Elisabeth Griffith: Author of "Formidable"

The historian’s latest book chronicles American women and the fight for equality, 1920-2020. In it, Griffith looks at the 100 years that have passed since adoption of the 19th Amendment and the differing crusades and struggles of white women and Black women. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Well. One way to simplify it is to say that
white women wanted the same rights as white men. They
wanted political access, education, employment. Black women had a much
deeper and larger and broader agenda, So they were fighting
for even more than just the rights that white women enjoyed.
They wanted to protect their entire communities and in much

(00:27):
more dangerous circumstances. That was historian Elizabeth Griffith talking about
her new book Formidable, American Women and the Fight Free
Quality from nineteen twenty to twenty twenty. It looks at
American women struggle for their rights from a perspective we

(00:47):
usually don't see. I'm a land Ververe and this is
senecas one women to hear. We are bringing you one
hundred of the world's most inspiring and history making women
you need to hear. Elizabeth Griffith is an expert on
women's history. Her biography of suffragists Elizabeth Katie Stanton in

(01:10):
her own right, was the basis of Ken Burns documentary
on Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Not for Ourselves Alone.
The New York Times called Formidable, engaging and relevant, noting
that it delivers a multi racial inclusive timeline of the
struggles and triumphs of both black and white women. Listen

(01:34):
and learn why Elizabeth Griffith and the women who fought
for equality are among Seneca's one Women to Hear. I'm
speaking today with historian, author, and educator Elizabeth Griffith. Betsy, Welcome.
We're so delighted to have you with us. Thank you.
I'm delighted to be here now. You and I have

(01:57):
had the pleasure of knowing each other for many years,
and I must say I always greatly value your expertise
on the struggle for women's equality in the United States,
so I'm doubly delighted to have this conversation. I'm thinking
we met when Um, the First Lady was preparing to
go to Seneca Falls, uh in the middle of the

(02:18):
nineteen nineties to celebrate the anniversary the hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the Seneca Fall Falls Women's Rights Convention. Exactly.
Seneca Falls brings us together always. It's a wonderful, wonderful
part of America's history that continues today. So let's talk
about your new book, Formidable American Women in the Fight

(02:40):
Free Quality nineteen twenty to twenty twenty. It covers a
hundred years now. You know, there was a lot written
about women's suffrage in on the hundredth anniversary of the
nineteenth Amendment. What has been missing from all those previous
suffrage histories that have vot evading you to write this book. Well,

(03:02):
they were histories of the suffrage movement, how we got
the vote, all vital parts of American history. But my
question was what did we do after we got it?
The question I wanted to answer was how did women
use the vote if they were able to? What were
their causes, what were their issues and what kept them
from advancing? And what conclusions did you come to? Just

(03:27):
very briefly before we go into lots of different questions,
American women, change agents, reformers, these progressive, brave women were
divided throughout our history by race and segregation. Women who
ought to have been allies, educated, change agent, brave women
could not work together because of the times and the

(03:51):
issues dividing them. Specifically, White and black women had different
agenda items, different priorities, different realities, and different strategies. And
so can we talk about some of those divisions or
differences in the struggles that Black women and white women
undertook during this hundred year period. Well, one way to

(04:12):
simplify it is to say that white women wanted the
same rights as white men. They wanted political access, education, employment.
Black women had a much deeper and larger and broader agenda.
It was really community wide, beginning with um ending lynching
and securing the safety of their communities. That was not

(04:32):
only safety against violence, but it was safety against shabby
educational systems. You know, no sewers, no playgrounds, all of
the ways that Jim Crow post Civil War reconstruction had
damaged African Americans. So they were fighting for even more
than just the rights that white women enjoyed. They wanted

(04:53):
to protect their entire communities and in much more dangerous circumstances.
And their client was a much harder climb in many
ways given what they were up against, and in some
ways they were more successful than white women because white
women go into the nineteen twenties thinking, you know, they
won the vote, the world is open, everything will advance

(05:14):
for them, and it and it does for maybe the
first congressional term, and then white men um in charge
of the Congress and the Senate figure out that white
women are not turning out to vote in large numbers.
In nineteen twenty two or twenty four, twenty six of
the advances that were passed relating to maternal and infant health,
related to education and prison reform were reversed, were defunded,

(05:39):
were defeated, so that by nineteen thirty one journalist rights
the nineteenth Amendment promised almost everything and accomplished almost nothing.
And then the combination of the depression UM interesting issues
about observations about women and sexuality sort of depressed women's
organizational efforts in the thirties. There's a revival in the

