♪ ♪

(gulls squawking,
waves crashing)

NARRATOR:
By the fall of 1915,

there could scarcely have been
an adult in the United States

unaware of the controversy
over votes for women.

It had been circulating
on the periphery

of the national conversation

for six decades,

and during the previous
five years,

had moved decisively
to the center--

a crusade of the few
blooming into a mass movement,

their demand for the ballot
growing ever more insistent.

Hotly debated in town halls,
on street corners,

and around dinner tables
the country over,

woman suffrage had divided
husbands and wives,

siblings,
women, one from another,

and had aroused
vociferous opposition

from every quarter
of American society:

industrial interests,
politicians,

and not least, the states
of the former Confederacy,

where the franchise was
a jealously guarded instrument

of white supremacy.

With defeats far more numerous
than victories,

new voices had risen to champion
new, more aggressive tactics,

and the suffrage movement
had splintered over strategy,

highlighting the fundamental
question of what it would take

for American women
to finally win the ballot.

What no one anticipated in 1915

was the lengths to which they
would actually have to go.

MARTHA JONES:
This is a real struggle.

It is a struggle over ideas.

Who are women,
what can they be?

What can they do,
who should they be?

It is a struggle over power.

Who gets to say
what this nation is

and how it does what it does?

ALEXANDER KEYSSAR:
The fact that there is
resistance

to the expansion
of democratic rights

is not uniquely American.

When people have some rights
that other people don't have,

you have to convince them
to share.

Not everybody's
going to want to.

♪ ♪

(car engine puttering,
horn honking)

(crowd cheering)

(children chattering)

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
On September 16, 1915,

at the Panama-Pacific
International Exposition

in San Francisco,

four women--
virtual strangers--

climbed into a waiting car,

drove through the fairground
gates,

and headed east

to launch a new phase
in the very long struggle

for woman suffrage,

now in its 67th year
and counting.

It was close to midnight
when they set out.

Their final destination:
Washington, DC.

(fireworks exploding)

MARY WALTON:
The car takes off,
very, very dramatic.

Lights and fireworks,
and it's on its way.

NARRATOR:
With few personal possessions,

the travelers' cargo consisted
primarily of an enormous scroll

which had been gathering
signatures

at the Expo for months:

a petition
demanding an amendment

to the U.S. Constitution

that would enfranchise all of
the nation's women at once.

Bearing it across the continent
was Frances Jolliffe,

42 and a drama critic
from Washington state;

poet Sara Bard Field,
33 and a native of Oregon;

and two Swedes
who had volunteered

their brand-new
Willys-Overland

for the trip.

(engine running)

The "envoys,"
as they were called,

would be taking
a circuitous route,

stopping for pre-arranged
rallies, receptions,

and press interviews

in 48 different cities.

Not counting unplanned detours,

the itinerary
was nearly 5,000 miles.

On a good road,
with the top up,

they'd be lucky to log
20 miles per hour.

WALTON:
You have to imagine roads
at that time.

Roads are like tracks across
the prairies left by wagons.

They had to cross the desert.

There are no maps.

TINA CASSIDY:
There was no interstate
highway system.

There weren't streetlights.

There weren't pay phones.

There was really
no infrastructure

to support a crazy trip
like this.

NARRATOR:
Already by Sacramento,
Frances Jolliffe had had enough,

leaving Sara Bard Field alone
with the Swedes,

one of whom talked incessantly.

"Like Odysseus, I have many
experiences to relate,"

Field telegrammed a friend
from the road:

12 miles through alkali salt pan
in Nevada's Great Basin,

an experience Field described
as "plowing through dust";

snow drifts so high in Wyoming

that everyone had to get out
and push;

a mud hole in Kansas
that swallowed the Overland

as if it were a shoe.

CASSIDY:
Newspaper outlets would call in
with scenes from the road.

The whole adventure of it

was really captivating
for the nation.

Women were quite literally
crossing

a new divide in America,

and being much more vocal
and aggressive--

demanding the vote,
not asking politely.

NARRATOR:
The stunt was the handiwork
of Alice Paul,

a 30-year-old Quaker
with a PhD

from the
University of Pennsylvania

and a playbook inspired
by her apprenticeship

with Britain's notoriously
militant suffragettes.

Having been recently ousted

from the movement's
pre-eminent organization,

the more moderate

National American
Woman Suffrage Association,

Paul now led the upstart
Congressional Union,

a small cadre
of committed activists

who shared her impatience
for the ballot

and her willingness to employ
unladylike tactics to win it.

CASSIDY:
Women had been at this
for decades,

and the movement
was going nowhere.

And Alice Paul really believed
that the answer

was in needing a new approach.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
While her one-time allies
from the National Association

continued to wage the battle
state-by-state,

re-enacting the by-now
tired ritual

of pleading with male voters
on street corners,

Paul had set her sights
on the federal amendment,

and had appealed instead
to female voters

from the 11 so-called
free states of the West,

where women already were
fully enfranchised.

As the popular humor magazine
"Puck" acknowledged

with a two-page spread in its
special 1915 Suffrage Issue,

the four million women
of the free states

were poised to liberate
their sisters elsewhere.

All they had to do was vote
in solidarity with the cause.

Alice Paul's envoys would
deliver that message

to Capitol Hill

and make it known
to the Democrats--

who held the presidency

and controlled
both houses of Congress--

that thousands of Western women
were prepared

to hold them responsible

for the federal
suffrage amendment.

J.D. ZAHNISER:
The idea was to get
the attention of the party

and convince them
that women's votes

can alter the balance of power,

and persuade them
to push through

the constitutional amendment.

♪ ♪

NARRATOR:
By the time the envoys' Overland
reached Washington, DC,

on the morning of December 6,

four states in the East

had voted to keep women
from the ballot box.

And even those suffragists who
dismissed Paul as a "militant"

had begun to see the wisdom

in her demand
for the federal amendment.

President Wilson received
the envoys graciously.

"Nothing could be more
impressive," he said,

surveying the petition.

"This visit of yours
undoubtedly will make it

"necessary for all of us
to consider very carefully

what it is right for us to do."

What the president did not say

was that he had already decided
what was right to do.

As he'd put it to a friend
just the night before,

"Woman suffrage will make

"absolutely no change
in politics.

"It is the home that will be
disastrously affected.

Who is going to make the home,
if the women don't?"