S02 E06 Illinois: Creative Strategies and Coalitions Lead to Ratification

In this episode on Illinois, Lori Osborne, Director of the Evanston Women’s History Project, discusses the struggle for the women’s vote at sites on the National Votes for Women Trail.

We talk about stories of people and events of the IL campaign:

• Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club with Belle Squire in 1913, which was the first organization to promote suffrage for Black women in Chicago.
• Jane Addams advocated for women’s suffrage in order to enact laws that pertained to improved labor conditions, and legal equity for African Americans and immigrants.
• Catharine Waugh McCulloch was a lawyer who introduced a legislative bill in 1893 to give Illinois women the vote. She fought for its passage for 20 years and finally saw it succeed in 1913.
• Grace Wilbur Trout organized the first suffrage auto tour in 1910 using a neighbor's car. She traveled with three others to 16 towns in five days giving speeches for woman's suffrage.
• Elizabeth Boynton Harbert was a leader in the women's suffrage movement as an author, lecturer, and editor.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Lori Osborne is the Director of the Evanston Women’s History Project in Evanston and specializes in women's history research and historic sites. Lori is the State Coordinator for the NVWT and a past NCWHS board member.

Links to People, Places, Publications

• Illinois and the 19th Amendment (here)
• Suffrage 2020 Illinois website (here)
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Ida B. Wells-Barnett marker in Chicago (here)
• Visit the Ida B. Wells National Monument in Chicago (here)
• Jane Addams Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Jane Addams Hull House Museum in Chicago (here)
• Frances Willard Biographical Sketch (here)
• Catherine Waugh McCulloch Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Catherine Waugh McCulloch marker and park in Evanston (here)
• Grace Wilbur Trout Biographical Sketch (here)
• Visit the Grace Wilbur Trout marker in Oak Park (here)

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

Do you have a question, comment, or suggestion? Get in touch! Send an e-mail to NVWTpodcast@ncwhs.org

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Lori Osborne, CM Marihugh, Earth Mama

CM Marihugh  00:00

Welcome to Her March to Democracy where we're telling stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. The trail chronicles the fight for voting rights for women. The Suffragists or Suffs, as they were called, were the revolutionaries of their day and they battled the powers that be. These foot soldiers cut across the lines of geography, race, ethnicity, class, and gender, and numbered in the many 1000s over 70 plus years.

Earth Mama  00:36

We are standing on the shoulders 
Of the ones who came before us, 
They are safe, and they are humans. 
They are angels, they are friends. 

We can see beyond the struggles 
And the troubles and the challenge 
When we know that by our efforts 
Things will be better in the end.

CM Marihugh  01:09

Each episode is a tour on the trail to the places of struggle. The cities, the towns, where wins and defeats happened over and over again. Our theme music is Standing On The Shoulders by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama. Join us on our travels to hear the stories along The National Votes For Women Trail. 

Today, we're in Illinois, where we'll be talking about the stories and sites to visit along The National Votes For Women Trail. And I'm welcoming Lori Osborne. She is the director of the Evanston Women's History Project and has also directed the Frances Willard House Museum for the past six years. Both of those are in Evanston. Lori is the Illinois State Coordinator for The Votes for Women Trail. And she's also a past board member of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites. 

In looking at The National Votes For Women Trail map, I see that Illinois has 82 sites that are linked to suffragists and suffrage events. And that number can grow just as all the sites on the map as more researchers find new information about the suffrage movement. I also found that there are at least 10 historical markers. And we're going to be visiting several of those in our tour today. So Lori, could you begin by giving us an overview of the role of Illinois in the fight for voting rights for women?

Lori Osborne  02:52

Sure, and thanks so much for having me, I'm really excited to share the Illinois story, because it's a really interesting story. And like a lot of this history it's mostly unknown. And we did a lot of this discovery when we were in the middle of planning for The Votes for Women Trail and other second marriage, anniversary things. So a lot of this discovery happened in those years. 

