Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye and to
Speaker 1: day I will be reading from a special edition of
Speaker 1: Smithsonian Magazine America at two fifty the Revolutionary Spark. As
Speaker 1: a reminder, Radio I is a reading service intended for
Speaker 1: people who are blind or have other disabilities that make
Speaker 1: it difficult to read printed material. Please join me now
Speaker 1: for the article titled The operating room where anesthesia was
Speaker 1: first demonstrated is now a landmark. But for the men
Speaker 1: who claimed credit, there was much misery. Medical procedures used
Speaker 1: to be a scream filled endurance test until doctors at
Speaker 1: this Boston institution learned to tame the pain of patience
Speaker 1: by Douglas Starr. The most important demonstration in medical history
Speaker 1: was about to begin. The date October sixteenth, eighteen forty six.
Speaker 1: The setting the operating room at the top of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: General Hospital, a dome topped am the theater built to
Speaker 1: both capture the sunlight and isolate the screams of surgical patients.
Speaker 1: Surrounding the table stood a gaggle of Boston's most reputable surgeons,
Speaker 1: including John Collins Warren, one of the hospital's co founders.
Speaker 1: A driven puritanical man, Warren had studied in the medical
Speaker 1: capitals of London, Paris, and Edinburgh. Bare knuckled in black coats,
Speaker 1: he and his colleagues had gathered at Mass General in
Speaker 1: front of a steeply banked gallery of medical students. They
Speaker 1: were about to perform what they hoped would be the
Speaker 1: first surgery on a successfully anesthetized patient. About two years earlier,
Speaker 1: in another one of Warren's classes, a Connecticut dentist named
Speaker 1: Horace Wells had tried to anesthetize a patient with nitrous oxide,
Speaker 1: also known as laughing gas. Wells had come upon the
Speaker 1: substance while attending an event in which a showman dosed
Speaker 1: volunteers with the gas. The audience watched with delight as
Speaker 1: the volunteers lost all inhibition, laughing and prancing. Wells had
Speaker 1: seen one volunteer injure his knee but experience no pain.
Speaker 1: That had inspired him to give the gas to his
Speaker 1: patients before tooth extractions. After several successful trials in his office,
Speaker 1: Wells brought the formula to Boston. The procedure at Mass
Speaker 1: General a tooth extraction started out well, but after a
Speaker 1: few moments the patient moaned. It seemed that Wells had
Speaker 1: withdrawn the gas bag too soon. The audience irrupted into hisses, boos,
Speaker 1: and cries of humbug. Wells was humiliated. This time. A
Speaker 1: dentist named William T. G. Morton would use another inhaled
Speaker 1: substance as an anesthetic, Ether. As the doctors and students
Speaker 1: looked on, Morton readied his equipment, a glass sphere with
Speaker 1: a small sponge in the bottom, a valve on one side,
Speaker 1: and a tube projecting from the other. He poured ether
Speaker 1: onto the sponge, held the tube to the patient's lips,
Speaker 1: and told him to inhale. The man's body twitched for
Speaker 1: a few minutes and then lay still. Morton stood back
Speaker 1: as Warren began the operation, a brief procedure to remove
Speaker 1: a tumor from the patient's neck. The patient did not
Speaker 1: struggle or scream, Unlike in every surgery demonstration that came
Speaker 1: before it. The patient remained sedated through the entire operation.
Speaker 1: Warren turned to the audience and uttered what would become
Speaker 1: one of the most famous sentences in the history of medicine. Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: he said, this is no humbug. That day, something entirely
Speaker 1: new was ushered into the world surgery, as we know it.
Speaker 1: Anesthesia would help place America, long considered a medical backwater,
Speaker 1: on the world's medical map. Ether was to medicine what
Speaker 1: longitude was to navigation, and the airplane wing was to flight.
