[horse hooves clopping] [bell rings] [horse hooves clopping] [bell chimes] [gentle music] [Narrator] When the Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888, only one woman occupied a place of honor.

She was the Goddess of Liberty, 16 feet tall and towering above the city.

[gentle music] American women fought for decades to win the right to vote.

Suffrage was a relay race with the baton passed from generation to generation.

One woman taught the next how to organize, give speeches, and recruit new members.

[footsteps plodding] There was resistance to woman suffrage everywhere in the United States but nowhere as hostile as in the former Confederacy.

Texas women petition the state legislature from 1868 to 1919 for the right to vote and every time they were denied.

Even with such prolonged opposition, generations of Texas women and men fought for suffrage.

By 1912, Minnie Fisher Cunningham emerged to lead the suffrage movement during one of the most politically corrupt chapters in Texas history.

Her great nemesis was Governor James E. Ferguson.

[Ferguson] The agitation of equal suffrage is sweeping over the country when women across the country should be performing functions for which God Almighty intended her.

Governor James E. Ferguson, 1916 [Colquitt] The question of surrendering our state's rights is the important issue.

When you give the ballot to women, you make it possible for Negro equality, such as you suffered in the carpet bag days after the Civil War.

Governor Oscar Branch Colquitt, 1916.

[Russell] Resolved, by the People of Texas in Convention assembled, that the resolution introduced in this body recommending the incorporation of woman suffrage, be expunged from the journals of this Convention.

Delegate Stillwell Russell, 1875.

[dramatic music] - The suffrage movement represented a promise of true equality.

It was an idealistic approach to democracy holding authorities to account for the promises enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.

The words themselves, although noble in the context of human history, lacked a basis in reality.

Freedom to own property, freedom to do with that property what you want, freedom for white men often meant slavery for people of color.

[Narrator] It took a civil war and over 700,000 American lives to put an end to legal enslavement.

The post-war government attempted to forge a new equality.

The 14th Amendment of 1868 granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including the formerly enslaved.

The 15th Amendment of 1870 extended the vote to Black men.

But women were excluded and Black men were disfranchised by voter suppression and intimidation.

- Remember Texas was a one-party state for the most part.

The masses of white vote Democrat.

Blacks voted Republican party but there were only a few of them.

[Narrator] The Republican Party was still the anti-slavery party of Lincoln.

The Democrats governed to enforce the racial hierarchy of the Old Order.

[Jackie] At the same time, in the South, we see attempts to limit the Black male vote.

By 1877, white Democrats had recaptured all of the Southern states and imposed white supremacy laws in those states.

[Narrator] In several Western states, women had the right to vote.

But suffragists set their sights on a Federal amendment to grant all women the vote.

They had to win allegiance in the South, to gain the requisite number of states to pass a Federal amendment.

With the expansion of the railroad into Texas, suffragists ventured into a new territory.

In 1884, suffragist and Universalist minister, Mariana Folsom, left her native Iowa on a lecture tour of Texas to spread the word about woman suffrage.

- She's traveling up and down railroad lines and going where they will take her.

She would meet someone through a social introduction or she would do personal outreach and give a talk to one individual or a few.

Through that personal connection, you see the movement grow.

In a lot of places, this is the first suffragist that they've heard speak.

She's just as much entertainment for them as she is recruiting individuals to support suffrage.

- To talk of freedom for women without the ballot is mockery.

Gentlemen, what does your vote mean?

What does the right say to every possible man, native and foreign, Black and white, rich and poor, educated and ignorant, drunk and sober?

It says, "Your opinion is worthy to be counted."

What does it say to every possible woman, native and foreign, white and Black, rich and poor, educated and ignorant?

It says, "Your judgment is not sound.

Your opinion is not worthy to be counted."

[Narrator] After hearing Folsom speak in Meridian in May, 1887 a woman reported: [Woman] Not many went.

Most of the men sneered or growled and the women thought "She had better have stayed home and done her housework."

But some of us had longed to hear something on the subject and attended.

Her soul-inspiring words made us feel there was hope of a better day.

Even for us women of Texas.

- Mariana Folsom, she's educating people.

That's her role within the movement is to take who knew about it and what they knew about it and stretch it further.

In a way, she's ministering.

[Narrator] Early suffragists like Folsom spoke about equality and social rights to women whose lives were contained by family and farm.

Some who supported women's rights wouldn't sign public petitions for fear of the consequences.

The Temperance movement, also called Prohibition, was more appealing because they felt its direct impact at home.

- Many women knew kin, sisters, cousins, their mothers, who had been abused by men who drank too much, who drank their wages leaving their women and children with nothing.