So when Illinois became a state in 1818, it did not include women's suffrage in its constitution, limiting the vote to white male inhabitants above the age of 21 years. Like all of the other 20 states in the union at the time, there was some suffrage activity in Illinois in the 1850s with some early meetings. But the movement really began in the 1860s after the Civil War, with the first statewide organization forming in 1869, the Illinois Women's Suffrage Association, and this story is going to sound familiar to a lot of the suffrage histories of all the states. But what makes Illinois really different is two things in my opinion. 

First, the state constitution was really difficult to change. And so any progress on women's suffrage in the state would have to be done outside of changing the constitution. And this led to lots of creative ideas on behalf of the suffrage strategists because they decided they couldn't change the constitution so what are they going to do instead? And so they started looking at something called incremental or partial suffrage, where women would gain the ballot in a few areas not limited by the Constitution not specified in the Constitution. 

And so women would gain power incrementally, and that's really an important idea and strategy comes from Illinois. The second thing that makes Illinois different is an idea developed by several suffrage activists in the state, that women in their role as caregivers, or their families, would and should also be voters. And this argument runs side by side with the idea that women deserve the right to vote simply for reasons of fairness and justice, which was very common, and really the founding idea around the suffrage movement. 

But Illinois women become architects of this idea that women as protectors of the home should be given the power to vote, so they can truly fulfill their traditional role as wives and mothers and daughters. And this is the pro suffrage argument that persuades lots of women to join the movement. And it's also the argument that the women's temperance movement, really importantly, develops, supports and focuses on and that movement is based in Illinois, as well. So those two things, I think, are kind of that things that mark Illinois, and really anchor the suffrage story here in the state.

CM Marihugh  06:16

So an observation when you're talking about the Illinois suffragists being an architect for this message, you know, that women were protectors of the home and should be given the vote to fulfill that. They were really it seems like taking on or perhaps building on this concept of separate spheres for women and men, which was to put it simply, you know, women minded the home and men operated in the world of jobs and politics. So that was used by anti suffragists to fight against giving women the vote, but it seems very canny that the suffragists didn't directly fight it, they took it and expanded it, and said women would better be able to fill that sphere, correct? 

Lori Osborne  07:10

Definitely. That is correct. And it is a strategy, as well as a true belief. And like lots of good strategies. They're both things at the same time.

CM Marihugh  07:21

So where are we going to start on our tour?

Lori Osborne  07:28

Well we're gonna start with the temperance movement, going into the next phase of this story, and we're going to start in Evanston. There are three buildings that I wanted to- three sites and markers that I want to tell you about in Evanston, Illinois; The Frances Willard House at 1730 Chicago Avenue in Evanston, The Woman's Christian Temperance Union Administration Building, which is directly behind the Willard house at 1730 Chicago Avenue. And then the Woman's Club of Evanston, which is just south of the Willard house at 1702 Chicago Avenue, all of them really important in this story. 

So let's start with Frances Willard. Frances Willard was born in 1839 in upstate New York, and came to Evanston to go to a small women's college that was here in town. When she graduated, she began her working life as a school teacher, like so many women did at that time. Frances Willard became involved in the temperance movement when it became a woman's movement. 

In 1874, The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was founded, and Frances Willard left her teaching career and became a social reformer and a temperance reformer. And in 1879, that same year, that she became president of the WCTU, she presented a petition with 180,000 signatures to the Illinois legislature supporting partial suffrage for women, Willard defined a limited set of issues for which women would be eligible to vote on and she called it a, "home protection ballot." 

And it was Willard who sort of came up with this whole idea that women should certainly be able to vote on things that impact the home, things like your local school board, and who was going to be educating your children, things like whether or not there was a saloon in your town. And whether or not your family would be subject to the risks that having a saloon down the street from your house, might bring. And so it was Willard who took this idea that women should vote as part of their traditional role as mothers wives and daughters, and really drafted this whole idea around home protection. 