Speaker 1: Throughout history, nothing but death had been considered as unavoidable
Speaker 1: as pain. Today, anesthesia during surgery is routine, with options
Speaker 1: ranging from local injections to intravenous or spinal delivery. Breathing
Speaker 1: tubes and continuous monitoring introduced in the twentieth century help
Speaker 1: ensure the patient's airways stay open while they're under But
Speaker 1: although that first successful demonstration in eighteen forty six benefited
Speaker 1: untold millions of people, it brought only misery and pain
Speaker 1: to Ether's discoverers. Morton had a secret passed. He'd been
Speaker 1: a con man, drifting from one city to another, embezzling funds,
Speaker 1: defrauding his partners, and in one case, creating counterfeit postal seals.
Speaker 1: Fleeing a step ahead of the police. He'd returned to
Speaker 1: his native New England, decided to reform, and married the
Speaker 1: daughter of a prominent family. He'd met Wells, who instructed
Speaker 1: him in dentistry, a crude practice at the time, easily
Speaker 1: taught to an apprentice, and the partners opened a branch
Speaker 1: office in Boston. In eighteen forty three, Morton and Wells
Speaker 1: came up with an idea for a new kind of
Speaker 1: denture and hired Charles Jackson, an imminent Boston chemist and geologist,
Speaker 1: to analyze the metal in the denture and indorse it.
Speaker 1: After Well's humiliation, Morton consulted with Jackson about which gas
Speaker 1: might be more effective. Jackson suggested a gaseous form of
Speaker 1: sulphuric ether, a liquid long used to alleviate stomach cramps
Speaker 1: and topical pain, and sometimes enjoyed in recreational frolics. Morton
Speaker 1: had a local craftsman fashion and inhaler so a patient
Speaker 1: could breathe in the gas as it evaporated from a
Speaker 1: liquid soaked sponge. He experimented on his dog and himself
Speaker 1: before playing his part in the miracle at Mass General.
Speaker 1: After the surgery, Morton took out a patent on the substance,
Speaker 1: calling it Lethion. When the military used ether while treating
Speaker 1: soldiers during the Civil War, Morton unsuccessfully petitioned Congress for
Speaker 1: a reward. From then on, he spent part of each
Speaker 1: year living in Washington, d c lavishly entertaining politicians to
Speaker 1: enlist them to his cause. Jackson, the chemist claimed that
Speaker 1: ether had been his idea and that Wharton had simply
Speaker 1: demonstrated it in public. Meanwhile, Wells claimed credit for discovering
Speaker 1: inhaled anesthesia, even though his demonstration had appeared to fail.
Speaker 1: A decade's long battle ensued. Wells gathered affidavits and testimonials
Speaker 1: from his peers in Connecticut, while Morton and Jackson fought
Speaker 1: each other for congressional recognition, financial reward, and international acclaim.
Speaker 1: The fight took its toll. Wells, who never recovered from
Speaker 1: his humiliation, became addicted to chloroform and died by suicide
Speaker 1: at thirty three, just fifteen months after the demonstration at
Speaker 1: Mass General. Morton exhausted himself with his frenetic lobbying and spending,
Speaker 1: letting his dental practice and farm fall into ruin. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, he died, bankrupt and broken, at forty eight.
Speaker 1: Jackson invested his energy in an attempt to sully Morton's
Speaker 1: reputation and burnish his own. In June of eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: he suffered what doctors called a paralytic shock, possibly a stroke.
Speaker 1: He spent the next seven years at the mc lean
Speaker 1: Asylum for the Insane, where he died at seventy five.
