completely sold on the woman contribution that Montessori was making. I had never studied kindergarten profoundly, and I never been to kindergarten. but I, I thought that the points that she had brought out and I from then on became, advocates of the Montessori method. To be incorporated in the good things that we had from verbal and from the other, that test a lot.

00;25;17;09 - 00;26;03;29
Elsie Hill
She was an Italian from the great teachers. so that, in all these fields, you you have to add. Now then, one of the things that I was born in upon me was the work already underway all over Europe for the emancipation of women. And I presume I would have been a long time getting it further if I hadn't had to be there for that occasion, because it was not, at that time illiterate men voted in Rome, and women, a radical young men that I became well acquainted with at the at the University of Rome, where I was an auditor for the class, for the lectures of and legal theory, the great criminologist,

00;26;03;29 - 00;26;31;13
Elsie Hill
and where I met, Rosa Labriola, who was the daughter of the criminologist Labriola. this young man was very much against women's suffrage, because which was being discussed because of the fact that women were so backward that they would be just at the mercy of any men, particularly the priest who would advise him. And he was a very, I thought he was a very emancipated young man and a very radical young man.

00;26;31;13 - 00;26;55;23
Elsie Hill
He was, and a very interesting young man. He was from Catania in Sicily. And I've never seen him since. But I remember so well almost every detail and how the much the students demonstrated, the most fraction it that they were always having it for getting some governance measure which was customary in this country at all at that time.

00;26;55;26 - 00;27;29;09
Elsie Hill
One of the things that was indelibly fixed in my vision, my inner vision, was a sign that said, in Italian or Latin, the status of women well tied in my ideas, a cat, what the status of women was. But I heard the discussions that surrounded the status of women. And so many, many years later, after we had the vote, we the word has come back and I assisted in causing the status of women.

00;27;29;09 - 00;27;58;03
Elsie Hill
Commission of the Inter-American Organization of States, the Pan-American Union, to be created. and I've collaborated with it in the, in the field of the status of women and assisted in the reports. And then another one was la ricerca della Anita, which nobody ever talked about, who were here, but which was talked about by the leading women in all the countries of Europe.

00;27;58;05 - 00;28;20;03
Elsie Hill
The awful plight of the illegitimate child. There were places at convents where they had a, rosary for, you know, the woman who had had a child could come and lay the baby in this rosemary field and give it a turn. It would go inside and she would depart, and that would be the end of that. There was no adoption and no surrender.

00;28;20;05 - 00;29;00;23
Elsie Hill
It was just simply that she had to get rid of this. This, Well, it was a sin to her. Maybe it wasn't a sin to it anyway. It was an event that was a very embarrassing and troublesome affair to her. And it. The nuns would have these pieces where the foundlings could be taken care of. And we had this, as I observed, as it grew and understanding the cause of this situation, you had this terrific taxing of the people of Italy and of the other countries who were ground down between the cost of a standing army, which we didn't used to have of any size in this country at that time, and of the

00;29;00;23 - 00;29;35;20
Elsie Hill
cost of, of of, aristocracy and power and of a state church, which was very expensive to maintain, but was maintained. And there was a peasant struggling with all the taxes from, for all these purposes of, the church, the, monarchy and the standing army and women were caught in that with the old idea of what the status was of women, which was a subject status.

00;29;35;22 - 00;30;04;14
Elsie Hill
I didn't know much of anything about Italian law at that time. But having been, interested and at that time, in 19 seven and eight. I had been through college and had studied, had lived at the nurses settlement in New York, where Lillian Wold was the founder, and with 2 or 3 other women who were founders with her.

00;30;04;14 - 00;30;32;17
Elsie Hill
I sat at table with them and went to the School of Philanthropy, because the education in economics and charities and corrections was, of course, as I took it was very popular and very wonderful. Professor, Professor Herbert Mills. And again with him, as I did with the French teacher in Paris, years later, I out of a sudden feeling of depth of appreciation, I wrote him a letter and said that I could never be too grateful for what he had done for us in our class.

00;30;32;17 - 00;30;57;00
Elsie Hill
And he wrote back and he said, well, you were fortunate in being better investors, Golden age. And then he spoke of these different other professors, Professor Lucy Solomon, Miss Laura Wiley and so forth. And yet when I was in bursar, the trustees were so vile that the anti suffrage that they would the and the president was that they wouldn't allow any discussion of suffrage, any lecturing on the suffrage or any mention of suffrage.

00;30;57;00 - 00;31;18;12
Elsie Hill
And yet the history professor was famous among historians, professor Lucy Solomon and the doctor, who was, of course, in a relatively small group of women doctors in the United States, Doctor Elizabeth Taylor. She was a strong suffragist, and so it went with a great many others with whom I became personally acquainted. But they they were not supposed to talk with us about it.

