Hindsight

65,615,653. 

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, more than 65 million American voters made history. Though Hillary Rodham Clinton did not become president of the United States, her nomination to run for president on a major-party ticket and her then-record-setting popular vote count declared to many Americans that Clinton would not be the last woman to run for president. And that final glass ceilings of male privilege in national politics were closer to shattering than ever before. 

As the United States celebrates the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote, KMUW is celebrating too with a behind the scenes peek of the new podcast, Hindsight. Creator Dr. Robin Henry sat down with Sarah Jane Crespo to discuss her method of capturing the history and importance of the women’s rights movement, as well as how it’s still relevant today.

Listen:

Or watch:

Hold a credit card, buy a house, or take out a loan in her own name.

Serve on a jury.

Be pregnant and keep your job.

Attend military academies and Ivy League schools.

Refuse sex from husbands.

Fight on the front lines.

Take legal action against sexual harassment at work.

Access contraceptives of her choice.

Even as American women won the right to vote in 1920, they could do none of these things on their own. 

Phoebe King Ensminger Burn. That name probably doesn’t sound familiar to you. But on Aug. 18, 1920, Miss Febb, as she was known, might have become the most famous mother, at least in suffrage history. 

In 1915, the American humor magazine Puck, known for its political cartoons and satire, published a special edition, guest edited by New York State suffrage groups, in anticipation of the upcoming statewide referendum on women’s suffrage.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then conflict both presents new challenges and opportunities and requires us to consider what our necessities actually are.

In this episode of Hindsight, we will explore the development of the woman’s movement between 1850 and 1875.

In 1920, the United States ratified the 19th Amendment recognizing women's voting rights. Over the next year, we will explore, commemorate, and celebrate the history of women's suffrage in the United States and discover what role voting played in the social, political, legal, and economic changes of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This is Hindsight.

-

For historians, knowing where to start a story, where the real root of a movement begins is difficult to find but is critical to where the narrative goes.

Seneca Falls.

New York.

July 1848.

Wesleyan Chapel.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Lucretia Mott.

"A convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman."