Program Overview

On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, prohibiting states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. The Amendment was a victory for women’s rights and for equal suffrage. These online events commemorate the work of activists in Minnesota who ensured that right, and explores current debates and litigation over the Equal Rights Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

The week begins Monday evening with a showing of the documentary Citizen, on Minnesota women’s role in the fight for woman suffrage, followed by a conversation with producer Daniel Bergin and production assistant Anne Guttridge. Tuesday evening’s panel of eminent historians will discuss their work in Minnesota History (Fall 2020), on the history of Minnesota suffrage activity that changed ideas about citizenship and exposed the roles of gender, ethnicity, and race in the movement. On Wednesday afternoon, University of Florida Professor Danaya Wright will describe current litigation and activities to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment; a discussion follows with Mitchell Hamline Professor Joanna Woolman. On Thursday, Mitchell Hamline Professor Raleigh Levine will trace modern litigation on the Voting Rights Act and describe what issues lie ahead for this important federal law. Mitchell Hamline Black Law Student Association President Aretha Haynes will moderate. On Friday, Hamline University professor David Schultz and Madeline Thieschafer (Hamline CLA ‘20) will share their collaborative research on states that passed an Equal Rights Amendment.

Application for 7.0 CLE credits for the series is pending.

The week’s events are sponsored by the Hamline University Endowed Chair in the Humanities and Mitchell Hamline School of Law; and co-sponsored by The Infinity Project, Hamline University Legal Studies Department, Hamline University Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Hamline University Center for Justice and Law, Hamline University Social Justice Program, and the Hamline University History Department.

Minnesota women from our North Star state played a unique role in the fight for woman suffrage. Citizen explores the multigenerational march of Minnesota women for the franchise. From pioneering activists like Julia B. Nelson and Sarah Burger Stearns to Progressive Era leaders like Nellie Griswold Francis, the vote was seen as a mark of fuller citizenship and tool of change for concerns like healthcare, children, and women’s rights. But how did tensions between Black and white, native born and immigrant, and radical and moderate mar the movement? How did Minnesota’s suffragists mirror the national effort? This chronicle of Minnesotans’ role in achieving the 19th Amendment also suggests that the 70+ years of activism was itself an important badge of change and true democracy.

Daniel Pierce Bergin

Daniel Pierce Bergin is a producer, writer, and director whose work focuses on history, diversity, and community concerns. The Twin Cities PBS Executive Producer is a winner of 15 regional Emmy Awards. His notable productions include Jim Crow of the North, Lost Twin Cities 5, North Star: Minnesota’s Black Pioneers; Homeless Youth: Finding Home, and Out North: MNLGBTQ History. His documentary With Impunity: Men & Gender Violence was named ‘Best Documentary of 2012’ by Mpls/St. Paul Magazine. Bergin’s narrative films have screened at the American Film Institute, KQED San Francisco’s Living Room Film Festival, the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, and the Hollywood Black Film Festival. The Minneapolis native and University of Minnesota graduate has served as a director on the boards of several community media organizations including FilmNorth and PollenMidwest. Bergin has been an adjunct instructor at St. Cloud State University and lectured and presented in countless schools, colleges, and community settings. He has been recognized as a MN State Arts Board Fellow, a City Pages Artist of the Year, and was awarded a Bush Leadership Fellowship for his work in community media.

Anne Guttridge

Anne Guttridge is a Production Assistant at Twin Cities PBS where she works on local productions with the Minnesota Media Group. Since her start at TPT as an intern, she has worked on Emmy award-winning films and short-form video content for broadcast and digital platforms. In addition to her work with the Minnesota Experience team as an archival researcher, she has taken her passion for Minnesota history to TikTok, where she attempts to remind audiences that public media can be fun and cool.