If a woman lived in an abusive relationship with her husband, she had very few options.

She did not even have the right to leave with her children.

If women were really to protect themselves, they needed the right to vote.

[Narrator] At the end of the 19th century, Texas was seeing unprecedented growth.

Land was abundant, large-scale cattle ranching flourished, and cotton was King because labor was cheap, including convict labor.

Galveston, a barrier Island between the Gulf of Mexico and the Texas mainland, was an international port where hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Central and South America, Asia, and Europe disembarked.

With prosperity, more women were getting an education, and suffrage was gaining supporters.

[Narrator] In 1898, a young woman arrived in Galveston who would go on to play a leading role in the Texas suffrage movement.

She was there to study pharmacy at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

A daughter of the South, though not the privileged "moonlight and magnolias" variety, Minnie Fisher grew up in New Waverly, Texas on her family's farm.

Her father, Horatio, formerly one of the biggest landowners in Walker County and a slaveholder, lost his wealth in the Civil War.

Minnie's mother, Sally Komar Abercrombie, grew vegetables and sold them to buy her children's shoes and pay for their education.

When Minnie was in her second year of the Pharmacy School, Galveston suffered the worst recorded natural disaster ever to strike North America.

On the morning of Friday, September 8th, 1900, the water of the Gulf of Mexico was rising.

Four hours later, the entire city was underwater.

Six to 8,000 people died and the bodies of many storm victims were burned in funeral pyres on the beaches.

The Women's Health Protective Association, WHPA, worked to re-inter hastily-buried storm victims in a proper cemetery, and later to replant the island with trees and shrubs appropriate to its climate.

Two years after the storm, Minnie Fisher graduated from the Pharmacy School, the only woman in her class.

Her first job was in a drugstore in Huntsville.

She soon discovered that her monthly $75 paycheck was half what a male coworker made without a degree.

Minnie Fisher met and married B.J.

Cunningham, a lawyer from Illinois.

The couple moved to Galveston in 1907 for B.J.

's job.

When she married, Minnie Fisher Cunningham gave up her profession as middle-class women were expected to and turn to women's organizations as a way to engage.

She joined the Women's Health Protective Association, which was now taking on the islands lax food regulations; contaminated milk and meat were making children ill and even killing some.

- Adulterated food was to very large issue.

It was up to mothers to keep their children healthy.

- Call it social housekeeping.

They're applying all of these skills for being a good mother into a society.

They're asking for safe playgrounds, sanitation, trash cleanup, all sorts of things to improve their communities and they become very political in making those claims on government to meet these needs.

- Some of them got tired of petitioning and lobbying men who would listen to them very politely and then do absolutely nothing, and began to argue that women needed the vote in order to elect public officials and hold them accountable.

[Narrator] It was no coincidence that when the Galveston Equal Suffrage Association, GESA, started in 1912, many of its officers, including Cunningham, had been activists in the WHPA.

Cunningham said: [Cunningham] I floated into the suffrage movement on a sea of bad milk.

[Narrator] In 1914, the members chose Minnie Fisher Cunningham as their president.

About 300 miles southwest of Galveston lies the long Texas-Mexico border.

Tejanas, Mexican-American women, were also fighting for their rights and faced obstacles of a different magnitude.

[Gabriela] Jovita Idár was born As a school teacher in Los Aguelos, she discovered that white supremacy was having a devastating impact on ethnic Mexican school children, even citizenship was not enough to protect them from school segregation and from racism.

After a while, she decided that she would be of better service as a political journalist.

She knew that women who were educated, who worked, could contribute to their own independence.

In Laredo, Texas, Jovita Idár and her brothers wrote for their father's newspaper, El Progreso.

Jovita published an essay criticizing American intervention in Mexico.

- And so the Texas Rangers were basically ordered to get rid of El Progreso, they were troublemakers.

The Texas Rangers arrived to shut down the newspaper.

- The way the Suffrage Movement in Texas plays itself out very much ends up being a transnational movement.

When we look at Jovita Idár and her brothers as being supporters for Suffrage, they're also a part of this transnational community.

You have individuals coming north to south through El Paso and through Laredo, but you also have individuals coming in through ocean travel from the United States and Europe.

When people are traveling in this manner, they're taking with them and bringing with them ideas, and these ideas are passed on.

[Narrator] One person who brought fresh ideas to Texas was suffrage leader, Annette Finnigan.

A Wellesley graduate and Houston heiress, she moved to New York to work for her father, a hotel owner and merchant.

Finnigan volunteered in a settlement house alongside members of NAWSA, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and she observed the novel methods that Northern suffragists were using for outreach.