(06:02):
forties with the Rosie for that the Rosie the riveter,
and the Second World War benefited all women, black, white,
everybody else, UM. But then white women UM again sort
of surrender to stereotypic expectations. But meanwhile, black women, much
less publicly, not covered in the news, not in the headlines,

(06:25):
working out of church basements, or as agricultural agents, or
as public health nurses, or as teachers or just neighbors
and communities are trying very hard to advance civil rights UM.
One registration by another, one literate person after another UM,
and they are at risk of great reprimand if their
activities are discovered, but their support. They're joining the n

(06:48):
Double A c P. They're joining the League of Women
voters where they weren't in a segregated state, and they're
pushing uh the advances that will culminate in the fifties. UM,
lot of it driven by the Double A CP Legal
Defense Fund, including obviously led by Third Good Marshal, but
supported by Constance Baker Motley. You've got Pauli Murray working

(07:10):
behind the scenes, and you have a lot of women
who've been in church basements now coming forward. There the
women who will lead the Montgomery bus boycott. They're the
women who will um support the integration of Central High
School in Little Rock. There's a lot going on. And
then finally, sort of around nineteen sixty into the nineteen sixties,

(07:30):
white women are paying attention to what's happening to black women,
white reformers, and they begin to think we need to
we need to be supporting them, and we need to
be asking questions about our own status as well. So
the sixties, as you and I will remember, maybe not you,
I remember, um, uh, you know, you've got the civil
rights movement boiling. You've got the women's rights movements simmering,

(07:53):
you have the anti war movement exploding. Um, so you've
got a lot going on that will have impact on
the country history in the seventies and eighties. Such a
wonderful abbreviated perspective on all of this. So we're do
Hispanic and Latina women come into this tell us about
their struggle? Well, it's it's There are lots of other

(08:15):
women who are on whom I did not focus as
fully as I did on white and black women, because
that seems to me be the central struggle in American history.
But in addition to Hispanic and Latino women, there are
Native American women, and Jewish women and Asian women. But
to answer your immediate question, Hispanic women obviously have been
in this country since fifteen twenty three and have pursued

(08:38):
different routes. A lot of them literate, but a lot
of them kept in a more um, I almost want
to say convent like tradition of upbringing. But by the
by the twentieth century, women are pulling ahead. The first
woman in elected office, the first Hispanic women in elected office,
is Soladad Chevez de Chakonne, who became Secretary of State

(08:58):
of New Mexico in nineteen twenty two, and in that
role ended up substituting for the governor for almost a month.
So she's she's not even technically the first woman, a
Hispanic woman to be a governor, because there was a
Hispanic woman in a similar role in Oregon in nineteen
oh six who first served in the role of governor,

(09:19):
and since then there's been two other Hispanic governors, one
a Republican, one a Democrat. Now, of course Michelle Luhan Grisham,
but and and all of these women were in New Mexico,
which is such historically deeply rooted state and experience. But
you've got Native American women pushing for citizenship and voting

(09:40):
rights because they were not covered by the nineteenth Amendment UM,
nor were people with Asian immigrant roots were not UM
did not become technically citizens until nineteen forty three, and
other Asian Americans not until the nineteen fifties. But it's
Patsy Mink who will be the first person of colors
to serve in the Congress as an Asian American Pacific islander.

(10:01):
And I do want to note just the longstanding contributions
of Jewish women, UM from the colonial period. They are
always reformers, they are always progressives. They are always having
to confront discrimination. Those women's organizations like the Women's Christian
Temperance Union or the a u W. We're not only
excluding blacks, they were excluding Jewish women, and one in particular,

(10:24):
Hannah Stone will become the medical director for Margaret Sanger's
birth control clinics, playing a huge role. UM. Jewish women
were well represented in the medical profession in the first
half of this century as they are now, but with
such discrimination that they frequently did not get on hospital
rights and admission into medical professional organizations. Senecas one hundred

(10:51):
women to hear, will be back after the short break
you mentioned the sixties. Tell us about your own involvement
in the women's movement and how, if at all, that

(11:11):
shaped your perspective on Formidable Well. I I graduated from
a women's college, and my classmates and I agree that
we were very lucky to come into adulthood on the
cusp of this rebirth of the women's movement when so
much was going on. So I came to Washington, first
as a congressional intern and then UM as a graduate student.

(11:34):
And was recruited by another well as the classmate to
participate in the National Women's Political Caucus, and I've always enjoyed.
I've always thought of myself as a more political person
than a protest personal though I've certainly marched my fair share,
but I think you have to be the kind of
person who's actually counting the votes, which is why I
admire carried Chapman cat more than Alice Paul during the

(11:57):
suffrage fight. From the caucus, I went of the Women's
Campaign Fund, which was a forerunner of Emily's List, back
when you could fund both Democratic and Republican feminists. But
those our country became so partisan, and the Republican Party
deserted its feminist and civil rights and environmental and all those,
um you know, all the reproductive rights that it used

(12:19):
to support, and the parties divided so dramatically that then
you needed groups that were going to support one side
or the other. But I've done my share of training
women candidates and working for female legislation. But then really
I'm a historian at heart, so I've been teaching and
writing women's history as another way for people to learn
about social change. That it's been a great combination having

(12:43):
had that personal history of deep engagement. Uh, and then
your great expertise as an historian giving us a lens
on all of this a lot if I could just interrupt,
because I know that that that you're so engaged and
focused on the whole Seneca Falls Convention as an organizing
prince siple in ninetee when the National Women's Political Caucus

(13:04):
organized there. There are variations of its creation myth, and
one of them claims that it was founded on Mount
Vernon Campus college here in Washington, in a chapel in
the middle of July, and none of the people who
were there would have made the connection to Seneca Falls
in a chapel in the middle of July, because none

(13:26):
of us knew the women's history which is helping to
fuel us forward today. So fascinating and how important it
is that we know that history. Thank you for mentioning
that your book covers a wide variety of struggles by women,
some of which you've touched on already, from voting rights, healthcare,
equal pay, etcetera. Do you think among these various issues

(13:51):
there is a most pressing issue for women today. Yes,
I'm with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about if women do not
of reproductive rights, they don't have agency over their bodies
and the ability to make decision about whether or when
to have children and whether or when to end a pregnancy,

(14:11):
they will never be equal. So I think, for all
the advances we've made in the last century, since nineteen twenty,
and some of those advances didn't take us as far
as we assume were in a way back to ground zero.
If we cannot regroup and secure these rights for every
American woman in every state, then we are facing a

(14:32):
dire future. Indeed, so you mentioned a number of these
extraordinary women in our history as Americans, or some of
the forgotten or overlooked figures that we might not know
much about, but that you will have featured Informidable Uh,

(14:53):
And obviously you think should be better known because you've
included them in your new book. I already had a
PhD when I started writing this book, and I feel
the research I did should earn me another one, because
like a lot of white Americans, I do not know
enough African American history, and I'm a little bit reassured
when I speak to groups of black women that they

(15:14):
don't they don't necessarily recognize all these names immediately either um,
So I think there are a lot of lessons for
us to learn too. I might name there's a woman
named Julia Cooper who was as active a feminist writer
and philosopher at the end of the nineteenth century as
was Elizabeth Katie stand Um. She wrote a book called

(15:35):
Voice of the South in eighteen ninety two, and she's
really laying out a case for black feminism. I'd never
heard of that book before, and now I note more
and more when I'm traveling that there are schools named
for her, and I never would have thought to ask
who she was. A story I particularly like is about
a woman named Septum mcclark. She would have been an

(15:57):
adult in the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties. She was
trained as a teacher and was working for the Charleston,
South Carolina School System, which was a segregated system, so
even with her advanced degrees, she was teaching in the shabbiest,
least resourced schools um and being paid less. So she
brings a suit in cooperation with the n double a

(16:18):
CP to make sure that black and white teachers are
paid the same, no matter where they are teaching, and
she's fired um and then the state of South Carolina
passes a law saying no teacher, no state employee can
be a member of the Double A CP. So she
leaves South Carolina and loses her pension, loses all of
her sort of accrued reputation and assets. She moved to

(16:39):
Tennessee and participates in the Highlanders School, which will play
a huge role in the civil rights movement that had
begun as a labor organizing center. But in the summer
before the Montgomery bus boycott. Rosa Parks is a student
of Septem mcclark at Vota Citizenship Freedom School. Eventually, the
state of Tennessee will shut it down as a communist front,

(17:00):
and she will join the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with
Dr King and lead citizenship education programs Throughout the sixties.
She is the woman who organizes Freedom Summer in Mississippi.
She's credited with registering seven hundred thousand black voters between
nineteen sixty and nineteen seventy. And here's the best part.