Another Evanston woman who was very influential on Willards and or developing ideas was named Elizabeth Boynton Harbert. And the reason I mention her is that she, some years later, formed The Woman's Club of Evanston. So this wonderful little group of homes and buildings on Chicago Avenue in Evanston, kind of represent this whole story around what does it look like when you are trying to get women further rights and also maintain their traditional place at the same time? And how do you persuade women to join the suffrage cause when they're not persuaded that they deserve the right to vote, but they might be persuaded that they need the vote to protect their families. 

And it's Willard and Harbert, who are really developing this idea that's extremely successful. It's probably the most successful suffrage strategy in the 19th century in getting women to join a cause. And the woman's Christian Temperance Union becomes the largest organization in the world by 1890 under Willards leadership. And its support of women's suffrage makes it really the leading suffrage organization of its time. This changes, the Woman's Club movement, and other things start to grow at the end of the 19th and definitely into the 20th century.

So the story on this little block in Evanston is really a good example of how the suffrage movement changed. It was a 70 year movement. And so the arguments, the strategies, the ways that got done, don't say the same over that whole time. So that's really the story in Evanston. And by the time we get to the 1890s, in Illinois, The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association is formed. Illinois, women are voting for school board, they achieve partial suffrage in 1891. 

And it shows women that the state legislature, can give women rights without changing that constitution, that's so hard. So that successful movement towards partial suffrage for school boards and things like that, that shows them or their strategy is a good one. And they realize maybe they can do more with that strategy. 

And then the other thing that happens in the 1890s, is that the Chicago Women's Club once again, women's clubs, none of the women's clubs ever supported suffrage directly. They worked on suffrage separately. And so the Chicago Women's Club, very powerful group of women, formed The Chicago Political Equality League, which becomes so important in this story of the state Suffrage Movement. And that's where a lot of work happens in the city of Chicago, which we'll come to in a little bit.

CM Marihugh  13:01

 I have to comment on 180,000 signatures. Something that becomes so clear in hearing all these stories is this was real physical labor. People were going house to house people were out on the street asking for petitions. We forget that with our online, sign the petition, which makes it so much easier, but it really took so much work. So 180,000 people, I wonder what percentage of those were men because certainly some men were involved. Certainly some men were supportive. 

The other thing that I wanted to mention was I looked up, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, and she seems to have been a real Renaissance woman. She wrote, essays, articles, books, songs, poetry, and she was a mother of three, I found out that she wrote a book called Out Of Her Sphere, which relates to what we were just talking about. It's a novel about a young woman who's torn between having a career and family obligations. So I'm surmising that that book had autobiographical elements to it. 

Lori Osborne  14:21

Yeah, I think you're probably right. Oh Harbert is a wonderful, wonderful figure. Yeah, I really so appreciate her story. And she formed The Indiana Women's Suffrage Association, The Iowa Women's Suffrage Association, and then came to Illinois and found that the one in Illinois, so this was near and dear to her heart. She's the generation older than Willard. She's generation of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and Willards the next generation and then there's the next group who we'll talk about next, who're just a little bit younger than Willard.

CM Marihugh  15:01

So where are we going to next? 

Lori Osborne  15:03

Well, we're going to stay in Evanston for a little bit, but we're going to go north in town and go to the historical marker that's at Catharine Waugh McCulloch Park on Livingston Street. And Catherine Waugh McCulloch like Harbert and Willard is no one to ignore in this story, a remarkable person. She was born in 1862, also in New York, and she moves to Illinois in 1867, when she's quite young, and her family settles in Rockford, which is in west of Chicago. She attended Rockford Female Seminary, and then Union College of Law, and graduates with her law degree in 1886. And she has quite a talented legal mind. And that's a really important part of this story. 