Finnigan was also influenced by the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, whose organization brought together affluent and working-class women for the cause of suffrage.

[Jessica] Annette Finnigan gets involved with these national suffrages while she's living in the Northeast.

They know she's from Texas.

They know that she's of this economic elite, the social elite and they're asking her to go back to Texas and organize.

[Narrator] By 1914, Finnigan returned to Texas to take a leading role in the Suffrage Movement.

- Finnigan has seen, in the northeast, suffragists reaching out to labor organizations and that is influencing a new perspective on suffrage when she comes back to Texas to work towards women's suffrage.

[Narrator] Finnigan turned to Minnie Fisher Cunningham, who she knew would be the best person to connect with workers.

[Reporter] The Galveston Labor Dispatch reported: During the course of her visit to the Galveston Labor Council, Mrs. B.J.

Cunningham goes deep into the question of equal suffrage and shows clearly that this movement and the organized labor movement have cause to aid one another.

[Cunningham] When I first began to think about Women's Suffrage, I thought of it as an abstract injustice, very much out of place in a democracy.

I remember talking a great deal about taxation without representation being tyranny but I did not get excited about it because I considered that the woman who has property to be taxed is in very much better circumstances to stand tyranny and bear injustice than the woman whose only capital is her physical strength and who without the protection of the ballot cannot be sure the state will protect her capital.

The Equal Suffrage States have banished child labor through legislation.

We find minimum wage laws so that no girl needs to go without food when she needs shoes.

The voting women of the West are proving themselves the real daughters of the American Revolution.

They actually believe in guaranteeing to everyone life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[Judith] Finnigan appointed her chair of Galveston County for the state association and that meant that she was the one who was responsible for traveling and organizing local societies in the County.

[Cunningham] My dear Madam President, I have to report a spell of the most thoroughly anti suffrage weather I have ever met.

It wrapped my county campaign in a veil of moisture, which was very dampening to local suffrage ardor in most of the little towns.

But I did a lot of preliminary work and I will organize this county if I have to do it in a yellow slicker and a pair of rubber boots.

[Narrator] Finnigan appreciated Cunningham's enthusiasm and wrote her: [Finnigan] You are a treasure.

How I wish there were many more like you ready to give up anything for suffrage.

[Narrator] But 1915 was not a good year for Texas suffrage.

In February, the Texas legislature debated an amendment for woman suffrage for the first time in decades.

Representative George Mendel of Travis County argued: [Mendel] With such a law, the beloved wife of my bosom, and the precious daughter that was sent by the great God above to bless and enlighten my home, would have to go to the polls on election day, and elbow their way through the gangs of Negro women and cast their ballot.

Oh, gentlemen of the house, let us maintain the beloved womanhood of Texas on that high plane, for in my judgment, some of them are asking for something that they would not know what to do with if they had it.

[Narrator] The amendment was defeated but the woman-suffrage movement had become a reality the legislators could not ignore.

Texas suffragists went ahead with their annual convention.

- Annette Finnigan is a strategist.

She is president for a year.

She may have been president longer had her health not failed.

She has a stroke.

And her protege is Minnie Fisher Cunningham.

Cunningham is a very good speaker.

She's very strategic.

She's very organized and she needs to be the one to take over.

[Narrator] Finnigan chose the Hotel Galvez for the convention because Galveston was Minnie Fisher Cunningham's home.

After three days of reports from members and festive excursions, Cunningham was made president of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association.

[Judith] She was 33.

She joined the movement in 1912.

By 1915 she was president.

NAWSA did not pick Cunningham, Cunningham rose straight to the top through talent and hard work.

One of the things that made her an effective leader, she wanted to pull other women in to be organizers too, and she made them feel that they could do the work themselves because she believed in them.

She encouraged them and mentored them.

[Narrator] Kate Gordon of Louisiana attended the Galvez convention to recruit Texas members to her own organization.

She was the co-founder of the Southern States Women's Suffrage Conference, a group opposed to the federal amendment and committed to getting the vote exclusively for white women through state action.

She advocated state's rights and white supremacy.

Gordon explained a problem she anticipated if Black women tried to vote: [Gordon] In reality, every prohibition against the Negro man's voting could be applied to the women, but in the states where the mass of the men who are determined to preserve white supremacy are willing to club Negro men away from the polls, you will understand when they do not wish to be forced to club Negro women, and the Negro women hearing this are far more belligerent.

[Narrator] both Finnigan and Cunningham rejected Gordon's racist argument.

As president, Cunningham never invited Gordon to Texas again.

The same year that Minnie Fisher Cunningham became president of TESA, Carrie Chapman Catt became the president of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association.

