TR and the Gents: At Sagamore Hill, 4 February 2020

On February, 4, 2020, the National Park Service invited me, along with my friend Natalie Naylor, to speak to teachers from across Long Island during a day-long suffrage training seminar at Sagamore Hill. It’s  a wonderful site, once the permanent home of the Theodore Roosevelts and the (first) summer White House while he was president.

We gathered in the second floor conference room of the second home on the large estate, built for one of the Roosevelt children. At the side of the room was this banner from Roosevelt’s failed Bullmoose campaign for the presidency in 1912.

Lauren Berger, of the Sagamore Hill staff, organized the event

and attracted a full house.

Naylor, president of the Nassau County Historical Society and a professor emerita at Hofstra, spoke first.

We toured the Roosevelt home (and marveled at its many animal head trophies), had lunch, and

then I told the tale of the men of the suffrage movement, adding a new section on TR and his equivocal response to the movement over the years. This changed only in 1912 when he formed the Bullmoose Party and pointedly sought the support of women voters from states that had already approved changes to their state constitutions–more than a million of them at the time.

I wanted to title the speech like this

but was quickly disabused of the idea by Natalie, who schooled me. Only the press called TR “Teddy” and he didn’t like it, she said. So TR it became and here is the brief  TR portion of my remarks.

Lovely day. Below, please find links to some documents provided by Lauren on Tuesday.

TR_Suffrage_Cartoon_Sources

TR_Suffrage_Quotes

And here are some of the images from my PowerPoint and the 90-second video about the men’s league.