my name is ella wagner
i am a women's history fellow with the
cultural resources
office of interpretation and education
at the washington support
office of the national park service the
19th amendment
is the women's suffrage amendment which
basically removed all
barriers based on sex or what we usually
call gender
in the constitution to voting in the
united states so in effect what that
meant was that
women who had previously been barred
from voting because they were women
that was no longer allowed after the
amendment was ratified in august of
1920.
so the national park service cares about
it because
it's a really significant event in our
country's history
it's marks the triumph of a
movement that have been going on for
more than a hundred years to get those
legal barriers removed
it certainly was not the end of the
story of women voting
there remained barriers to women voting
based on
race based on tribal affiliation based
on national identity
so it was not not the end of that story
but a really important
milestone in this long journey to
hopefully having full inclusion and
participation
by everyone who is in this country into
its its political system
so as an agency with a responsibility to
share our history even in you know in
places where
you might not think that there's
suffrage history it's our responsibility
to
tell the story and to do it in as many
ways in as many parks
as possible
[Music]
my name is jonathan fairchild i'm the
historian here at homestead national
monument of america
we talk about millions and millions of
people
over more than 120 years this tremendous
impact
that the homestead act has had on
american history in ways that
a lot of people may not think of when
they first think about home setting in
the homestead act
the 19th amendment which was ratified in
1920
guaranteed the right for women to vote
that
the right to vote should not be
restricted based upon gender
and so we're talking about that story as
it relates to homesteading and
homesteading women
part of that dream is
the development of the west and the
development of the west is so
entwined with the homestead act that you
actually can't talk about one without
the other
that dream of having your own land was
so crucial to people moving to the west
even if they didn't farm if they were a
shopkeeper
a banker or a lawyer or a teacher or
something else it still
was that dream that there was going to
be people there
farming that land making that land
productive it was going to support the
towns and the communities and the other
activities
that happened and so right from the
start
as the west developed which was of
course
the key battleground for women's rights
the east was hopeless they already had
laws that even predated the revolution
that had been in place
traditions they could see that nothing
there was going to be new
but the west presented opportunities for
things that could never happen
starting with land ownership and of
course land ownership
is so linked with the right to vote that
women were always of course there in
homestead
although we there's that kind of image
of a
young man strikes out to homestead in
point of fact even those young men that
went out and almost did on their own
next thing they're writing to a sister
an aunt
a widowed mom and say can't you come out
here
it's hard to be the one and only person
trying
to create a farm out of undeveloped land
and then to go in at night who's made
supper
who's taken care of that cabin that they
had to build
so right from the start the pattern
is you see a couple now i think that
the excitement of discovering what about
the women
filed in their own needs and what about
those women
who made this work when
even a woman would inherited land
through and
or had landed through some other uh
vehicle
did not necessarily expect to be able to
hold on to that land
or to take care of the land on earth let
alone do what took to homestead
which was really making something out of
nothing
i don't mean to disparage the land
for anything that native people or other
people might have been doing because
they had a different form of land
management
but that creation of farms was just
so much more work than what we think of
that there were women there were always
women there not just the women that were
the helpers along with the men
the women who were stepping up and
saying i can make this work for me
the fact that women were able to claim
land in their own name
was huge between 100 and 200 000 women
started choosing the homestead and one
of the
phrases that many americans remember
from their school days
no taxation without representation
right so these homesteading women as
they're proving up
and receiving land in their own name
of course they have to pay taxes on it
but when it comes time to vote
they have no say in how these taxes are
spent they have no say
in what is being done
in their communities around them and
many women as their home setting
obviously are taking issue with this
right
the link between homesteading
and the suffrage movement is pretty
clear when you look
at when and where suffrage is being
passed
prior to the 19th amendment
when you think about states that were
west of mississippi and
certainly states west of the missouri
that was the west when you're sitting
somewhere in
the east the other thing that people
don't realize is
as i said that they they realized that
they were not going to make progress
in those eastern states the power
structure was just too entrenched
the traditions were too entrenched but
the west was a whole new opportunity and
wyoming
is the example that we point to and we
almost point to it sometimes as
an anomaly look at how desperate those
people were to be a state
they'd count everybody they'd let
anybody vote if women
but we don't realize that wyoming is the
one that did what they were hoping
all those other states wanted kansas
the hope was that one after the other
that they
would allow women to vote and influence
the eastern states in the other
direction
so these women who were advocates
were actually out talking and speaking
in the west much more than we realized
because they saw that as the great home
they
they really thought if this was going to
happen in the united states
it was going to happen because the
western states not because of
that the people in the eastern states
were suddenly going to have
a great revelation and change their
minds about women voting
some of the women homesitters actually