She comes to Evanston in 1893 with her husband, and they start their own law firm. And McCulloch, and amongst all of her other accomplishments, she serves as legal counsel for The Woman's Christian Temperance Union and for the National American Woman Suffrage Association. So she is very involved in the legal understanding, you need to gain suffrage and through the legislature and through the Constitution and through changing laws and all of that. In 1890, McCulloch is elected the Illinois Women's Suffrage Association Superintendent of Legislative Work, and in 1893, she's elected president. 

So she's the one who drafts the first legislation around getting women the right to vote in Illinois. She drafts that legislation in 1893. And it takes 20 years, with her taking it to the legislature every two years when they meet and insisting that they pass this new legislation. Once again, she's created this idea of partial suffrage. She knows what the Illinois constitution limits and what it doesn't. And she says the legislature can give women the right to vote on everything that the Constitution doesn't limit. And it's McCulloch who comes up with this idea.

And this finally passes in 1913. But it takes that long for it to work. She is- McCulloch's story is so interesting, because she's working on lots of these legal issues for women, not just suffrage, she's working on their legal status, and ensuring they're treated fairly under the law, in wage discrimination issues, custody battles, property rights, all of that. And it's really remarkable how important it is that women's education leads them to this understanding, and then they use it to figure out these new strategies and ways to get the vote. 

So in this time period, the 1890s is where we are right now. Lots of things happen nationally for women's suffrage, states in the West, as they're drafting their constitutions start giving women the right to vote. So in Colorado, and Wyoming, in Utah, and Idaho, and then lots of Western states like Washington, California, Oregon, Kansas and Arizona, you're getting the right to vote into the 1910s. So things are starting to change, and the movement is starting to change. And Illinois women are well aware of that and watching it. So it's interesting to watch the Illinois woman movement change too. 

CM Marihugh  18:52

Throughout hearing these stories. I'm always moved to hear about the men who were allies in this movement. And, you know, we tend to always focus on the male voters and legislators that were against suffrage, because they were, of course a huge group. But there was also a large group of men that were allies. The fact that Frank McCulloch set up a law practice with his wife in 1890, demonstrates he was a supporter of women's rights, and I'm sure suffrage, he was decades ahead of its time. I find it inspiring to hear stories like that as well.

Lori Osborne  19:34

Yes. And McCulloch, she couldn't get a legal job. So this was their strategy, their family strategy, and they had four children and she ran the legal practice from their home. It's- great, great story.

CM Marihugh  19:49

So where are we going to next?

Lori Osborne  19:52

So next we're going to go to Oak Park, another suburb of Chicago. And we're going to visit with Grace Wilbur Trout. The Votes For Women Trail marker for Grace Wilbur Trout is at the site of her former home which is at 414 Forest Avenue in Oak Park. Grace Wilbur Trout like McCulloch is that next generation. So these are women who are getting educated going to college. And their opportunities are changing. She is born in Iowa and comes to Chicago with her husband, who's a wealthy hardware merchant. 

And they come to settle in Chicago area in 1893. And trout be- given her status is very active in the Chicago's Women's Club. And she gets very active in the Chicago Political Equality League, which is formed by that club to work on suffrage. And members of the club who were pro suffrage could do their suffrage work there, and not in the club itself. Very interesting. And that was typical of the woman's clubs at this time. So Trout, she becomes president of the Chicago Political Equality League in 1910. And she becomes president of the state organization in 1912. 

And it's Trout who brings a whole new view on how we're gonna get suffrage passed in the state. She has lots of ideas about publicity, how to build support for the movement. She's big into public demonstrations, like parades, and auto tours, she's got a lot of ideas about how to persuade more and more people to join the cause. She's also got lots of ideas about a non partisan approach to getting the legislature, most importantly, to join her. And so she starts a lobbying campaign that will exploit her political connections, but not alienate any lawmakers. She's very savvy about how she's going to keep everyone on her side. 

And so they open Under her leadership, The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association opens a office in Springfield to manage their work. They organize every senatorial district in the state with someone who's from that district, to lobby the Senator. They start doing auto tours all over the state, and they don't just hit the pro suffrage places, they go everywhere, they start holding big parades, and really doing that kind of hard lobbying work on the ground. 