Their alliance would be crucial to the fate of woman suffrage.

Born January 9th, 1859, and raised on an Iowa farm, Catt was a brilliant strategist and the most gifted of the new generation that followed Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

[Judith] Cunningham and Catt admired each other both personally and professionally.

Catt had also risen in NAWSA through her talent as an organizer.

Cunningham could always see what Texas' role in the larger strategy was.

Anything that Catt asked for, Texas got it done.

The goal was to build what the suffragists called a suffrage machine, so that they were organized from the local level all the way to the top.

It was a matter of building organizational strength to put pressure on legislators to vote for suffrage.

[Narrator] Catt's strategy of patient lobbying different from that of Alice Paul, who patterned her national women's party on the more aggressive British Suffragette movement.

Paul's militancy and Catt's long-term vision often clashed, yet both played defining roles in the struggle for women's suffrage.

[Narrator] The war in Europe began in July, 1914.

Americans followed the war's progress eagerly in their daily newspapers.

In June 1916, the Democratic National Convention took place in St. Louis.

Thousands came to debate the nation's possible entry into World War I, prohibition and women's right to vote.

- And because the South is largely one party, and it's the Democratic party, Cunningham goes to the 1916 DNC in St. Louis.

[Narrator] Carrie Catt was committed to a federal suffrage amendment and wanted to see the Democratic party adopt it in its platform.

Catt rallied American women to join a demonstration envisioned as The Golden Lane.

Over 5,000 women lined the delegates route to the convention center.

[Reporter] Austin American Newspaper reporting.

These women kept their line intact while thousands flowed through the lane of white and gold and cheered them with shouts and music.

They kept their eyes straight to the front and did not acknowledge the salutes.

[Narrator] The Golden Lane ended on the steps of the Old Art Gallery, where the suffragists formed a tableau vivant.

Women dressed in black wore shackles to stand for the states that denied women the vote, including Texas and all the former Confederate States.

The Texans, led by Cunningham, entered the Coliseum and took their seats in the upper balcony alongside sisters from the 48 States.

Down on the convention floor, Governor James E. Ferguson of Texas, sworn enemy of the women's vote led the Texas delegation.

A conservative Democrat backed by the Liquor industry, Ferguson was a powerful orator and in St. Louis, against the sounds of jeers and shouts from suffragists in the Colosseum balcony, Ferguson railed.

[Ferguson] The agitation of equal suffrage is sweeping over the country when women across the country should be performing functions for which God Almighty intended her.

Delegates, show yourselves free and brave enough to vote your honest convictions.

[Rachel] The Democrats end up approving a plank that would only support suffrage by state action.

So they get a half-hearted measure.

And of course, Ferguson is furious even at this half-hearted measure.

Cunningham was angry, as most of the Texas suffragists were.

She tears this black dress up so she can drape it across the Texas flag and show the flag in mourning, as if Ferguson has embarrassed the state, has embarrassed the state's women.

[Narrator] Ferguson's unrelenting stance confirmed for the Texas women that they would never get any form of suffrage while he was in power.

[Rachel] And when they come back the suffragists give amazing interviews to local newspapers about how angry they are.

They talk about Ferguson starting his own funeral, that they will see to it.

[Narrator] Shortly after the St. Louis Convention, Ferguson began campaigning for his second term as governor.

Cunningham and TESA organizer Lavinia Engle braved the summer heat to speak in South Texas against the governor.

[Rachel] It's still very difficult to travel, this is not a comfortable vehicle to be in long term.

It's dusty, it's dirty, there's no air conditioning but they see South Texas as really the region of the state that is most supportive of Ferguson, and so that's where they went, right into the heart of the battle.

Cunningham and Ferguson were in the same party but its members bitterly divided into Conservative Wets and Progressive Drys.

Ferguson boosted his unequivocal stance against Prohibition and the Temperance movement.

[Ferguson] I promise, pledge, and put the world on notice that if I am elected Governor, and the legislature puts any anti-liquor legislation up to me, I will strike it where the chicken got the axe.

[Narrator] The "Wets," represented by Governor Ferguson and empowered by liquor interests, were opposed to Prohibition and to woman suffrage.

It was widely assumed that enfranchised women would vote with the Prohibitionists, but Cunningham viewed alcohol restriction as a political issue, not a moral one.

She deplored the liquor trust whose money bought elections and financed political campaigns such as Ferguson's.

Ferguson also had the support of the Anglo-American ranchers in South Texas.

They continued the near-feudal tradition of the haciendado, when the wealthy landowner controlled the lives of the peasants, dictating for whom the workers should vote.

- There was a lot of political corruption involving the use of ethnic Mexican workers as voting blocks that would deliver the vote for this or that political boss.

