Last updated: September 12, 2023
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Podcast 136: Preserving and Sharing the Story of Women's Suffrage
A Partnership between NPS and the National Women’s Party
Aug 26 2020 NPS photo
Joanne Westbrook: So my name is Joanne Westbrook, and I work for the National Park Service. I am one of the museum curators for the National Mall and Memorial Park. It is a rather large park, with more than 32 individual sites and reservations across the District of Columbia. So we've got a pretty big reach, and my specific responsibilities are working with Ford's Theater National Historic Site, and the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument.
And the relationship with the Park Service and the NWP, the National Women's Party, goes back to the 1970s. So the National Women's Party have their final headquarters on Second Street, right across from what is now the Supreme Court. It wasn't there originally when they bought the house. And in the 1960s, it came under threat from development for the Hart Office Building, which is right next door now. And there was a large outcry from the Washington, DC community to protect the house, not only because of the work of the NWP and their contribution to women's suffrage and then women's rights throughout the 20th century, but also because it is one of the oldest standing buildings in Washington today.
So a lot of preservation support came out, and they were able to successfully lobby Congress to not take the main building. There were some other buildings next door that NWP owned that were demolished, unfortunately. But the main house, what used to be known as this Little Belmont House, is still standing.
In the 1970s, the National Women's Party wanted to take this a step further, to make sure they wouldn't have to have this discussion and this public outcry to help them again. And so in the 1970s, they were successful in getting the house listed both on the National Register and as a national historic landmark, and they were able to successfully lobby Congress to create a partnership agreement with Department of the Interior, through the National Park Service, who helped them maintain the grounds and the collection.
And then in 2016, President Obama issued an order to make the site a National Monument, so the National Park Service was given the house, and the National Women's Party was allowed to continue to use it as their headquarters and maintain the collections on-site. So we have been close partners for over four decades now.
The Collections of the National Women’s Party
NPS Photo
Joanne Westbrook: Yeah, absolutely. So the National Women's Party has actually been collecting since the 19-teens, when they were lobbying Congress for the right, for women's suffrage. And luckily, we had some women in the party who were very forward-thinking and knew that this was going to be an important organization and important work to commemorate for the future. So they began collecting a lot of two-dimensional objects, the archives, things like that. Some of them, they donated to the Library of Congress in the 1920s. And as you said, we have an incredible collection of textiles that they used in their marches, in their protests. Everything from the iconic tricolor banners that they carried on their banner poles to banners made in honor of different women, banners that were carried by different groups of professional workers, artists, women in the federal government, banners carried by state contingents who came in to lobby for women's suffrage.
So it's really incredible, and the collections also have quite a bit of other material related to the work of the NWP, so we have a lot of the printing blocks that were used to create their publications, first with the Suffragists and then with equal rights. We also have quite a bit of furniture that the NWP used, from the teens down into the 1990s, when they were still lobbying for women's rights and hosting different events and different people from Congress, all sorts of movers and shakers in the city of Washington, DC. So it's a fantastic collection.
Jason Church: So is the National Women's Party still collecting banners and protest material?
Joanne Westbrook: So the National Women's Party actually ceased their lobbying efforts in 1997 and became a 501(c)(3) organization focused really on education about their work and about the continued need for work for women's equality in the United States and around the world. So they're not collecting as heavily as they used to. However, they did collect a little bit around the Women's March back in 2017.
Jason Church: So if someone comes to visit the collection, what would they expect to see?
Joanne Westbrook: The collections that are on site normally and available for visitors to see include scrapbooks that were created by some of the founding members. There are a lot of bold materials, so some of their publications, a lot of the pamphlets they were handing out in their campaign for women's suffrage. We also have some really neat commemorative pieces that they would do as well, little ceramic figurines. We've got a makeup container branded with Logan for women's suffrage. We've got sashes of course. We also have, what I think are really cool are three pieces of textile that were stolen by one of the women who were arrested when they were being held in the workhouse. It's some really iconic, really important pieces talking about the work at the NWP and what it took to have this successful campaign for women's suffrage.