And by 1913, he's got enough of a support that she persuades the legislature and The Illinois Equal Suffrage Association successfully gets a bill passed. The bill is The Presidential Suffrage Bill or Illinois Law as it was called, and women achieved the vote in lots of municipal and township offices, so local offices, but more importantly, they're voting for presidential electors. 

And because so many women live in Illinois, and so many women have lots of different races and classes live in Illinois. This changes the national landscape because Illinois women are voting for president. So Illinois isn't the first state to grant women the right to vote for president, but it's the most powerful state at the time. 

So in 1913, this changes the story, it's the first state east of the Mississippi, and in 1914, and the municipal election in Chicago, 250,000 women voted, and this push to register and educate women really changes local, state, and then national politics. So Grace Wibur Trout, such an important figure, she goes on to do national suffrage work too. And we'll talk a little bit more about Trout in a minute with another figure in the story.

CM Marihugh  24:19

Amazing. I find it interesting that she had to work tirelessly to get the bill passed. And then she had to work with others of course, to protect it from opponents. What for two more years. Something else that I thought of was this was always work for no pay. Middle, and upper class women in the movement were able to dedicate this kind of time because they were typically financially supported. But it was still a lot of work for no pay. So where are we going to next?

Lori Osborne  24:59

So now we're finally coming to Chicago and get to hang out here for a little bit. And I'll start with the story of Jane Addams and the museum that documents her life's work at Hull House. It is located at 800 South Halsted in Chicago. The museum you can visit today. Addams has an interesting story, also the same generation as Trout and McCulloch and Ida B. Wells, who we'll talk about in a minute. These young women born in the 1860s were really coming of age and then hitting their stride at the turn of the century. 

So Addams is born in Rockford, Illinois, and also attends Rockford Female Seminary like McCulloch. But she's most well known as the co founder of the first settlement house in the United States Hull House. She was a reformer from Hull House, she worked on a wide range of social issues, child labor reform, and immigrant rights and got involved in lots of different things, including political things. But she wasn't in her early life, very focused on women's suffrage and the right to vote. It wasn't something that- the political realm wasn't something that was high on her list. 

But as Chicago starts to develop a new municipal charter, in the early 1910s, there's an idea that they're going to add women's suffrage to the charter and women would be able to vote just in Chicago. So once again, this idea of partial suffrage, we're going to explore that idea. What does it look like? And Addams becomes interested in the suffrage movement and really gets involved with that municipal charter reform movement that develops. 

She is very instrumental in building the coalition of women's groups that support that charter reform. And that includes labor, activists, working women, women across race and class and immigrant group lines, lots of women join that movement, and Addams is very involved. And that takes her into the state and then national suffrage movement. So a very important figure, but for a short amount of time, just in the years leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. 

Lori Osborne  25:06

Jane Addams was a powerhouse I think that is my main comment. That word says it all. Of course, all these women were powerhouses in their way. But that is the word that came to mind when you were talking about her. Where are we going to next?

Lori Osborne  27:45

So now we're going to come to the story of Ida B. Wells and her involvement in the suffrage movement, and The Alpha Suffrage Club which she formed. There's a Votes For Women Trail marker for the Alpha Suffrage Club at State Street and 31st Street. There's also a wonderful monument to Wells called The Light of Truth, at 3729 South Langley Avenue and all of those are in Chicago. 

So Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Mississippi. Spent most of her life before coming to Chicago in Memphis, Tennessee. She started working as a school teacher, but then became a pioneering journalist, and she wrote about race issues for local and national newspapers, eventually becoming the co owner of Free Speech and Headlight, a Memphis newspaper in 1889. And from that vantage point, she begins investigating the lynching problem in the United States, which is growing dramatically in the 1890s. 