Immigrants are a very easy population to control because they are among the most vulnerable.

[Narrator] Ferguson was reelected Governor by a landslide of 66,000 votes.

Suffrage never looked as hopeless as it did in the summer of 1916.

Ferguson seemed unbeatable but he didn't reckon with the determination of the suffragists.

Catt conceived of a new strategy named the Winning Plan.

Its goal was passage of a federal amendment by 1920.

In Texas, the focus would be on achieving partial measures, such as the right to vote in state primary elections.

Cunningham endorsed the Winning Plan enthusiastically.

Before the Texas legislature convened in early 1917, Cunningham moved to Austin and set up TESA headquarters in the Littlefield Building on Congress Avenue.

Daily she walked the five blocks to the Capitol, to lobby legislators to allow women to vote in the primary.

In the summer of 1917, Governor Ferguson's biggest donor, the liquor industry, became alarmed at the growing sentiment for Prohibition at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ferguson made a serious miscalculation by cutting the university's funding from the state budget.

His actions enraged students and powerful alumni, lawyers and state senators, all of whom accused Ferguson of being an autocrat, governing by one-man rule.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham got a permit from the city of Austin to hold a demonstration at the Capitol.

Jane McCallum, journalist, journalist, suffragist, publicist for the Texas Women's Movement, and mother of five, noted: [McCallum] "Women of Texas Protest," blazed from two orange-colored banners that were attached to scaffolding on a float.

Men and women, one after the other, climbed on and made speeches that were earnest and impassioned.

- Cunningham is watching all of this against her nemesis that has devoted himself against her cause since 1916 and she sees an opening.

And so she begins trying to organize with the alumni of the University of Texas and anyone else that she can get on board against Ferguson.

[Narrator] Armed with TESA's extensive files and a dossier of Ferguson's misdeeds, Cunningham collaborated with anti-Ferguson legislators at the Capitol.

She also worked with women's organizations, which distributed 100,000 leaflets that explained Ferguson's corrupt dealings.

She urged women to pressure their legislative representatives to bring charges of impeachment against him.

In July 1917, the house brought 21 articles of impeachment against Governor James Ferguson.

The scandal made headlines across Texas, competing with news from the battlefield in Europe.

On August 1st, 1917, the House began to investigate the governor.

- Any good defense attorney would tell you never take the stand at your own trial.

It's a bad idea.

Ferguson does it anyway and he opens himself up to questions about his financial history.

[Don] One of the charges against him was that he was stealing from the state treasury and his whole point was, "Why would I need to steal from the state treasury?

I got $186,000 loan from my friends."

$186,000 in 1917 is a $3 million loan.

Several people said, "We happened to have a pretty good idea that the Texas brewing industry gave him a $186,000 loan."

Now we're talking about bribery.

[Narrator] The Texas Senate found Ferguson guilty on 10 of the 21 counts, and Cunningham sought to press the advantage.

[Cunningham] Dear Mrs. Catt, after we get impeachment, the Lieutenant Governor will call a special session of the Legislature.

It seems to me a wonderfully opportune moment to ask them to put through our primary suffrage bill.

What do you think?

[Don] When the Governor is impeached, the Lieutenant Governor becomes the acting governor.

They also passed a bill stating, "Ferguson could never run for an elected office in the state of Texas ever again."

He resigned from being governor the day before they voted.

And he claimed that impeachment didn't apply to him.

He uses that later on the run for Governor against Will Hobby.

[Narrator] By April 1917, the United States had entered World War I and 198,000 Texas men were in the armed forces.

- Texas trains more than 50% of the American Expeditionary Force.

The first step in making sure that the troops are able to fight is making sure that those who join are medically able to do so.

And many were not.

About one-third of lost manpower days in World War I was due to venereal disease.

[Narrator] Bars and saloons thrived around military camps, lining the pockets of the liquor industry.

As brothels grew a number, venereal disease, then incurable, was widespread.

Following NAWSA's directive, Cunningham merged suffrage work with support for the war effort, and she pushed for a 10-mile radius around military camps called White Zones, where saloons and brothels would be forbidden.

Cunningham saw this as another opportunity for political leverage, and she encouraged thousands of women to write letters reminding their legislators of their duty to protect soldiers.

In February 1918, acting Governor William Pettus Hobby declared that he would run for governor.

Former Governor James E. Ferguson, despite being banned from holding public office, declared he would run against Hobby with the support of rural voters.

[Narrator] In contrast to Ferguson, Will Hobby was a moderate, known and respected statewide as a newspaper publisher and editor.

Hobby chose to run on a Progressive, anti-liquor ticket.

- Will Hobby was a drinker.

He enjoyed his drinks.

But he could please the prohibitionist that he had outlawed alcohol in these 10-mile zones.

He could please the religious folks and the women's movement by saying that he was saving these soldiers from themselves.

And he got credit for that.

[Narrator] Several other Progressive "Dry" candidates joined the race, potentially splitting the Progressive vote and weakening Hobby's chances of defeating Ferguson.

[Judith] And at that point, Cunningham wrote to Charles Metcalf of San Angelo, who was a suffrage supporter and also a Hobby supporter.

She pointed out that Hobby was vulnerable.

He had switched sides from anti-prohibition to prohibition.

The multiple dry candidates would split the dry vote and Ferguson would win by a plurality.

[Narrator] Cunningham saw Hobby's political vulnerability as a new opportunity to put a primary suffrage bill front and center before the Texas legislature.

[Jessica] And this would allow women to have a say over who held the legislative offices and if they could do that, then they would be able to pressure the legislators to vote Yes for the 19th amendment when it came to the state legislature for ratification.

[Rachel] Any bit of Suffrage where you can chip away at the restrictions of having women at the ballot box will eventually begin to convince politicians one that there could be a political cost to be paid if they don't support suffrage, and two that these women are organized, they're there, they want to vote, and if you get into a competitive situation, they can save you.

[Narrator] Cunningham proposed a secret quid pro quo deal to representative Charles Metcalf, writing that: [Cunningham] A large number of new and grateful voters would be his salvation, I should think.

[Narrator] Metcalf wrote back: [Metcalf] Can you guarantee a turnout for a women's vote for Hobby?

[Cunningham] Vote in hand, we will quite naturally concentrate on the man who enfranchised us.

[Judith] But Hobby, in spite of Metcalf's pressure, was still cautious.

He said he would only ask for primary suffrage bill if the suffragists could present him with a petition signed by two-thirds of the legislature.

As soon as they delivered it, Metcalf and half a dozen co-sponsors introduced a primary suffrage bill.

[Narrator] On February 26th, 1918, Governor Hobby called a Special Session to introduce the Primary Suffrage Bill.

[Cunningham] Dear Mrs. Catt, the bill passed the House by 84 to 34.

When we rose to leave the gallery, the men all stood up and gave us a perfect ovation, cheering for some minutes and calling for a speech.

It was a surprising and greatly appreciated tribute to the work that the women have been doing.

[Catt] Congratulations to you upon the notable victory achieved.

It will help the cause throughout the United States.

Congratulations also to the women of Texas for having so splendid a commander as yourself.

[Wilson] Mrs. Minnie Fisher Cunningham, please accept my warmest congratulations on the adoption of the Primary Suffrage Bill by the legislature of the state.

Woodrow Wilson.

[Narrator] On March 26th, 1918, Governor Hobby signed the suffrage bill into law.

The right to vote in the primary gave women the chance to elect legislators who might possibly support full suffrage.

Metcalf sent a pointed reminder to Cunningham.

[Metcalf] I hope to be vindicated in my statements that they will vote and for the right men.

[Narrator] The Texas register predicted that politicians would take a new interest in Texas women, writing: [Reporter] Mary had little vote she never had before, and now the festive candidate loves Mary all the more.

[Narrator] When the primary suffrage bill went into effect on June 25th, the suffragists had less than three weeks to deliver on Cunningham's promise and register women in 248 counties to vote for Hobby in the July election.

In 17 hot and dusty summer days, TESA distributed nearly a half-million copies of the July ballot.

Most women had never before seen a ballot.

The suffragists established Hobby Clubs, whose members elected officers, as well as precinct and block chairwomen to organize house-to-house canvassing and distribution of campaign literature.

[Judith] Hobby Club women stood on street corners and handed out literature for Hobby.

They handed out yellow badges signifying women's intention to vote.

- They had gone to the county clerk's office and asked what women had registered to vote.

And in the first few days of this registration period, they were told that a large portion were African-American and a large portion were white, but there was also approximately 100 Latinas at that point.

It really highlights the women in the state who were stepping forward and saying, "You know, I really want to participate in this moment."

[Narrator] James Ferguson had to contend with a new electorate -- the women of Texas.

- His advisors are going, "There's a machine out here for Will Hobby."

So he goes out and makes a speech specifically targeted to rural women.

And he said, "Do not vote for Will Hobby.

Don't be influenced by that Pink Tea Club women's group living in the big cities who would rather nurse a poodle dog than a baby.

Will Hobby's women are a class of women who would rather raise trouble than raise a family."

[Narrator] In the summer of 1918, not all Texas women were allowed to register to vote.