This author roundtable features contributors to the groundbreaking Fall 2020 issue of Minnesota History focused on new histories of woman suffrage and women's rights. Participants will discuss the importance of studying Minnesota's role in the American woman suffrage movement; the history of state's legal initiatives and changes to the state Constitution to include women voters; how women advocated for voting rights, and shaped new ideas about citizenship; and how gender, ethnicity, and race shaped the movement in Minnesota. Q&A and discussion with the audience follows the roundtable. Audience members are encouraged to read the Fall 2020 issue of Minnesota History prior to the program (it is available online or for purchase) and to view the Votes for Women online exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Roundtable Speakers

Annette Atkins, professor emerita of history, Saint John's University/College of Saint Benedict.

Kristin Mapel Bloomberg, professor of women's and gender studies, legal studies faculty affiliate, and Hamline University Endowed Chair in the Humanities.

Jacqueline deVries, professor of history, Augsburg University.

Elizabeth Dillenburg, assistant professor of history, Ohio State University at Newark.

Hannah Dyson, Augsburg University, class of 2020.

Sara Egge, Claude D. Pottinger Associate Professor of History, Centre College, Kentucky.

William D. Green, professor of history and M. Anita Gay Hawthorne Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Augsburg University.

Frederick L. Johnson, independent scholar; Minnesota regional history author.

Lori Ann Lahlum, professor of history, Minnesota State University Mankato.

Kate Roberts, Senior Exhibit Developer, Minnesota Historical Society.

Laura Weber, Editor, Minnesota History, Minnesota Historical Society.

J.D. Zahniser, independent scholar; co-author, Alice Paul: Claiming Power (Oxford, 2014/2019).

The ERA was first proposed in Congress in 1923, but did not successfully emerge until 49 years later, in 1972, when it was sent to the states for ratification. Saddled with a 7-year deadline for state ratification, it ran into opposition from a conservative coalition that objected to women’s equality and feared the loss of women’s privileges. Forty-eight years later, however, in 2020 it received ratification by the 38th state, Virginia, queueing up a series of unprecedented constitutional questions. Does Congress have Article V power to impose a ratification deadline on the states? May the states rescind their ratifications before the necessary 3/4ths of ratifications? May the National Archivist, who is taxed with publishing the amendment, defer to the executive branch Justice Department in determining whether to publish or not? May Congress waive or remove the deadline, or vote to accept the ERA? The lean 70 words of Article V governing constitutional amendments provide little guidance on these issues which are currently in the federal courts. With a conservative majority on SCOTUS, and a bare democratic majority in Congress, what is likely to happen now that we have our first female vice president who has announced that the ERA is high priority? This presentation will explore those issues and the legal and political landscape for what could be our Twenty-Eighth Amendment.

Dayana Wright

Danaya Wright is the Clarence J. TeSelle Endowed Professor at the University of Florida, Levin College of Law. She has taught in law schools at Arizona State, Indiana University-Indianapolis, and Georgetown. She teaches Property, Constitutional Law, Trusts and Estates, Legal History, and the History of Women in the Law. She has authored dozens of articles and book chapters on such diverse subjects as English family law, American property law involving railroads and utilities, the Constitutional Law of Takings, and on the Equal Rights Amendment. Professor Wright holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins and a J.D. from Cornell University, as well as master’s degrees in English literature from the University of Arizona and in liberal education from St. John’s College. She has been working closely with the State of Virginia and Equality Now on amicus briefs in the ERA litigation and has blogged and spoken on the subject at events around the country.

Joanna Woolman

Joanna Woolman is an Associate Professor of Law and the Director of the Institute for Children, Families, and Communities at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. Professor Woolman researches, writes, and presents about women’s experiences in the child protection system and criminal justice system. She is a member of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Juvenile Protection and Adoption Rules Committee. She has been a public defender, directed MHSL’s Re-entry Clinic, and taught in its Child Protection Program and legal skills programs. She holds the J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

The Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, was groundbreaking civil rights legislation. The VRA’s purpose was to overcome the obstacles that states, counties, and cities put in place to keep Black Americans from exercising their right to vote, guaranteed by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. What are the events that led to its passage? How did it try to end voting discrimination against voters in racial and language minority groups? What difference has it made, including in the 2020 election? And what does the future hold now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that some of its provisions are unconstitutional? Mitchell Hamline Law Professor Raleigh Levine’s presentation will examine the VRA, describe its history, and consider where it stands today and what might be next. Mitchell Hamline’s BLSA President, Aretha Haynes, will moderate a discussion following Professor Levine’s talk.