00;31;18;15 - 00;31;52;01
Elsie Hill
And when in Israel, Holland answered as a freshman, having been really a good deal in England and having been presented at court, through her father and mother and father, was one of the great American men of wealth who owned the tubes in New York. telephone tubes and, who was a great contributor to Irish Freedom, through whom I have met Deborah, Leora and all of the other visitors I won't name from Ireland who sought support and help from us.

00;31;52;01 - 00;32;32;02
Elsie Hill
He used to eat at our headquarters in Washington. These famous people, of of the movements of the day later, when we had the suffrage headquarters from 1912 on until now, we have this woman's party headquarters. But the, these movements were all represented at this first national congress of Italian women. And without going into them all, I, I went through that whole Congress, being educated by the women of Europe and what they were trying to do to raise the status of women in each one of those countries.

00;32;32;05 - 00;33;12;01
Elsie Hill
and I don't believe there was any profession or any interest of women. It wasn't there. It was a great thing for Italian women. It was a great thing for all women, a landmark for all women, because Italy was pretty backward at that time. And for instance, the nurses in the municipal hospital, there were all nuns with with black trailing robes, and there was no I have it written in this book that came across the other night, the details of it telling exactly how how the hospital was organized, because I had done those reports for the School of Philanthropy and various things in college, because in college we were supposed during vacations to visit the,

00;33;12;03 - 00;33;42;05
Elsie Hill
given type of institution in the neighborhood of our residence during vacation, you see. So I went through the whole mill of, of, public and private charities in Rome, 1908 and studied under this great man who became a socialist deputy. And finally, in order to keep on with his legal activity after Mussolini came to power, he accepted an appointment as senator.

00;33;42;08 - 00;34;16;22
Elsie Hill
in that period, and then was at a conference, a law conference up in Brussels, where my husband was one of those who worked with him there. And there again, you have, as one of my friends, is the same fish swim at the same level so that you, you if you, stand, faithfully and, intelligently for a given purpose and stick to it until you win it, or as long as you live.

00;34;16;25 - 00;34;40;04
Elsie Hill
the the continuity and the faith, the vicissitudes of the course or the. If it's a worthwhile cause. I don't think that the trivial things are worth hanging on to at all cost. But see if it's worth doing it, then stick to it through to the end. And that's the trouble with people don't know about about equal rights for women in Congress.

00;34;40;04 - 00;35;24;27
Elsie Hill
No, we've had the vote here in our country, for 42 years. For three years, I was it will be in August. And the people were women who had not taken part in the suffrage campaign, and even those of us who had were very insufficient to educate others in regard to the law and the constitutional law, so that people had the notion and the men in Congress had the notion when we got the vote, and then after we went back there to propose the equal rights Amendment, in 1923, 22 and 23, they say, well, we thought you girls had gone all you were after what you hear for now.

00;35;25;00 - 00;36;04;16
Elsie Hill
Now, that is typical of of of the lack of depth of understanding of our own government. And I had heard it was rather better than the average before I got interested in women, but in none of the books that I had to study it at the law school, even in 1922 and three at Yale, in 99, in George Washington University, where I studied constitutional law, the best professor of it there was there there was never any mention of the status of women, but the Constitution, about all 40 to that was all there at that time.

00;36;04;16 - 00;36;47;28
Elsie Hill
We didn't have the income tax yet. We didn't have the, we hadn't taken on prohibition and then abandoned it. And we hadn't any of the other things. It was popular election of senators. Those things came later. But the but the whole definition of citizenship and the enumeration, practically of the particular privileges and immunities, the reference to it that you have in the 14th amendment, which was written for the Negro and known to have been written for the Negro, although it doesn't mention him in it, but it was written to define citizenship, shows that the Negro would just cease to become a piece of property by the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln, and by the adoption

00;36;47;28 - 00;37;12;20
Elsie Hill
of the 14th Amendment. I mean, by the by the adoption of the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, that nobody knew what the Negro was. He'd been property. What was he doing? And there had to be something done to define the status of all these creatures who had been property. And they didn't know, and nobody else knew what they were in our society at that time.

00;37;12;20 - 00;37;30;14
Elsie Hill
And it was true that it was the Negroes only had to be the, had to have a definition of what it was. And that's why the defiance citizenship as being all persons born and they considered the Negro was a person, the man who put that through. And they were regarded as radicals. You know, Charles Sumner was regarded as a radical of that period.

00;37;30;16 - 00;37;55;02
Elsie Hill
Well, they put that through saying what the rights of citizens were and forbidding the states. No state may deny citizen the equal protection of the laws. No state may deny a citizen the privileges or immunities of the citizen. And then to be sure, they would be allowed to vote, they said in any move, any state that denies the mail says that was the first time the word male.