Caring for Textiles
Collections of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/item/mnwp000192/)
Joanne Westbrook: So I love textiles and I also hate textiles from a preservation standpoint. So I do have some conservation training early in my grad school career before I realized that I wanted to work with collections on more of a holistic level. So my lens in viewing collections is always from that preservation standpoint and textiles present very unique challenges, especially I think the textiles of the National Women's Party present even more unique challenges because many times when the women were putting together these textiles that were part of their marches and their protests, so it's costumes that they had in tableaus; there are tabards that they would wear over their clothing. They weren't making them like they would make their own clothing, like they would make textiles that they knew would be used many times and needed to have a long life.
So textiles are very fragile normally, light damages them and you can't undo it. It all adds up through the lifetime of an object. If they're dirty, the dirt can also damage them more when they're in storage. And we see that a lot with women's party textiles because as you can imagine, they were wearing these marching through the streets even when they were getting arrested. And so we find there's been a lot of wear and tear on these textiles and that ages them and makes them a little more vulnerable to the agents of decay. So part of how we deal with these challenges is we try and store them properly as much as we can.
We, with all the banners, we roll them in, you get a tube and muslin and you wrap it and make sure that it's protected from light and other pollutants as you can. For as many of them as we can, we keep them in the Park Service’s Museum Resource Center, which is a 53,000 square foot climate controlled facility out in the suburbs of Washington DC to help prolong their life. We try and keep the textiles on a rotation when they're on exhibit. So if you go to the site in one of the rooms, you can see a cap and a cape, and we rotate that out every few months to try and limit the damage that we can. And we're actually really excited. We're looking to have a collection condition survey done this fall to have some expert conservators come in and kind of look at the collections and give us an update on our priorities for the second century of stewardship.
Objects of Work
Library of Congress
Joanne Westbrook: Oh my gosh, that's so hard. That's like being asked about your favorite child.
Jason Church: We won't tell the other objects what you choose.
Joanne Westbrook: I appreciate that. Oh my gosh, that's so difficult. I'm new to working with the Women's Party with their collection. Previously I had been at the Museum Resource Center working with the collections of other parks in the region. So I'm still learning about the collection. And honestly, the banners are great. The banners are iconic, but it's some of the printing blocks, and I know that sounds really weird, but it's a plate of metal. It's a wooden block. But I'm more concerned about the work of history, how these organizations did the work that they did to create a change in our country. And so for me, the printing blocks are really emblematic of that because so much of the work of the Women's Party was constantly pushing out their own publications. So not only the Suffragist and Equal Rights, but their pamphlet, their broadsides, educating the American people about why this was so necessary for women, this way to become more equal with men and this fundamental right for them to have.
And it was so impactful and so influential and it really turned the tide in suffrage and the American people's perspective on women's suffrage and how essential it was for them to get this right. And so I love these printing blocks and just thinking about the number of hands that held it and the purpose they put it towards and how it was one of their fundamental ways to reach the American public and really change the tide on women's suffrage in America. And we do in fact have the printing blocks that they used for the program that they handed out for that first march in 1913. And we were just working with that the other day. And I think that's why it's foremost in my mind.
Jason Church: And you have the printed material that matches all the printing blocks?
Joanne Westbrook: I think we do, between what the Women's Party is still managing today and then also what they had given to the Library of Congress I'm pretty sure. No one has had the time to go through the printing blocks and start matching up the publications and how the images were used, but it's a future project that I'm already starting to plan out in my head to work with the Women's Party on getting all those things matched up.
Jason Church: That would be a fantastic project.
Joanne Westbrook: Absolutely. And I think the printing blocks are also a really cool way for our interpreters to have some hands-on activities with the kids. Because with museum collections, a lot of times they're behind glass, they're kind of remote, especially some of the printing blocks that have raised metal designs. So the Nina Allender cartoons, we have a lot of those. We could make those 3D printed and then that could be an activity that our interpreters have with students on teaching them this is how the work gets done, this is how you do the work of progressive action and activism and draw parallel with some of the things that are going on today and have them stamp and make their own publications, which I think would be really cool.