Raleigh Levine

Professor Raleigh Levine’s academic interests focus on the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and press. Her passion for First Amendment rights stems from her pre-law school experience as a news editor and producer for CNN Headline News. After graduating with honors from Stanford Law School and clerking for the Ninth Circuit, she spent the first years of her legal career as a litigator specializing in speech and press issues, serving as an attorney for the Southern California ACLU and other public interest-oriented law firms. Her practice also involved significant litigation in Election Law, and her interest in that field, particularly in electoral speech issues, has heightened since she entered the legal academy. In addition to teaching, writing, and submitting amicus curiae briefs on First Amendment and Election Law topics on behalf of high-profile public interest organizations, she frequently serves as an expert on those issues for both local and national news media.

Aretha Haynes

Aretha Haynes is the current President of the Mitchell Hamline Black Law Student Association (BLSA). A winter 2021 graduate of the law school, Ms. Haynes is studying for the Georgia Bar examination even as she continues to serve as a volunteer on multiple boards and committees. Through her law school journey, she made the Dean’s List, participated in mock trial/moot court competitions, received the CALI award in family law, and won several scholarships. She is most proud of her volunteerism and, one day, plans to create her own Mobile Law Office to bring legal representation to underrepresented and marginalized communities.

Many states, beginning in the 1960s, added Equal Rights Amendments (ERAs) to their State Constitutions to formally and legally give women the same rights as men. But have they actually been helpful in advancing women’s rights? The impact of these ERAs can be observed by looking at the many factors that increase the likelihood of their passage, correlations between ERAs and gender inequality, and the inclusivity of the language used in the amendments themselves. Learn about the outcomes of cases brought under these amendments and whether the United States courtrooms are on the side of progress. By the end of this presentation, audience members will be equipped with knowledge that will allow them to advocate for women’s rights more effectively, understand which methods of advocacy have proven to be a lost cause, and speak knowledgeably about the role that courtrooms play in advancing gender equality.

Madeline Thieschafer

Madeline Thieschafer is a Hamline Alum (CLA 2020) who has always been committed to equity and justice. After graduating with her B.A. in Legal Studies and Spanish, Madeline accepted a position as a Bilingual Paralegal and Healthcare Navigator at Mid Minnesota Legal Aid, where she helps immigrants and people of low income obtain health insurance. However, her proudest achievement in the field of public interest is the completion of her senior thesis State Equal Rights Amendments: How the Language of the Law Affects Women’s Rights. Though the project comes from humble beginnings (being mentioned in passing during a first-year college course), it has blossomed into an extensive and thorough investigation of gender equality in the United States. Madeline hopes to continue examining the relationships between the laws of the United States and gender inequality as she enters law school Fall 2021.

David Schultz

David Schultz is the Distinguished University Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Hamline University, where he teaches across a wide range of American politics topics including public policy and administration, campaigns and elections, and government ethics. He is the author of 30 books and 100+ articles on various aspects of American politics, election law, and the media and politics, and he is regularly interviewed and quoted in the local, national, and international media on these subjects by agencies including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Economist, and National Public Radio. His most recent books are Presidential Swing States: Why Only Ten Matter (2015), Election Law and Democratic Theory (2014), and American Politics in the Age of Ignorance: Why Lawmakers Choose Belief Over Research (2013). A three-time Fulbright scholar who has taught extensively in Europe, Professor Schultz is the 2013 Leslie A. Whittington national award winner for excellence in public affairs teaching.