KEYNOTE ADDRESS, 68TH ANNUAL U TA H S TAT E H I S TO R I C A L S O C I E T Y C O N F E R E N C E
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When Women Won the Right to Vote: A History Unfinished
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Thanks to everyone for joining in this new virtual world we’re all growing quickly accustomed to. And thank you to the Utah State Historical Society for this invitation, and for their wonderful programming around this anniversary. I’ve been learning a great deal. We’ve gathered here, from far and wide, to talk about the Nineteenth Amendment, the amendment that supposedly gave women the right to vote in the United States. Ratified and added to our Constitution on August 26th, 1920, it still serves, one hundred years later, as the conventional date for marking that victory. The main thru lines of this story in popular lore are pretty-well rehearsed, and have not changed much since ratification. This newspaper headline from August 18, 1920, when the last of the states needed for ratification approved the amendment, for example, sings: “Tennessee House Ratifies Giving Women of the Entire Nation Vote This Fall.”1 Likewise, today, google searching “what is the 19th Amendment” yields similar results. Here’s one from a governmental website, ourdocuments.gov: It “granted women the right to vote”; and “legally guarantees American women the right to vote.”2 Also, this widely circulating digital map, created for the centennial, tracks when women around the world won voting rights. The year 1920 is emblazoned across the United States. You’ll see we are not the first to enfranchise women— but somewhere near the beginning of this global turn.3 In other words, U.S. democracy rates fairly well. And many of the stories you’ll hear this centennial season will champion the triumph of this moment, as one step in the steady, progressive, full opening of American democracy. If you take another look at this global map, however, and zero in on the United States, you’ll see there is a tiny asterisk after 1920. Today, I want to spend my time unpacking that asterisk, because it contains multitudes. According to the note on the map, the asterisk means not “all women” voted after 1920. This intervention you may have heard. Despite contemporary headlines heralding “women of the entire nation” and present-day google results championing “guarantees,” millions of women, in
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