In Kleberg County, South Texas, Black suffragists Christia Adair tried.

- We dressed up and went to vote and when we got down there, well, we couldn't vote.

They gave us all different kinds of excuses.

We kept after them though, until they finally said, "You can not vote, because you are a Negro."

And the election officials said, "Negroes don't vote in the Democratic primary in Texas."

When they said that, that gave us the grounds to sue, and sue we did!

[Narrator] The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in New York City in 1909 and dedicated to securing justice for African-Americans.

The Houston branch of the NAACP sued the polling station successfully in court.

The same summer that Christia Adair was turned away from the polls, Maude Sampson, a prominent Black suffragist in El Paso who fought for six decades for voting rights, wrote to a NAWSA lobbyist in Washington, D.C. - My dear Mrs. Park, we would like to become an auxiliary branch of the National American Suffrage Association.

Will you please send me the necessary information?

Yours truly, Mrs. E. Sampson.

[Narrator] Carrie Catt wrote to Minnie Fisher Cunningham instructing her to reply to Mrs. Sampson.

[Catt] I will say that the question of auxiliaryship within the state is one for the state itself to decide.

Of late however, there's a movement among the colored women and men to insist upon recognition and to get into places that seemed to have been closed to them before.

I'm sure if I were a Colored woman, I would do the same thing they are doing.

In some southern states, it would be an impossibility to have a colored league without gravely upsetting the work and ruining the influences of the suffrage association.

I suggest you write Mrs. Sampson and tell her that you will be able to get the vote for women more easily if they do not embarrass you by asking you for membership and that you're getting it for colored women as well as for white women.

[Narrator] For the sake of political expediency, Catt and Cunningham set aside the aspirations of Black Texas women who were ready to work for suffrage.

[Cunningham] My dear Mrs. Sampson, the question of the affiliation of organizations of colored women has never come up in Texas and therefore there is no precedent in the matter.

I feel sure you will understand that it is a question which, should it arise, would bring a great deal of discussion and possibly friction.

Before the meeting of the next convention in May, 1919, I am very hopeful that we will have suffrage for the women of the United States.

You understand that the Texas Equal Suffrage Association is working for full and equal suffrage for women, all women, and have not in our constitution or bylaws or principles, any discrimination against any class.

[Narrator] When the 17-day registration ended, Cunningham telegraphed president Catt with extraordinary news.

[Cunningham] Registration of Texas women voters closed.

Estimated that 360,000 have registered.

Consider results good and elections safe.

- In the end, 386,000 women registered to vote.

Cunningham was delighted she said the numbers were enough to make Ferguson sick.

[Narrator] On July 28th, 1918, Hobby was elected governor in a landslide.

- Although women's votes weren't counted separately, even Ferguson conceded that the women had probably voted 10 to one against him.

The outcome of the election was everything that Cunningham had promised Metcalf and more.

[Narrator] Minnie Fisher Cunningham's leadership achieved a historic victory in the anti-suffrage South.

Texas women voted in the Democratic Primary, defeated their enemy, and elected a politician who would legislate for them.

NAWSA was thrilled and continued its fight for passage and ratification of a federal suffrage amendment.

Carrie Catt invited Cunningham to Washington to serve as secretary of NAWSA's Congressional Committee.

She was immersed in her new role when bad news came from Texas: A doomed-to-fail push on a state suffrage referendum.

Because Texas women were able to vote only in the Democratic Primary, the power to lift or sink full suffrage would be in the hands of male voters.

In Austin, the anti-suffragists were out in full force supported once more by liquor money and by corrupt political bosses from South Texas.

[Darden] The women who were clamoring for suffrage do not represent the real womanhood of Texas.

God pity our country when the handshake of the politician is more gratifying to a woman's heart than the patter of children's feet.

[Narrator] Anti suffragist, Pauline Wells, put it more simply: "She who bears voters has no need to vote."

In the May 1919 election, the suffrage referendum lost by 25,000 votes.

While the Texas anti-suffragists believed that they'd archived an important victory, Cunningham and Catt didn't look back.

The 19th Amendment passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and then, on June 4th, 1919, it squeaked by in the Senate.

With part of the fight over, a new one began in a state-by-state campaign.

Now the amendment had to be ratified by 36 out of the 48 States.

Governor Ruffin Pleasant of Louisiana tried to forge an anti-suffrage alliance between 13 of the southern states, including Texas.

If the Southern coalition stayed united, the pro suffrage forces would be one state short of ratification.

Cunningham went into action and used her troops, the women of TESA and their suffrage machine, to put pressure on their legislators.

Ratification was a drawn-out fight.

After days of wrangling, the resolution passed by the narrowest of margins.

[Cunningham] It was a hot battle.

The antis tried to break the quorum by sneaking enough senators out of town but couldn't manage it as our people police the railroad stations.

I've never seen such splendid teamwork.

[Narrator] On June 28th, 1919, Texas became the first southern state and the ninth state in the nation to ratify the amendment.

On August 26th, 1920, the 19th Amendment of the United States Constitution became law.

[inspirational music] Texas women had worked for decades toward that exhilarating victory.

In the words of Jane McCallum, "With what high hopes and enthusiasms women stepped forth into a world in which they were citizens at last."

Participating in the long fight changed every woman who'd stood up for herself and for other women.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham and the women of TESA had taught a large cadre of women how to be citizens out in the world.

They no longer saw themselves exclusively through their private lives and family roles.

They knew themselves as public beings with rights and responsibilities.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham never stopped fighting to make Texas a more inclusive state.

She ran in the Democratic Primary for the U.S. Senate against the Ku Klux Klan-sponsored incumbent, served in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal administration and secured her home county in the election of President John F. Kennedy.

Cunningham spent her last years in New Waverly on the family farm, which was much reduced because she'd sold so much of her inheritance to fund the causes she believed in.

[Jessica] One of the things that Women's Suffrage History has done is focus enormously on the 19th Amendment of the United States Constitution and therefore has treated it as an end.

We need to see the 19th Amendment as part of a longer discussion.

Women who invested in its passage were part of a longer narrative, but also not all women got to vote in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was passed.

These battles continue.

[Narrator] The 19th Amendment prohibited voter discrimination on the basis of sex, but many women of color were still denied the ballot.

In 1923, Texas passed a law allowing a political party to set its own rules on voting, as if it were a country club.

Voting in the Democratic Primary was thus legally restricted to whites only.

- African-Americans starting in the 1920s would go to court several times, using the NAACP.

So this is why African-American women would play a very important role.

Lulu Belle Madison White was instrumental in helping to destroy the White Democratic Primary.

When she became the Executive Secretary of the Houston chapter, the membership rose from 5,000 to 12,000 in two years.

[Narrator] The series of lawsuits brought through the courts by the NAACP resulted in the 1944 landmark case in the Supreme Court, Smith v Allwright.

- But Lulu didn't stop there.

She said, "We cannot sit idly by and expect things to come to us.

We must go out and get it."

Lulu would campaign for Hattie Mae White, the first Black female to win office in the State of Texas.

And Hattie White would campaign for Barbara Jordan.

[Narrator] In 1974, long after the 19th Amendment was ratified, Houston Congresswoman and legend, Barbara Jordan, spoke at the impeachment hearing of President Richard M. Nixon.

- Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, "We, the people."

It's a very eloquent beginning.

But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people."

I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake.

But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

[Narrator] In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, ending state laws that limited voting based on race and class.

But in 2013, nearly a half-century later, the Supreme Court, in Shelby V Holder, weakened the power of the Voting Rights Act.

- You can have a law on the book, but you have to make sure that it is applied.

In most cases, you have to bring pressure to bear.

And this is the only way that you can have an inclusive society.

[Narrator] On August 20th, 1940, the Houston Post commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification and the article repeated the story that the women had been given the vote because of their selfless war service.

Cunningham's quid pro quo deal was still a secret.

In a letter to her close friend, Jane McCallum, Cunningham expressed her frustration.

[Cunningham] The time has come to dispense with this starry-eyed babes-in-the-wood twaddle about suffragists.

We went up against and helped to break the most ruthless and powerful machine that ever fashioned its tentacles on Texas and the United States and we knew what we were about.

At that moment, we were the smartest group of politicians in the State.

[Narrator] Twenty-eight years after her death, the Texas Historical Commission placed a roadside marker near the site of Cunningham's home.

At the dedication ceremony, she was remembered as a dynamo who devoted her life to saving democracy from its enemies.

Minnie Fisher Cunningham once wrote to her old friend, Catt, "You can't just lean back and let them run over you."

And she never did.

- What I would want my daughter to know and it's actually what I tell all my students every semester, "You're going to find out many things that are going to be upsetting to you but I don't want you to get discouraged, stick with me."

I tell them that they are no different than the men and women of the past who made this country better.

We always have an opportunity, all of us, in our own way, to make a contribution in the struggle to become a more democratic nation.

So we have the power as "We, the people," not, "We, the government," not "We, the power brokers," not "We, the rich 1%."

It's "We, the people."

And as long as we can remember that and "We are the sovereign," then nobody can stop us and nobody will.

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