Speaker 1: No one can deny the impact of their contributions. In
Speaker 1: the year after Morton's demonstration, surgeons at Mass General performed
Speaker 1: seventeen operations with anesthesia. To day, they perform more than
Speaker 1: fifty thousand such operations annually. Globally, surgeons perform more than
Speaker 1: two hundred million operations under anesthetics each year. They rarely
Speaker 1: use ether any more. It was phased out in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies with the discovery of less flammable
Speaker 1: annisetaethetics with fewer side effects. Who should get credit for
Speaker 1: the discovery? Historians give partial recognition to all three men,
Speaker 1: and to a fourth, Crawford Long of Athens, Georgia, who
Speaker 1: experimented with ether in eighteen forty two, but did not
Speaker 1: publish his findings until eighteen forty nine, three years after
Speaker 1: the demonstration at Mass General. All four men have been
Speaker 1: memorialized in stone. There are statues of Long in Georgia
Speaker 1: and Washington, d c. And of Wells in Connecticut, and
Speaker 1: tombstones at the grave sites of Morton and Jackson inscriptions
Speaker 1: on each claim sole credit. The room at Mass General
Speaker 1: where the experiment took place, now called the ether Dome,
Speaker 1: is a designated National Historic Site and open to the public.
Speaker 1: But the grandest monument stands in the Boston Public Garden.
Speaker 1: Forty feet tall with Gothic style arches and columns, It's
Speaker 1: topped with the sculpture of a doctor cradling a supine
Speaker 1: patient on his knee, preparing to give him a dose
Speaker 1: of anesthetic. The sculptor inscribed no names on the structure,
Speaker 1: only Biblical quotations about the blessed work of alleviating pain.
Speaker 1: It's the nation's only monument to a drug and accompanying
Speaker 1: this article, did you know speed was of the essence
Speaker 1: before anesthesia? Surgeons strove to finish painful surgeries as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. A skilled surgeon could amputate a leg in
Speaker 1: under thirty seconds, according to history dot com quote. The
Speaker 1: longer a patient was on the table, the greater their suffering,
Speaker 1: and the greater the chance that they would die from
Speaker 1: blood loss or shock. Next, among all the great things
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin invented or discovered, his alter egos gave him
Speaker 1: the most freedom Silence, do Good, Richard Saunders, Benevolence, CD may, Iemette, Abrahim.
Speaker 1: All were pen names that allowed Franklin to say things
Speaker 1: he couldn't have otherwise said by H. W. Brands. Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin's fertile mind constantly spun off inventive and useful ideas.
Speaker 1: His lightning rod saved buildings and lives. His energy saving
Speaker 1: improvement of the wood burning fireplace kept families warm and
Speaker 1: forests from being leveled. His lending library extended literacy to
Speaker 1: those who couldn't afford books. His map of the Gulf
Speaker 1: Stream made travel faster and commerce more efficient. But Franklin's
Speaker 1: ingenuity showed most clearly in his invention, or rather recurrent
Speaker 1: reinvention of himself. In the course of his life, Franklin
Speaker 1: devised dozens of arthorial personas in print, which allowed him
Speaker 1: to challenge authority, identify folly, and promote human progress with
Speaker 1: an unsparing vigor he never could have achieved under his
Speaker 1: own name. Franklin created his first auts or ego when
Speaker 1: he was in his teens. A middle aged widow named
Speaker 1: Silence Dogood Missus Dogood, allowed Franklin to evade an embargo
Speaker 1: against publication imposed by his jealous elder brother, James, a
Speaker 1: printer to whom Ben was apprenticed. James had a newspaper
Speaker 1: and sought contributors, but he refused Ben's submissions as corrosive
Speaker 1: of the master apprentice relationship. So Ben disguised his handwriting
Speaker 1: and surreptitiously slipped letters from Missus Dogood under the door
Speaker 1: of the print shop. Franklin's account of her life delighted
Speaker 1: readers while underscoring the difficulties facing widows and women of
Speaker 1: the day. Polly Baker was a literal as opposed to
Speaker 1: an actual descendant of Silence Dogood. Polly had the misfortune
Speaker 1: of falling in love with men who had no intention
Speaker 1: of marrying her. When she became pregnant, she was brought
Speaker 1: before the magistrates to be punished for her crime of fornication.