And after three close friends of hers are unjustly arrested and lynched in 1892, she uses her journalism connections to shed light on the problem and call national leaders to account. Because of this activism, work and journalism work. A white mob destroys the offices of her newspaper and drives her from Memphis. She eventually lands in Chicago and makes Chicago home for the rest of her life. From Chicago, she publishes the powerful pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and really lays out this story in such glaring and horrific detail, hoping to change hearts and minds to support her anti lynching cause. She is an early civil rights leader in Chicago. She's one of the founders of the NAACP talk about a powerhouse, you really can't stop Wells once she gets started. 

So this suffrage story in Wells' life, she had so many things that she worked on, but it's a really interesting and important story, and critical for the national suffrage story as well, but based in Illinois. She focuses on globe growing black women's involvement in the suffrage movement, especially around the new state law in 1913. This is when the suffrage movement really crystallizes for her. And as the state is gaining power, as that state separate organization starts to gain power, Ward's passing that law, Wells warns the Alpha Suffrage Club with a white colleague named Belle Squire, and they extend the work among black women, get black women involved, get them registered to vote, create a coalition building organization. And this includes many white women too. 

So they're working across lines that would normally divide. And that's really, really important. And it's happening in Illinois, and it's not happening too many other places in this time. So this is one of the most important black suffragette organizations in Chicago and the United States. And it really is in instrumental in getting black politicians elected to state and city offices too. So this is a broad and extensive movement. So as they're organizing the Alfa Suffrage Club, The National American Woman Suffrage Association is organizing a suffrage parade in Washington, DC and March of 1913. And Wells goes to this parade as a representative from Illinois and from the Alpha Suffrage Club. There's a whole delegation traveling to Washington DC to participate in the parade. 

On the day of the parade, Grace Wilbur Trout, who we've just talked about, who heads the Illinois delegation was told that NAWSA wanted to keep the delegation entirely white. And all African American delegates like Wells are to walk at the end of the parade in a separate "colored delegation." And so there's some discussion, the Illinois delegation discusses this. And there's some debate about it, they're told that southern states do not want to march in an integrated parade and the southern delegations won't march if there are black women marching with the northern delegation. This proves I think, to be false, but that's what they're told. 

And so they have a debate, and they ask Wells to march at the back of the parade and follow what NAWSA has asked them to do. And Wells says to them, "I will march with you or not at all." What happens on the day of the parade is that Wells defies the request and marches with her supporters in the middle of the Illinois delegation, just as she always had planned, and the marches integrated, I guess, in some fashion, regardless of what have been asked, but this tells you the complicated story of women's suffrage and the complicated nature of what's happening in Illin-, in Illinois. 

Because they have traveled together to Washington, DC. And when they get there, they're asked to separate and they don't know what to do with this. And they respond in a way that's unacceptable. There's no question about that. But in Illinois, now mean, this is a example, is a true of a conflict across race and class lines that takes place throughout the suffrage movement. There's a tradition of working across these lines that divide it, but there's also a lot of baggage that goes with that. So there's waffling that happens, definitely and the Illinois delegation really struggles with what to do. So Wells, once again a powerhouse and not going to give in to any kind of disrespect or lack of inclusion. And rightfully so.

CM Marihugh  34:30

Yes, Ida B. Wells Barnett. She was a super powerhouse. I'm not trying to rank them, but definitely she, she has the super powerhouse. It's very interesting to hear you talk about the racism, the classism in the movement. There are some ugly incidents that happened, but they need to be told, and we can get disappointed. But we also can feel inspired by the times that there were coalition's. I think, we've learned that every social change movement has its weaknesses, and the suffrage movement had its own weaknesses. Can we finish up with you telling us about what happened in Illinois during the ratification of the 19th amendment, and then after 1920?