(17:22):
She retires. She returns to Charleston. She runs for the
school board and wins a seat and a Republican governor
make sure that her pension is reinstituted. So some of
these stories do not end in violence and disaster. Some
end in good behavior. Well that's heartening, and how wonderful

(17:42):
to hear about black women's leadership over this period, which
continues to today. So it's great to hear there's so
much about these women in your book. You know, I've
known you as the headmistress of Madeira School, among other things, obviously,
which is a wonderful school for girls in the Washington,
D c. Area, And I wonder what you would want

(18:06):
your former students and actually girls everywhere to take from
your book. Well, I'm confident that Madure girls are getting
a very deep education in American history and world history
as well. But I but I believe all students need
to be grounded in American history and civics lessons, and
I don't think that that's happening equitably across the country.

(18:30):
We cannot shy away from the reality of our history.
We cannot worry about being made uncomfortable. That's how people learn,
and we need to learn the lessons of our past.
So I hope all young people have an opportunity to
learn women's history, black history, immigrant history. All of this
is part of our history. Is not just about old
white men who may have been heroic but not always.

(18:54):
And I particularly think it's important for young people to
find in history role models. These could be again of whatever,
finding their own identity. And these characters in the past,
and there are many, we just need to bring them
to light because I think in those historic actors young
people find examples of courage and fortitude of integrity. I

(19:18):
am just awed by these women. You may have read
in the book that I took myself on a road
trip across the South to visit various civil rights sites
and memorials, and in every place people had died, people
had been tortured, people had been murdered to get civil

(19:39):
rights for themselves and to expand civil rights for all Americans.
Those un named, many of them um forgotten. People need
to be remembered every time. Every time anybody thinks they
might not go out and vote because it's raining, they
need to remember that women were forced fed for this right,
that black people died for this right, that we have

(20:01):
an obligation as citizens to really participate in this democracy.
So that's what I want people to think about well,
and that's such a good reminder of how important it
isn't on whose shoulders we all stand in many many ways,
you know, I think this is a perfect segue to
our a last last question. Because you've seen so much,

(20:25):
You've experienced much, you've studied history. You've just opened our
eyes to so many other chapters in this new book
that we may not have been familiar with. I wonder
in all of that, what gives you optimism? What makes
you hopeful? Because there's so much in our country, in
our world today that makes people feel less hopeful. I

(20:49):
have to say, Allen, after I just saw you recently
in Little Rock, where Secretary Clinton convened a women's summit.
I've been quite inspired because the program included so many
young people, a bunch of impressive people our age and
younger grown ups I would call them. But these young
change agents, these young people who are so comfortable with

(21:11):
inclusion and diversity, who don't see the differences that we
might have grown up having had pointed out to us,
who make very easy coalitions, and who already already proving
how effective they can be about gun control legislation or
about climate change. I of course, hope they turned their
sites under reproductive rights. But I think it's caught everybody

(21:31):
by surprise thinking that the Court would ever overthrow a
fifty year precedent. But um, I'm really much more optimistic
about the future than I might have been had I
not taught young people and worked with them, and then
been exposed to them so effectively at the Clinton Center summit. Well,
that's a wonderful way to conclude that optimistic note. I

(21:54):
can't thank you enough for being with us today for
your inspiration for your new book, Formidable American Women and
the Fight Free Quality nine. The journey continues, and I
know it continues with you as well. Thank you so much,
Elizabeth Griffith for being with us today. Thank you what

(22:22):
a different and important focus on women's history. There are
three things I took from that eye opening conversation. First,
the passage of the nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the
right to vote, was only the beginning, not the end,
of women's fight free equality. In fact, its passage was

(22:43):
followed by setbacks for women's issues like maternal health and education. Second,
black women's struggle for equality was certainly much harder than
that for white women. Yet they remained undeterred. As Elizabeth
Griffith says, black women were organizing, working out of church basements,

(23:06):
and we're a driving force in the civil rights movement. Finally,
it's inspiring to learn about the forgotten women of American history.
Think about women like Julia Cooper, a nineteenth century philosopher
who wrote Voice of the South, a Call for Black Feminism,

(23:27):
or Septi mcclark, a black teacher and education reformer who
also registered seven hundred thousand black voters between nineteen sixty
and nineteen seventy. To learn more, pick up a copy
of Formidable American Women and the Fight Free Equality nine twenty,

(23:52):
and tune in next time to hear about our next
featured woman and discover why she's one of Seneca's one
ed Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear
is a collaboration between the Seneca Women Podcast Network and
I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG. Have
a Great Day,