Collection Items on Loan
LOC 97500088 Alice Paul
Joanne Westbrook: The National Women's Party, I think has between six and eight loans right now. As you can imagine, it's a of climate increased attention. So right now we've got loans with the Brandywine River Museum, with the Library of Congress, with the National Archive, Virginia Historical Society, the Library of Virginia. The Skirball Cultural Center has actually borrowed two pins to do a really exceptional exhibit on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and that's a traveling exhibit that will be coming around the country over the next year and a half or so. So yes, we do loan objects out. It's always really important museum collections, not only that we preserve them, but allow them to be used for the benefit of the American public and to educate those folks who can't come into the house. Not everybody who wants to come into the house can come into the house, just because it is a small historic site.
Not everybody can travel to Washington DC. So it's really important for the NWP and the NPS to make these collections more available to the entire country and even folks around the world. Some of the most requested things are the banners. They're beautiful, they're iconic. It's what people really think of when they think of the Suffragist marching, the Silent Sentinels and the work of the NWP in the 19 teens to advocate for women's suffrage. We also frequently have requests for some of the membership buttons and some of the other historic memorabilia that's associated with the NWP and their struggle for suffrage. But of course, much of the most prominent historic memorabilia is already on display at site. And so we really like to keep it at the site as part of our exhibits. And because they are such important talking points for our rangers who interpret the site. It's an incredible collection.
It's been created and curated by women for its entire history and by the organization that created it. And again, it's just a fabulous collection of some of the work that the Women's Party was doing.
Only One Part of the Story
Joanne Westbrook: And of course, it's not the only story when talking about women's suffrage. It shouldn't be the only story since this was just one organization that was working towards suffrage. And we do have issues with the legacy of the NWP and NAFA and their illusion of women of minority groups who are also trying to advocate for women's rights. Then of course, the split in order to get southern states to sign on to women's suffrage was often to exclude black women voters because there was still such degradation and resistance in the South. So it's not the full story, but I think it's an important story and it's one that I'm proud that the Park Service is hoping to preserve in perpetuity for the benefit of the American public.
Jason Church: Well, thank you, Joanne. We really appreciate you talking to us today, and we will definitely recommend all of our listeners to go look at your virtual exhibits.
Joanne Westbrook: That is our sincere hope too. And in the meantime, people have two avenues for accessing the collections online and the house itself. They can go to the official NPS website for Belmont Paul, and that's nps.gov/bepa for Belmont Paul. Or they can find the National Woman's Party. And if you go online, you can find all of their collections have been made available. They've done a really fantastic job of getting their collections database online. So you can see an incredible amount of pictures and everything that tells the story of the historic work that the NWP has done. What we have today is only a small subset of what there was back in whatever period you're studying. And that's especially true with those banners because a lot of times the banners were ripped out of their hands, they were destroyed. So I am all the more grateful for the incredible collection banners that we have and their inspiring messages then, and I think a lot of them that are still applicable today.
Jason Church: Absolutely. Thank you, Joanne.
Joanne Westbrook: Absolutely.
Jason Church: Well, thank you, Joanne. We really appreciate you talking to us today, and we will definitely recommend all of our listeners to go look at your virtual exhibits.
Joanne Westbrook: That is our sincere hope too. And in the meantime, people have two avenues for accessing the collections online and the house itself. They can go to the official NPS website for Belmont Paul, and that's nps.gov/bepa for Belmont Paul. Or they can find the National Woman's Party. And if you go online, you can find all of their collections have been made available. They've done a really fantastic job of getting their collections database online. So you can see an incredible amount of pictures and everything that tells the story of the historic work that the NWP has done. What we have today is only a small subset of what there was back in whatever period you're studying. And that's especially true with those banners because a lot of times the banners were ripped out of their hands, they were destroyed. So I am all the more grateful for the incredible collection banners that we have and their inspiring messages then, and I think a lot of them that are still applicable today.
Jason Church: Absolutely. Thank you, Joanne.
Joanne Westbrook: Absolutely.
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