Speaker 1: In defending herself, she said she had done nothing more
Speaker 1: than obey the biblical command to be fruitful and multiply. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she asked why was no sanction brought against the men
Speaker 1: who were equally responsible for her illegitimate children and more
Speaker 1: responsible for the corruption, As the court insisted of the honest,
Speaker 1: if imperfect woman who stood before it. Franklin's most famous
Speaker 1: alter ego was Richard Saunders, an astronomer and a polymath
Speaker 1: who annually published Poor Richard's Almanac. The Almanac provided information
Speaker 1: on holidays, holstices, phases of the moon, and the like.
Speaker 1: What made it special were the squibs of advice and
Speaker 1: humor that filled otherwise blank spots on the pages. Quote
Speaker 1: fish and visitors stink in three days quote recommended itself
Speaker 1: to guests and hosts alike. Quote three may keep a secret,
Speaker 1: two of them are dead. Quote chided the garrulity of
Speaker 1: blabbers and the naivete of confiders. Franklin's Saunders didn't invent
Speaker 1: adages so much as he improved on earlier versions. Franklin
Speaker 1: retired Saunders after going into politics, a move that inspired
Speaker 1: him to create additional personas. Americanus appeared in Franklin's own paper,
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania Gazette, when he responded to news that the
Speaker 1: British Parliament planned to transport felons to America. The measure
Speaker 1: was intended to relieve the British government of the expense
Speaker 1: of incarcerating the convicts at home, but was cast as
Speaker 1: a gift to the colonies, which could always use more people. Quote.
Speaker 1: Such a tender parental concern in our mother country for
Speaker 1: the welfare of her children calls aloud for the highest
Speaker 1: returns of gratitude and duty end quote. AMERICANUS wrote, the
Speaker 1: colonies must reciprocate quote. In some of the uninhabited parts
Speaker 1: of these provinces, there are numbers of these venomous reptiles
Speaker 1: we call rattlesnakes Felain's conduct. From the beginning of the world.
Speaker 1: AMERICANUS expatiated on the virtues of rattlesnakes, concluding that they
Speaker 1: quote seemed the most suitable returns for the human serpents
Speaker 1: sent us by our mother country. In this, however, as
Speaker 1: in every other branch of trade, she will have the
Speaker 1: advantage of us, as the rattlesnake gives warning before he
Speaker 1: attempts his mischief end quote. Franklin, appointed as agent of
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania Assembly to the British government in seventeen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: relocated to London. There, he wrote to British newspapers as
Speaker 1: benevolous to rebut arguments in Parliament that the American colonies
Speaker 1: were too lightly taxed. Benevolus was a serious fellow compared
Speaker 1: with Franklin's other alter egos. After the Stamp Act provoked
Speaker 1: riots in America, Navelous identified numerous errors in fact and
Speaker 1: reasoning that misinformed British policy. He concluded with the fond
Speaker 1: hope that the British would be quote a little less
Speaker 1: hasty in censuring their brethren in America upon the groundless
Speaker 1: surmises and mistaken facts so frequently delivered as truths in
Speaker 1: our public papers, and that they will consider the importance
Speaker 1: of a firm union between the two countries in affection
Speaker 1: as well as in government. Franklin's personas provided varying degrees
Speaker 1: of cover. Readers in Philadelphia caught on that Richard Saunders
Speaker 1: was Franklin. Americanus and Benevolus too, were obvious pseudonyms fit
Speaker 1: for an age when political opinion pieces often appeared under
Speaker 1: made up byelines. Sometimes this was to keep the authors
Speaker 1: out of trouble with the authorities. Equally, it reflected the
Speaker 1: philosophy that a persuisive argument depended on evidence and reasoning
Speaker 1: rather than the expertise of the writer. But many people
Speaker 1: who read about Polly Baker thought she was real. Franklin's
Speaker 1: parting alter ego appeared just weeks before his death. In
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety by, now a leader of the abolitionist movement
Speaker 1: in America, Franklin sent a petition to Congress urging an
Speaker 1: end to slavery. In response, slavery apologists mustered of vehement defense,
Speaker 1: citing economic necessity and religion in support of the institution.
Speaker 1: In high satirical style, Franklin thereupon claimed to have discovered
Speaker 1: a speech by one cd Mayemet Abraheim of Algiers justifying
Speaker 1: the enslavement of Christians. Quote if we cease our cruises
Speaker 1: against the Christians, how shall we be furnished with the
Speaker 1: commodities their countries produce which are so necessary for us?
Speaker 1: Asked Ibrahim. Quote if we forbear to make slaves of
Speaker 1: their people, who in this hot climate are to cultivate ours,
Speaker 1: to fail to enslave Christians would deny them access to
Speaker 1: the true faith. Here they are brought into a land
Speaker 1: where the son of Islamism gives forth its light and
Speaker 1: shines in full splendor, and they have an opportunity of
Speaker 1: making themselves acquainted with the true doctrine, and thereby saving
Speaker 1: their immortal souls. Franklin's Ibrahim concluded, quote, let us then
Speaker 1: hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of
Speaker 1: Christian slaves end quote and accompanying this article, fun fact
Speaker 1: how Benjamin Franklin charted the Gulf Stream As Deputy Postmaster General,
Speaker 1: Franklin wondered why British male packet ships arriving in New
Speaker 1: York City were so much slower than American ships on
Speaker 1: similar routes. From his cousin, Captain Timothy Folger, a veteran whaler,
Speaker 1: Franklin learned that American whaling expeditions had been aware of
Speaker 1: the hidden eastbound current of warm water, one that British
Speaker 1: crews didn't know to avoid while sailing west. In seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, sharing credit with Folger, Franklin published a chart
Speaker 1: of this hidden current, a quote river in the ocean
Speaker 1: end quote. Following Franklin and Folger's map, ships knew to
Speaker 1: sail north of the current on the westbound journey from Europe,
Speaker 1: saving two weeks or more for some vessels that was
Speaker 1: nearly half the trip. Transatlantic trade and communications accelerated significantly
Speaker 1: as a result. Next, when a journalist took on corruption,
Speaker 1: he used a tool that hadn't been used much in
Speaker 1: American history. The unvarnished truth Lincoln Stephens was a reporter
Speaker 1: so dogged that political party bosses called him a quote
Speaker 1: born crook that's gone straight. In quote, he and his
Speaker 1: fellow muckrakers redefined modern journalism. John Grinspan, while we might
Speaker 1: imagine nineteenth century Americans living on isolated farmsteads, in fact,
Speaker 1: they were constantly receiving news from year and far. Trouble was,
Speaker 1: much of it was rotten. Openly partisan papers distorted nearly
Speaker 1: everything to suit the biases of their subscribers. The French
Speaker 1: sociologist Alexei de Tokeville was dismayed to find in the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties that the typical American reporter mostly resorted to
Speaker 1: a quote coarse appeal to the passions of his reader's
Speaker 1: end quote. For much of early American history, you just
Speaker 1: couldn't trust the news. The democratic innovation of accurate political
Speaker 1: reporting in the United States didn't arrive until around the
Speaker 1: turn of the last century. It took the ceaseless inquiries
Speaker 1: of Lincoln Stephens, a journalist so dogged that party bosses
Speaker 1: called him a born crook that's gone straight to teach
Speaker 1: citizens to a expect objectivity in news. Stephens went to
Speaker 1: the finest schools, but later wrote that his true education
Speaker 1: began with his reporting gigs, covering Wall Street and then
Speaker 1: crime for the New York Evening Post in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties. The Post was a reformist paper, and Stephens
Speaker 1: was expected to produce condemnations of corrupt bigwigs and bent lawman.