00;37;55;02 - 00;38;41;03
Elsie Hill
When had the Constitution had been a human? undivided document of principles up to that point. And then they said, and any state that denies a male citizen the right to vote shall have its representative in Congress reduced in the proportion that the total number of those denied, is to the total number of the inhabitants. So that you instantly and the court had to set up in the interpretation of the 14th amendment, what the enumerated dimension of male did to those who weren't males, because the law has a theory and a practice that if you mention one subject, you exclude the others.

00;38;41;06 - 00;39;07;16
Elsie Hill
In other words, you legislate for the thing that you mention and you do not cover the others. That's why we used to have at the first three years that we, after we got the vote, when we were entering upon this campaign to raise the status of women through, law and custom, beginning with law, those laws written and define, you know what it is custom you where it changes gradually and by no definite fire.

00;39;07;19 - 00;39;29;14
Elsie Hill
that's why we had to have what they called a blanket bill. Women shall have equal rights in regard to a, b, c, d, e. And if you enumerated the things that you knew about. And then we added the phrase, it was suggested by the knowing persons. And in every and in all other respects that was the blanket clause.

00;39;29;16 - 00;39;53;28
Elsie Hill
And we were attacked mightily because we have said people said they didn't believe in a blanket amendment or a blanket bill, but there was no other way to to effect all women with this advantage of having equality in, in the property rights and marriage laws and custody of children in the and employment, retirement, all the rest of it.

00;39;54;01 - 00;40;20;09
Elsie Hill
And in all other respects, you didn't know what might you what you didn't know about. You didn't know what you didn't know about. You didn't know what you might come up like aviation, for instance, or aerospace or any of the things at Peace Corps that say anything that is, created that wasn't done. Then we tried to cover it in those state bills and in all other respects.

00;40;20;11 - 00;40;53;07
Elsie Hill
Well, the result of that, kind of campaign. Was that in the first three years, we did repeal all of it, amend change for equality about 40 bills in different states. There were 12 in Louisiana alone. The special session in the first year that we went down, I went down to Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi 12 changed at Baton Rouge in Louisiana.

00;40;53;07 - 00;41;20;17
Elsie Hill
Well, we had the support there to show you how these things hang and can hang up on one one person, perhaps in the whole state that will turn the tide. If the person is a person of integrity and respect and honor and, recognized person as of being honest, the president of the Federation of Women's Clubs, who was the wife of the attorney general of Louisiana, was the person who came to this movement and backed it.

00;41;20;19 - 00;41;46;02
Elsie Hill
And although the Miss Anita pilots of Charleston, South Carolina, who was national secretary of the Equal Rights of the Woman's Party, and I was a national chairman, right after we got the vote in the next election afterwards, we've had one chairman through that Miss Ellis poll, and she retired, and I was put in as chairman and Miss Politzer as national secretary.

00;41;46;02 - 00;42;15;17
Elsie Hill
And then we had a board. But Miss Paulette and I went to those three states. And she, being a Southerner, was very much able to do a great deal. But of course, having a father who was in Congress had been, I had a position also. And as we both of us been through the suffrage campaign, and it was one, we were honored with, with just before the end of the suffrage campaign, we could have been denounced and, and, ostracized.

00;42;15;19 - 00;42;38;14
Elsie Hill
And those states, became became a part of the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment from then on. And you see, that was in the right after the end of the suffrage campaign. And, one thing that I'm reminded of at this point is that when,

00;42;38;16 - 00;43;07;09
Elsie Hill
When I had been teaching in the Central High School, the French that I studied so hard in Paris and practiced all over Europe, I used to be visited by the girls and boys who I had taught. They'd come back from whatever they were doing and stand around my desk, and we'd talk about things. And one group was at was studying at the normal school of the District of Columbia.

00;43;07;11 - 00;43;28;24
Elsie Hill
And it is very vivid. And now, in my mind always, that I asked them one day I said, well, now do what I do. What does it say in your history book about women? They looked it up in their history book, and there was one reference to women, and that was that Wyoming came in with women's woman suffrage, but nothing else.

00;43;28;26 - 00;43;52;21
Elsie Hill
Betsy Ross so give up the flag. And Martha Washington ran Mount Vernon in the absence of her husband. But, for example, there do I'm reminded of the very mention of Martha Washington that for nine years she was civilly dead under the English common law, but under coverture she had inherited money from. She had a first husband, didn't she?

00;43;52;23 - 00;44;26;22
Elsie Hill
And she had property and that which she had by inheritance. she had, but as a wife of George, she was absolutely on the cover her and could neither sooner be sued nor owned property than she was in Blackstone's. and the common law statement civilly dead. My mother was severely dead for nine years, that she had married my father and came to live in Norwalk because the married woman's property did not, was not passed until 1878.