Lori Osborne  35:25

Sure, so we're going to hang out a little bit longer in Chicago to finish up the story. And this time, we're going to be on Michigan Avenue, which is right in the heart of downtown Chicago, and at the Congress Hotel, which is at 520, South Michigan Avenue, and some important things happen there. So with the passage of that 1913 Law, Illinois was the site of much suffrage activity after that. Illinois women had the power to influence national elections, because they were now voting for president. And there were so many of them, that suffrage activists, political parties, and lots of different opinions and points of view came to Illinois to gain their support, who oppose their involvement, and all sorts of things. 

So the first big thing that happened in 1914, there was a suffrage parade with 15,000 marchers that went down Michigan Avenue in 1916. When a national election is gearing up, the Republican National Convention was held in Chicago and then the pouring rain 5000 women marched on Michigan Avenue, demanding that a suffrage plank be added to the party's platform. They were not successful, but they were trying. And then in June of 1919, when the 19th Amendment is finally passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification, Illinois is the first state to ratify the 19th amendment. And they wait patiently until February of 1920, when the National American Women's Suffrage Association holds its final meeting in the Congress hotel in Chicago, and transforms itself into the League of Women Voters, they wait a little bit longer, and by August of 1920, the 19th Amendment is fully ratified. 

So this series of events that take place, I don't think it's an accident, that it's so quickly after that 1913 moment, after 70 years of fighting it's only six years, until after Illinois women are voting that the 19th Amendment is passed and all American women are now able to vote. Nobody wants just Illinois women voting for president. So New York quickly moves forward and other East Coast states after 1913. And I think that's just really interesting that all of these things, The National Woman's party is formed in Illinois, like all sorts of things happen in a short amount of time, in the years after 1913. 

I want to conclude with the final Suffrage Monument you can visit just around the corner from Michigan Avenue and the Congress Hotel. Just this year, we've finally finished a Suffrage Mural Project, which is one of the largest public art projects honoring the women's suffrage movement in the United States. And they are three sister murals that are on the walls at 33 Ida B. Wells drive and 623 South Wabash in the loop in Chicago. 

The first mural features ten of the suffragists of the many suffrages, including Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, Frances Willard, Grace Wilbur Trout, who we've talked about today, and it's called On The Wings of Change. Wonderful mural. And then there are two more murals that on Wabash, the first one called Speak Up, that quotes Kamala, our Vice President Kamala Harris, with her words from the vice presidential debate, "I'm Speaking" and another small mural that's Votes For Women Mural. So all three of those murals you can see not far from Michigan Avenue and the Congress Hotel. ,

CM Marihugh  39:38

Oh that's great to hear about those. Were those done in the last couple of years?

Lori Osborne  39:43

Yes, they were just completed the last one completed last month, a month ago. So, yeah, took a little time, but we finally got them done.

CM Marihugh  39:53

So Illinois was the first state to ratify. 

Lori Osborne  39:56

Yes, it was!

CM Marihugh  39:57

I'm afraid to say I did not know that. 

Lori Osborne  40:00

Yeah a lot of people think it was Wisconsin. Illinois beat Wisconsin by one hour. And there's a little bit of controversy about that. But I'm here to tell you was Illinois was first. 

CM Marihugh  40:14

Well, I really thank you, Lori, for taking the time today to tell us about Illinois and the stories along The National Votes For Women Trail.

Lori Osborne  40:23

Thank you so much.

CM Marihugh  40:25

Thank you for joining us this week. We hope you'll contact us with comments or questions. The National Votes For Women Trail Project is a work in progress. Please click on the support the project link to contribute to our ongoing work. The trail is a project of the National Collaborative for Women's History Sites, a nonprofit organization dedicated to putting women's history on the map. Our theme is "Standing On the Shoulders" by Joyce Johnson Rouse and recorded by Earth Mama, be sure to join us next time.

Earth Mama  41:02

I'm standing on the shoulders 
Of the ones who came before me. 
I am honored by their passion 
For our liberty. 

I will stand a little taller. 
I will work a little longer. 
And my shoulders will be there to hold 
The ones who follow me. 

My shoulders will be there to hold 
The ones who follow me!