Speaker 1: Yet when he met crooks and cops, politicos and prostitutes,
Speaker 1: Stephens found their motivations far richer than the finger waggers acknowledged.
Speaker 1: He became obsessed with the systems that allowed malfeasance. Convinced
Speaker 1: that the country's corruption was part of a deeper story,
Speaker 1: Stephens set out with his little dog, Mickey, reporting for
Speaker 1: McClure's magazine. He came to appreciate the quote attractive candor
Speaker 1: of the honest crooks who ran urban political machines and
Speaker 1: would commits over how to steal an election or taxpayer fund.
Speaker 1: He became a regular at their headquarters, where party bosses
Speaker 1: petted Mickey while talking about the mechanics of corruption. Quote
Speaker 1: as one artist to another end quote. Stephen's stories became
Speaker 1: a sensation, inspiring a wave of journalists who uncovered social
Speaker 1: ills by investigating them up close. There had been prior
Speaker 1: to muckrakers, most notably Ida B. Wells and Henry Demorist Lloyd,
Speaker 1: who exposed lynchings and strike breaking, respectively. But it was
Speaker 1: his quote Shame of the City's end quote series that
Speaker 1: drew the connections between democratic failures and readers sitting in
Speaker 1: their parlors. Stephens discovered that his own middle class audience
Speaker 1: was partly responsible for political corruption In San Francisco. He
Speaker 1: found that nearly the whole business community was complicit with
Speaker 1: the party machine. In New York, he saw that Wall
Speaker 1: Street and Tammany Hall were deeply linked and rolled his
Speaker 1: eyes at respectable New York Yorker's occasional efforts to quote
Speaker 1: throw the rascals out before losing interest and electing another
Speaker 1: crook as mayor. It was an innovation in self criticism,
Speaker 1: asking leaders to consider how quote the misgovernment of the
Speaker 1: American people is misgovernment by the American people end quote,
Speaker 1: as Stephens put it in the introduction to his best
Speaker 1: selling collection, The Shame of the Cities. He capped off
Speaker 1: decades of work with the Funny Humane autobiography, published in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one. According to the novelist and critic Granville Hicks,
Speaker 1: the Autobiography of Lincoln Stephens was quote possibly the most
Speaker 1: influential book end quote of the New Deal era, prompting
Speaker 1: America to consider quote the goodness of bad men and
Speaker 1: the badness of good men end quote. Stephens redefined journalism,
Speaker 1: guiding the work of investigators like Bob Woodward and Carl
Speaker 1: Bernstein and advocates like Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader. For
Speaker 1: Stephens and other muckrakers, journalism meant speaking truth not just
Speaker 1: to power, but to one's own subscribers. And with this
Speaker 1: article fun fact, Lincoln Stephens also revolutionized the memoir. The
Speaker 1: Autobiography of Lincoln Stephens was published in nineteen thirty one
Speaker 1: in two volumes. A widely popular bestseller, the book traced
Speaker 1: Stephen's childhood in California and pioneering career as a muckraking journalist,
Speaker 1: and recounted his confrontations with party bosses as well as
Speaker 1: with national statesmen such as President's Theodore Roosevelt, who helped
Speaker 1: popularize the word muckraker, and Woodrow Wilson, and with figures
Speaker 1: like the crusading lawyer Clarence Darrow. The book was a
Speaker 1: landmark of style and of concept, helping establish a mode
Speaker 1: of confessional, self searching memoir that's still prevalent in the
Speaker 1: US and beyond. Next, a woman's right to vote was
Speaker 1: secured after work that was inspired by mothers and driven
Speaker 1: by maternal instincts, an appointment pattern. Many of the most
Speaker 1: important contributions to suffrage were enacted or inspired by mothers.
Speaker 1: By Lucia Graves as a young girl growing up on
Speaker 1: an Iowa farm after the Civil War, Carrie Chapman Cat
Speaker 1: was so swept up in the presidential election of eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two that she named her kittens after the candidates.