00;44;26;22 - 00;45;03;10
Elsie Hill
And she was married and came here in 1868. And those years mother was severely dead. She could need a soon to be sued in her own property, in her anything. No act legally, these things, have all been so fragmentary and and even at the Yale Law School, the special status of women under every one of this is one of the subjects that I studied torts, criminal law, contracts, equity, which was very tries to make up for other defects in law, grew it also in it did in domestic relations.

00;45;03;10 - 00;45;22;04
Elsie Hill
The law of persons, the you would find the woman's definition in law. I mean her rights, her got rights, but her necessity, whatever the was about her was in the footnote.

00;45;22;07 - 00;45;42;07
Elsie Hill
Now it just as it was in the history book of my students, former students who went to the normal school in Washington had no I take up a book that's published just a last few years ago, who a very, very popular professor at Smith College. And I again, look at the index. What does he have under the title The Woman?

00;45;42;09 - 00;46;08;25
Elsie Hill
Well, woman was suffrage movement became so strong that this vote was accorded to women in 1920. And that's all there is to it. And I think of the ten years that I put in ending finally with me and, on a hunger strike in the Washington jail under the great President Woodrow Wilson, who was elected and known to be an anti suffragist, and he was elected.

00;46;08;28 - 00;46;45;11
Elsie Hill
And then at the end of his toward the end of his time, and he came back from the peace conference to put through Congress his program. I was arrested on Boston Common and sent to jail in Boston, in the Charles Street Jail, with about 40 other suffragists. In 1919. Now. We we got it through in 1919, but not until Wilson had had so much pressure brought to bear on him from all pro suffrage men in the Democratic Party.

00;46;45;11 - 00;47;15;22
Elsie Hill
And with three campaigns against him, him and his candidates for Congress of his party, in the states where women already had secured the vote. Now that's the that was the great leverage that ended the suffrage campaign. It didn't add any more righteousness to the suffrage campaign, but it became a practical tool. And the weapon with which Miss Ellis Paul could lead a relatively small group, because I think they never were.

00;47;15;22 - 00;47;56;27
Elsie Hill
More than about 60,000 actually enrolled women who were members of the congressional union, which was the group that started the to do that hold the party and party party in power responsible for the fate of the Susan B Anthony suffrage amendment, which is now valid and in the Constitution since 1920 August 26th, and Connecticut was the last state to ratify that before we voted in that only six weeks before we actually voted, and that done only because the then dominant Republican machine was Mr. J.

00;47;56;27 - 00;48;19;07
Elsie Hill
Henry brought it back. Both national committeeman and state chairman, and Governor Holcomb, the war governor under whom women had been regimented to work for the war, do all the war work, and do all the war work that they possibly could. And to and were told that if they would do all that, that they would get it off with just the way the Susan V.

00;48;19;08 - 00;48;53;16
Elsie Hill
And it was told that this after the Civil War, that if they would stand back for the Negro, that when they did grow had been cared for with the 14th and the 15th amendments, that then they would take up the women, and they never did it, never done it yet to give us a 14th amendment so that it's, the Republican Party and those who supported that point of view have an unpaid debt to all women who know because of wars and diseases and way of life, women outnumber men by millions in the United States.

00;48;53;21 - 00;49;37;07
Elsie Hill
And outnumber them in every state. When I first was interested in this, Massachusetts was populated, I used to say jokingly, with widows. In the old days, because the men and the war women and men, when the men had gone forth to war, they'd gone forth to the great West, and the West has our cousins and their descendants who, went out to Portland, Oregon, from Westport, Connecticut, founded a hill school out there and the hill comes back and there's a baby, the class baby of William Howard Taft class at Yale, is one of my Portland, Oregon cousins.

00;49;37;09 - 00;50;11;07
Elsie Hill
Well, you New England has furnished and the South has furnished the population for these the western expansion and that, we've had all these wars and this misbehavior physically so that now I'm so grateful to this president who even talks about physical fitness because we are getting fat, lazy and disease. And I think women, have an inherited and, biological.

00;50;11;09 - 00;50;33;11
Elsie Hill
Strength which we are not responsible for, but which without which there would be no race at all if the female who bore and reared the child, and was the industrial expert and the agricultural expert in the earlier times in our country.

00;50;33;13 - 00;51;04;06
Elsie Hill
We're not she. You had to be strong, and the man was not needed at all times and at all places, and he could be a lazy hunter, and he can be a lazy broker, and he can be, a lazy lawyer or a minister or whatnot. And the church and the, business of the world, the whole organization of Yale is staffed, is manned by women, Yale University, every office you go into, the work is being done by women.

00;51;04;08 - 00;51;18;26
Elsie Hill
And fortunately, at last, women are allowed to go to the Yale Law School. Now.

00;51;18;28 - 00;51;51;15
Elsie Hill
At the time of this, superficial depression in Washington, and when I took the examination and, received an appointment, to teach in French in a central high school. It was a very the result came of getting the appointment and in a very curious way. And the consequences it was in 1911 and the daughter of another congressman from from Vermont, he was she was a graduate of Renmark.

00;51;51;15 - 00;52;13;17
Elsie Hill
One of her classmates was very wealthy and had given a very large gift to the Greenwich settlement in New York. I had gone, as you may remember, to the nurses settlement, and I didn't know this girl at all at that time. But in Washington I became acquainted with her because she had the, was there teaching already. Her father was on the District of Columbia committee, and the Republican Party was in power.

00;52;13;19 - 00;52;35;20
Elsie Hill
And she said, why didn't I, since I knew French so well, why didn't I come along and teach French at the end of the school year? Because I spoke at very few women, American women did, who were trying to teach. So she was resigning after she had gotten me started on this idea of teaching, which I was interested in.

00;52;35;20 - 00;52;57;20
Elsie Hill
But on from the outside, the study at the public school, because I was a private school product due to father going to Congress and then not wanting to break into my term and switched me to Washington, I went to a private boarding school. One day she was preparing for her departure, and she was president of the College Equal Suffrage League of the District of Columbia.

00;52;57;20 - 00;53;18;25
Elsie Hill
And I had nothing to do with it. I didn't I knew it was existed, but I didn't belong to it. So at a board meeting when she resigned, she suggested to them, and they acted immediately upon her safety. And she said, Elsie Hill is has anything to do that she needs to do? Let's make her a president and I will pay her dues.

00;53;18;25 - 00;53;40;24
Elsie Hill
So she paid $0.50 for me to become a member in Absalom was didn't know anything about it. And I was made a member. And they voted to fill the her vacancy of resignation by appointing me from the board to be president. The college yourself really well, I wasn't against woman suffrage, but I wasn't very for it. I wasn't particularly interested in it.

00;53;40;24 - 00;54;00;07
Elsie Hill
I didn't want to work for it. My sister was working for it. I thought that was all right. she was older than I, and that was a suitable thing for an older woman to do. Not be. However, I want to make it interesting. So I tried at the first meeting after Mabel Foster had left and I was on my own.

00;54;00;09 - 00;54;23;29
Elsie Hill
They had their the treasurer was a woman named Joy Webster, a graduate of the University of Nebraska. And it turns out one of my colonial cousins, because I'm descended from Governor John Webster of Connecticut. and my mother joined the Colonial Dames in part on his strength of her descent from Governor John Webster and so Joy was a descendant of Governor John Webster from Nebraska.

00;54;23;29 - 00;54;48;22
Elsie Hill
So we got on famously, and she kept the books, and I sat in the chair and presided. And then I hatched the idea that I, I'd never seen anything of suffrage in connection with the inaugural procession. And my sister again had plotted me and got me into the first one of the first national processions for women's suffrage in New York.

00;54;48;24 - 00;55;16;04
Elsie Hill
and I had marched somewhat and reluctantly, but Tim did march, and I thought, well, if we're going to do anything about this, we ought to have a procession in Washington. But there's nobody here knows how to get it up, because there are. The suffragists that were in Washington were many of them of the really pioneer stock who were very old ladies way I am now and the they weren't particularly good figureheads.

00;55;16;09 - 00;55;55;06
Elsie Hill
They were full of intelligence and full of devotion and full of faithfulness. But but it wouldn't be able to get up a parade at that at their age. So as these other people were going to a national convention of the national suffrage organization that was to be held in Philadelphia that autumn, the last meeting of the College Equal Suffrage League in the spring, I suggested that we have a resolution inviting the national organization to send someone here who knew how to run a get up a suffrage parade and let us have one at the time that the whatever man was elected was going to be inaugurated.

00;55;55;06 - 00;56;43;18
Elsie Hill
And I didn't fix well, the before after his inauguration. But at the time, around the time of his inauguration and nobody knew who it would be, that we have a suffrage parade in Washington and never had been one before. Well, I didn't know that this young woman named Alice Poole, who had been studying in London and Birmingham and on the continent and had her degree from University of Pennsylvania, is, was going to that convention with a Vassar graduate who had graduated in June before I entered in 1902, and they were offering their services to head the congressional work of the national Americans and work for the national suffrage amendment.

00;56;43;21 - 00;57;20;25
Elsie Hill
Instead of working state by state. And they were given the appointment on the condition that they would raise all the money that they spent, that they hadn't any money to give to this committee, and that so they were appointed. And suddenly Alice arrived in Washington after these delegates had come home. And he said, this is an autumn in December, following, knock at my door and in comes Miss Alice Paul is tiny and slim, and said that she had been appointed to head the congressional work of the National American Women's Suffrage Association and came to me because my name had been given to her.