become
some of the most politically powerful
women in the country at that point
you may be familiar with jeanette rankin
who was the daughter of women
homesteaders she was a
born on a homestead out in montana to
canadian immigrants
and she reflected on her time growing up
on the homestead that both men and women
together
had to put in intense difficult
often back-breaking work and as a young
woman jeanette was pitching in with that
hard work
but women politically without the right
to the vote they weren't benefiting in
the same ways that male homesteaders
were
and that was one of the things that
spurred her to go into
politics into fighting for women's
rights
and she actually becomes the first woman
in american history
elected to federal office she is elected
a congressperson for montana and has a
couple of
unique distinctions she was the only
woman in congress at that point so she
was the only woman
when the 19th amendment was ratified the
only woman to
in congress be able to vote for that and
said that that was one of her proudest
achievements
one of the homesteading suffragist
leaders
out in new mexico was adelina
otero warren who was a latina suffragist
and homesteader she was born in new
mexico
in the late 1800s and navigated
this unique world of
latino and latinas of anglos
of native americans and when
the suffrage movement wanted to create
a chapter out in new mexico
so alice paul who led the congressional
union at that time and became the
national women's party
she was looking for a strong leader to
head up
the new mexico chapter and
recruit to the movement latina and
latinas and so
they talked to adelina or nina otero
warren
and she made sure that all materials
that
the congressional union was putting out
were available both
in english and in spanish because i
wanted to be accessible
they'd give speeches in both languages
make sure that they were really reaching
the whole state
and she actually ends up being the first
latina to run for federal office she ran
for congress it's a very close election
but she was defeated
and then she ends up claiming a
homestead out in new mexico
under the stock raising homestead act so
she had a ranch
with her friend and longtime business
partner
mamie meadows they homesteaded right
next to each other each got 640 acres
and
affectionately named their ranch las dos
or the two women
hello my name is ranger lauren and i'm
here at the belmont paul women's
equality national monument
located here in beautiful washington dc
the national women's party
originally known as the congressional
union for women's suffrage
injected renewed vitality into american
suffrage campaign
inspired by their british counterparts
but frustrated by lack of progress
founders alice paul lucy burns and
thousands of other women
engaged in radical and oftentimes
dangerous tactics
to publicly challenge and persuade male
politicians
opposed to women's suffrage focus on
securing a constitutional amendment to
give women the vote
the national women's party demanded
rights of women entitled as
citizens as the first american civil
rights group to successfully use
sustained
non-violent resistance the national news
party designated a campaign
that combined traditional lobbying with
innovative
militant actions and set the stage for
the next phase of women's equality
movement in the united states
the story of immigration and
homesteading very closely tied together
and there's some fantastic stories of
immigrant homesetters
in the suffrage movement and one of
those women
is maggie walls who came to the united
states
from finland as a young woman
with almost nothing just a few dollars
in her pocket
i didn't even speak the language and so
when she arrives
in america she goes to an area that was
very heavily settled by finns and
by swedes up in the upper peninsula of
michigan
an area that's referred to as the copper
country a lot of uh
copper mining uh in that district
she moves to calumet michigan
and she starts working uh odd jobs
starts making a place for herself but
one of the things that she does is
she wants to be able to give back to the
community
if the size of our impact on our
community was reflected by the size
of our grave marker maggie j waltz would
have one of the largest gravestones here
at
calumet's lake youth cemetery hi i'm
ranger lynette weber at q a national
historical park
and we tell the story of copper and
community
in michigan's queue and often influence
the area is very well known for the
impact of finnish immigrants
who came here beginning in the 19th
century
they established a number of community
assets
such as newspapers clubs cooperative
societies
churches and more one of the most
important
founders and members of many of these
groups was maggie j
walt a fellow finnish immigrant
whose outsized personality and voice
legacy captains as was quoted in one
newspaper
might seem outsized for her diminutive
mark
maggie who anglicized her name was
a member of numerous organizations which
met at the finnish people's
enlightenment society hall here in
calumet
she was a founder of suffrage
intemperance organizations which met
here
and was involved at a national and even
international level
one of the things that these groups
promoted was to become a naturalized u.s
citizen
and maggie joined the ranks on april
20th 1900
becoming one of the first women to be
naturalized on her own accord
here in houghton county she was likely
thinking ahead
to her future in homesteading and voting
and one of the things she does she
actually becomes a
land agent on drummond island out in
lake superior
and she creates a homesteader colony
a settlement of largely ethnic
finns to settle and
create their own finnish community it's
the only
finnish language school by the time it
proves up
there are approximately a thousand
people in five different settlements on
the island
and so she really has this amazing story
no suffrage women's rights uplift
economic opportunity i think it's just
fascinating
between 1848 and 1920 you've got that
72 year period i think it's pretty clear
to see
that homesteaders are really leading the
charge
they're leading the way and
i say that the suffrage movement and
the 19th amendment in many ways were
planted in the soil these homesteading
women
they're the ones that are leading the
charge it's these
western and midwestern states where it
happens first
and set the stage for the 19th amendment
for that race to ratification that we're
celebrating right now