Speaker 1: One of the less comely fur balls was dubbed Ulysses
Speaker 1: s Grant. But when election day arrived, she was horrified
Speaker 1: to see her mother left behind as her father drove
Speaker 1: off with the farm lands in the family's three seated buggy.
Speaker 1: To the Poles quote, I was astonished that my mother
Speaker 1: did not go to vote. She recalled and shocked when
Speaker 1: she told me she had no legal right to do so.
Speaker 1: That moment set Cat on her path a life dedicated
Speaker 1: to the women's suffrage movement that culminated in the passage
Speaker 1: of the Nineteenth Amendment. Looking back on her achievements, she
Speaker 1: later wrote, I could never forget that rank and justice
Speaker 1: to my mother. Though we often speak of the mothers
Speaker 1: of suffrage in a metaphorical sense, Kat's story points to
Speaker 1: a more literal lineage as well. Suffrage succeeded because mothers
Speaker 1: who lacked any formal political power nonetheless inspired and shaped
Speaker 1: the work that secured it for their daughters and granddaughters.
Speaker 1: Susan B. Anthony inherited the reformist instincts of her Quaker household,
Speaker 1: and her mother managed a New York farm that became
Speaker 1: a hub for abolitionist organizing. Though Anthony herself never married
Speaker 1: or had children, she became something of a second mother
Speaker 1: to the children of Elizabeth Katy Stanton, caring for them
Speaker 1: so Stanton could write. All seven of those children lived
Speaker 1: to adulthood, and Stanton's youngest daughter, Harriet Eaton Stanton Blatch,
Speaker 1: extended her mother's legacy in a new direction by organizing
Speaker 1: wage earning women to take mass political action and urging
Speaker 1: wealthy women to march alongside them. A generation after Stanton
Speaker 1: and Anthony in the eighteen nineties, Mary Church Terrell, a
Speaker 1: civil rights strategist and educator, became the first president of
Speaker 1: the National Association of Colored Women and later helped found
Speaker 1: the n double ACP. Terrell wrote admiringly of her mother,
Speaker 1: a successful business woman born enslaved, who insisted her daughter
Speaker 1: received the higher education she'd been denied. I lift up
Speaker 1: my heart and gratitude to my mother for her foresight
Speaker 1: and for the sacrifice she made in my behalf. Terrell
Speaker 1: later wrote for Alice Paul, the radical strategist who co
Speaker 1: founded the National Woman's Party and led the White House
Speaker 1: pickets that helped force the Suffrage Amendment onto the national
Speaker 1: agenda in the nineteen tens. Support for women's suffrage had
Speaker 1: been taken for granted in her childhood home. Paul recalled
Speaker 1: her mother regularly bringing her to suffrage meetings, where she
Speaker 1: absorbed the value of uncompromising persistence. When you put your
Speaker 1: hand to the plow, you can't put it down until
Speaker 1: you get to the end of the row, Paul recalled
Speaker 1: her mother, advising. By nineteen sixteen, Kat was orchestrating the
Speaker 1: campaign that would carry the movement across the finish line.
Speaker 1: Her winning plan mapped a swift state by state push
Speaker 1: or ratification by three quarters of American state legislatures, as
Speaker 1: required to amend the Constitution. In the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty thirty five states had approved the amendment, one short
Speaker 1: of the number required. In Tennessee, the state Senate had
Speaker 1: approved the amendment, but the House was split. Then Harry Byrne,
Speaker 1: a twenty four year old Republican representative, reversed his anti
Speaker 1: suffrage position at the last moment. It was, of course,
Speaker 1: his mother who tipped the balance. Vote for suffrage, and
Speaker 1: don't keep them in doubt, she wrote. This concludes readings
Speaker 1: from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has been
Speaker 1: Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening, and have a great day.