00;57;20;25 - 00;57;41;04
Elsie Hill
She didn't know, even passed the resolution inviting them to come and she asked me, told me what she what was planned by Miss Burns and her burns as vice chairman. And the first thing she asked me to do, said, is to anybody from whom you could get a contribution, but I never asked for a contribution to get a parade before.

00;57;41;06 - 00;58;10;29
Elsie Hill
I had a one room in a bath apartment by myself at this very nice apartment house, and I bethought me, and I thought of the lady in whose beautiful studio I had the darn Greek dancing and natural dancing with chiffon robes fluttering about me. And so I called up, and this is, Christian Hammack, who, by the way, had been very much in love with and I'm not sure that was engaged to Stanley.

00;58;11;01 - 00;58;33;17
Elsie Hill
as Africa. Mr. Stanley, I presume? No. and I called her and I said that this person had come to the parade and that they were starting right away to organize money enough to have a headquarters and so forth. And what would she be? Would you give $50? Well, I'd always ask for $0.50 before, but I got it right away.

00;58;33;19 - 00;59;16;05
Elsie Hill
And that was the sudden switch from the meager, Oh, not timid, but to unobtrusive, action for suffrage that went on right up to that point when this young woman who was younger than I, but a Quaker, reared in it as a religion, the doctrine, the philosophy of the quality of the sexes, and had been endowed from within and from wherever it comes with the determination that that was to be her life, work and that there was nothing going to stop her.

00;59;16;07 - 00;59;50;07
Elsie Hill
And we that was in December of 1912. And as I say, my life has not been my own, since then and never through any, arbitrary authoritarian, action, but simply by pointing out a simple way of procedure immediately at that point. And that's why in going on back over this old stuff, I want to say what it is right this last October and right now, and we can tie these things together.

00;59;50;07 - 01;00;11;04
Elsie Hill
But at this particular point, I would like to tie this right now and tie it right together. Now, this young woman, we were both young and both, presentable, personable, educated, privileged.

01;00;11;07 - 01;01;20;26
Elsie Hill
She has made it so reasonable that even doctors and nurses and lawyers walked out to pick it in a legal way on the white House. And were arrested, sent to jail, and unanimously, a hunger strike. Some of the most prominent women in the United States by wealth, by political power, by, talent. did these things during a period of, of, the Wilson administration and pursued it, never backing backing at all, always inching forward for seven years from March 3rd when this parade came on and was mobbed and broken up and had to have had to send for the cavalry at Fort Myer to come and open a way down Pennsylvania Avenue, where we

01;01;20;26 - 01;01;42;20
Elsie Hill
had a permit for a parade from the Capitol to the Treasury Department, and then on to the Hall of the Da. These women have carried this on through there. They have died. They have lost their money through depressions and wars since 1913. But.

-10min: Rome; 1907-1908; President of First National Congress of Italian Women in Rome; met Montessori, along with others within leading feminists. Leo XIII was Pope at the time and Queen Margarita and daughter of Ferri, criminologist, was examining the scene. There were two extended trips in Europe, made possible by my parents giving $1,000.00 to each child to travel until money lasted. I was personally conducted through Europe by a sister who knew where and what she wanted to see as she had been there before; 1895; with a French Huguenot Minister's family; two daughters ran the parish, there were 14-15 people; Irish girl, French girl, English, two German girls, and a few others. I lived there from October to just before Easter; rode with the third class and stayed up all night for two nights to go straight to Rome and arrived right before Easter. Arranged to stay in a Methodist upper-class boarding school in a residential district of Rome where widowed-Queen Margarita was and exactly opposite the Cappuccini monastery and gardens; stayed up to 6 weeks. One of the teachers was the granddaughter of Giuseppe; I was at Saint Peter's on Easter Sunday, I went up to the church and watched the people in the church; went to see all the palaces and art galleries during the intensive study of Rome. In June, we went to Switzerland with a sister as pedestrians, stayed there for a week; went into the mountain there and was able to look out; hearing sheep bells of coming over the hill and troops; On the way home, came back to Switzerland from Geneva where we saw great things. Then went to Holland because my sister wanted to see the original Harlem. Then we came back home in August and saw all the friends dressed alike as floral prints were in and went back to boarding school for another year.

-10min-20min: My sister no longer needed to go through the agony of teaching me Geography anymore, but was able to see the great sites in Paris and the cathedral. I took four courses in boarding school and was behind a year, but thought the year in Europe was better than a whole college course as I had a better insight of how men reacted to women and constantly compared our men favorably to women in Europe. When we actually scratched the surface of women the position of women where we inherited from the European legal system; all is just a foundation of interpretation and an expansion of English legal system and felt ahead of many women in many times in her years of college, was not interested in women until after graduation of 1906, same year Susan B Anthony died; never met her and didn't know anything about her. In college, they didn't have any majors, only electives; I came in and took sophomore French after the trip to Paris and studying French thoroughly and fundamentally with the Huguenots. There were a lot of hard-work in Paris compared to here. There were successful, distinguished artists and in the garden where we had tea every afternoon, was a kiosk newsstand and around the corner was the Rothschild’s stable; beautiful neighborhood. My husband in WWI went in with the French and in the Philippines, he put up the first American field hospital before we went into the wars. In 1907, we stayed a couple weeks in Paris and saw old teachers; they didn't think I would've come back. I went to great lengths to go out to the suburbs to find her and felt the teacher enhanced my experience. I lived on the coast of Brittany with a French household after marriage and had to speak French. There was a temporary depression and father wanted me to take care of myself and the children. Father had to live on spare things during his time in the war, recorded everything in a diary. I was conscious in 1907-1908 of the women in Paris and Rome, women of blonde hair, as I was; couldn't go out alone, they didn't have the freedom to go out alone until 1908 it greatly developed than it was in 1900. At Paris, in 1926, at the International Congress of Women after 1908, my sister entered me in; my sister was already a suffragist as I was not, only a feminist; didn't know what it really was until someone opens it up to you. Because of your sex, anything that is normally human, an adult, educated, a citizen who is competent to do something and interested in doing something in any field, solely because of sex, not because of incompetence then the status is inferior. This was the finest statement from just outside of Washington, a scientist, head of the government for the mentally ill. This was just before the mental wrecks of our wars. And he spoke one Sunday afternoon at our National Orange Party Head Quarters on Capitol Hill on the question of equal rights. He spoke for it, scientifically speaking, no individual is like no other individual and each individual has taste and talents and abilities which should have the expression for expansion.

-20min-30min: (Cont.) You are depriving every individual of expansion; everyone has individual matches. In 1904, there were twins in my class, the mother sent them to different schools because she did not want them to be more identical than they already were; One was healthier than the other. Sex disqualification and sex discrimination, that the individual cant go to the capacity of expansion and of talent so the society loses. The great scientist came over with the late widow of Mrs. Harvey of the Food Bank in the late 20’s. April of 1963, I knew Mrs. Harvey when I was teaching at Central High School and she was working in the Library of Congress before she married Dr. Harvey where I knew him from the French Club. In Winter of 1907-1908, in Rome, I was with my mother and sister. My sister was teaching in a Methodist school opposite of Capuccini Church and emancipated in her head; she was much beloved by all the children and a loving person who graduated in 1895. She entered me in as an auditor in the First National Congress of Italian Women held Rome and then in the unfinished palace of justice. It was a great landmark in my life, I never heard of a lot of things that were discussed, but was with educated people and I was being educated. They had the guest of honor to celebrate in all fields where women had entered at that time, all kinds of reforms; French women, English women, and British women came down. Also, Montessori came down and who evolved the Montessori system which was then practiced in a palace in Rome. Then I became completely sold on the contribution of Montessori; I never even went to kindergarten. I then became educated in the method. In all these fields, you have to add; I was born in a family where work was already on the way all over Europe, for the emancipation of women. Illiterate men voted in Europe than women and radical young men, whom I became well-acquainted with, where I was the auditor for the great criminologist of Enrico Ferri. This young man was against women suffrage, as women were very much backward. He thought he was a radical young man from Italian, and I never saw him since. One thing that was fixed was a sign in Latin was the status of women. I heard discussions of women were able to vote. The status of Inter-American Status of Women, where I collaborated with in the reports. It spoke of women all over Europe and even for women who want to give up a baby without any repercussions and the baby was given to a family to be taken care of. There was a terrific taxing of people and surrounding areas for aristocracy and power and the state church, which was expensive to maintain. The poor were struggling to pay, along with women too. I didn't know much of Italian law at that time.

-30min-40min: I have lived in the nurse’s settlement in New York, where Lillian D. Wald with three other women were founders with her, because of the education in economics and charities and corrections. Professor Hubert Mills was a great professor there where I wrote back to him. The Trustees did not allow any lecturing or discussions or mentions of the suffrage. The history professor and a doctor, she was a strong suffragist but was not able to talk to us about it. These famous people of the movement from 1912 til now, these movements were all represented to the National Congress of Italian Women were all educated to raise the status of women in each of all the countries. It was a great thing and a landmark for all women. For instance, the nurses were telling how the hospitals were organized. So I went through the whole mill of public and private charities in Rome in 1908 and where I studied under a great socialist deputy and finally some legal activity when Mussolini came to power by the appointment of a senator. The continuity, if it was worth doing then stick it through until the end and that’s the trouble we have now. We were able to vote here for 43 years, almost, and most women educated or not were insufficiently educated in regards to the law and constituted law when we were able to vote. In 1922-1923, to oppose the equal rights amendment, they wanted to know what the girls wanted now, due to the lack of understanding of our own government. At Yale, I did not have any of the books regarding the status of women and we hadn't taken any of the prohibitions in either. The definition of citizenship was when the granted of citizenship for the negro was written for them by the adoption of the 13th Amendment to define the status of these creatures as the government did not know what they were in our society. Men stated that Negros and whites will be citizens and all males in states were allowed to vote and may not deny a citizen of any of the amendments. Those states that deny a male citizen the right to vote, shall have his representation in Congress. So then, the court had to do a representation of the 14th amendment for those were males and those who were not, as they did not cover themselves closely by not including women. Women should have equal rights; the Blanket Clause.

-40min-50min: Many didn't know what could happen by the Blanket Clause. In the first three years, we tried to appeal, amend and change for equality for about forty bills in different states, I went down to Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi and there were already 12 changes in Louisiana in the first year; 1 person can always turn the tie. The President of Federation of Women’s Club, wife of the attorney general of Louisiana came to this movement and backed it. The National Secretary of the women’s party and I was the National Chairman after the vote in the next election, after Alice Paul. Miss Politan and I went to those three states and I had a position to go through the campaign to end the suffrage. In those states, they became a part of the equal rights amendment towards the end. When I had been teaching in Central High School, the French I studied so hard and practiced, the boys and girls I had taught; we spoke about many things. I asked them one day, what does it say in your history books about women, there was one reference about women suffrage; there was a mention of Martha Washington who owned property, these things were all fragmentary. Everything that I had studied grew into the defects of the law. Women’s definition in law of necessity was in the footnote of the history book. Now, I look at textbooks in the index’ of a professor at Smith College and the women suffrage movement was so strong in 1920. During my hunger strike and in the Washington jail, under the President Woodrow Wilson, towards the end of his time after the peace conference, I was placed in jail in 1919 with the rest of the suffragists; we got it through in the same year. Wilson had three campaigns against him where women had already secured the vote, which ended the suffrage campaign as it became a practical tool and a weapon; Alice Paul was able to lead a small group of Congressional Union who were responsible for the fate of the Susan B. Anthony Suffrage Amendment which is now valid since August 26, 1920, and Connecticut was the last state to ratify that before we voted. This was done by the dominant Republican machine, Mr. J. Henry Roraback where women had to do all the war work they possibly could and they would receive the backing of the women’s amendment. Some of the Republicans did not back it up and owe it to us as women are outnumbering men in all states as there are more women than men.

-50min-61:48min: Women have inherited biological strength which we are not responsible for, but without us, there would be no race at all. You had to be strong and the man was not needed at all times at all places and he could be a lazy hunger and broker and lazy lawyer or minister; the whole organization is being done by women at Yale. At last, women are now allowed to go to the Yale law school. At the time of superficial depression in Washington, I took the examination to teach French in Central High School, the result to get the appointment came in a curious way and the consequences in 1911, the daughter of another congressman, I became acquainted with her as she was already teaching there; she asked why I didn't come teach French earlier, as she was resigning. She was President of the College Equal Suffrage League of the District of Columbia and I had no part in it but knew it existed. When she resigned, she suggested that I was to be a part club and she paid $.50 for my expenses to be president and my sister was already in it; I did not want any part in it but tried to enjoy it. Joy Webster, the treasurer, graduate of the University of Nebraska; I hatched the idea I did not see anything of women’s suffrage in connection inaugural of profession. The First National Procession in New York, where I marched where there were older women with full of intelligence and devotion, but was not able to be in the parade at their age. In the Spring, to invite the National Suffrage Organization to have a suffrage parade at the time of any man being elected is to be inaugurated. A young woman named Alice Paul, who had been studying in London and Bermingham and received her degree at the University of Pennsylvania; was going to that with a vast of June graduates when I entered in 1902. Where they offered their services to the congressional work of National America and the National Suffrage Amendment, instead of working state by state. Alice arrived in Washington, in Autumn, December falling, where she had been appointed to work for the organization. She asked me if there was anybody who gives a contribution to the parade? Only myself and another lady in a studio; I called her and said they were organizing money for the parade and I got it right away. That was the sudden switch to the suffrage, this younger woman, younger than I, had the determination to her life’s work. My life has not been my own since then; the last October til now, I would like to tie this right now, this young woman, we were both young and presentable, educated and privileged, she had made it so reasonable, that even doctors, nurses, and lawyers were able to picket the law and were arrested and sent to jail. Never backing, always inching forward for seven years from March 3rd to Fort Myers; these women had died and lost money through depression and war since 1913.