From the director of the Emmy Award winning documentary HOME
After the Vote is the story of women’s impact on American politics after they won the right to vote. Spanning the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s women with unprecedented levels of influence and power impacted social reform and political corruption.
ABOUT THE FILM
In this feature documentary, the story of women in the post suffrage era changes our understanding of women’s political history in America. Of profound importance, it includes women in the historical narrative as never before. Much is known about the suffrage era and the feminist movement of the 1960s and ’70s. But what about the years in between?
Women learned how to negotiate power in their own unique ways prior to and immediately after national suffrage. In 1917 women in the state of NY won the right to vote, three years before the passage of the 19th Amendment. A year later, in 1918, a woman named Belle Moskowitz became one of Governor Al Smith’s closest advisors. By the time Smith was running for president in 1928, Moskowitz was wielding more political power than any woman in the United States. Now generally forgotten by the public, in her day, Belle Moskowitz was considered an almost legendary figure.
After winning the vote, women emerged from their suffrage networks and wielded unprecedented levels of influence and power in New York City, and on state and federal levels. They brought about progressive social change, and blazed the path for the modern feminist movement. These women were deeply engaged in: reforming the city charter and municipal justice system, creating low-income housing, advancing women’s legal and reproductive rights, restricting child labor, creating a minimum wage and winning the right to serve on Juries.
In the 1930s women were at the forefront of inquiries into the court scandals that brought down mayor Jimmy Walker, swept Fiorello La Guardia into office, reduced the power of Tammany Hall and modernized the city’s administration. During his twelve years in office, La Guardia appointed over one hundred women into his administration’s leadership ranks including Jane Bolin, the first African American judge in the nation.
In addition to this hotbed of activity in New York, opportunities for women greatly expanded in Washington during the New Deal. Molly Dewson pushed for minimum wage. Mary McLeod Bethune was an advisor to the President and Frances Perkins became the first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet. Part architect of the New Deal, she forged the blueprint of legislation finally enacted as the Social Security Act, old age pensions, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation and aid to the needy and disabled.
Armed with the vote, these women harnessed the political party system to bring about progressive social and political change and served as the role models for the generations of political women to come.
About the Filmmaker
DAWN SCIBILIA
Producer/Writer/Director
Dawn Scibilia’s debut documentary, HOME won an Emmy Award for writing and two Emmy Award nominations for Best Documentary and Best Photography. Dawn co-produced, directed, photographed, and edited the documentary featuring Alan Cooke and New York-based notables: Susan Sarandon, Liam Neeson, Rosie Perez, Woody Allen, Elaine Kaufman, Pete Hamill, Frank and Malachy McCourt, Fran Lebowitz, Colin Quinn, Alfred Molina, and a host of immigrants and native New Yorkers. Dawn began her career in the industry as a Screenplay Analyst, Film Runner and Production Assistant, and has worked on New York-based TV shows, music videos, and major studio motion pictures. She has written, directed, shot and edited short films and directed full length and one act plays with material ranging from Noel Coward to modern original comedy and period drama. Dawn is a native New Yorker and graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Advisors
Elisabeth Israels Perry*
Chief historical advisor, granddaughter of Belle Moskowitz. Professor Emeritus of History & Women’s & Gender Studies, Saint Louis University. The film is largely based on the historical research contained in Elisabeth’s biography of Belle Moskowitz, Feminine Politics & the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith, Oxford University Press and her forthcoming book, After the Vote: Feminist Politics in La Guardia’s New York, Oxford University Press.
Susan Ware Honorary Women’s Suffrage Centennial Historian of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; General Editor, American National Biography, Oxford University Press.
Blanche Wiesen Cook Distinguished professor of history and women’s studies at the John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She was chosen as Scholar of the Year in 1996 by the New York State Council on the Humanities. Her biography Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One received the 1992 Biography Prize from the Los Angeles Times as well as the Lambda Literary Award. Among her three volume biography on Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Penguin, 2016)and other books is The Declassified Eisenhower. She has served as vice president for research of the American Historical Association and as vice president and chair of the Fund for Open Information and Accountability and was cofounder and cochair of the Freedom of Information and Access Committee of the Organization of American Historians.
Miriam Cohen Evalyn Clark Professor of History at Vassar College. Her specialties include the history of American women and twentieth-century social history. Her first book, Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in New York City was published by Cornell University Press in 1993. She has published numerous articles on the history of social welfare in Europe and the United States. Julia Lathrop: Social Service and Progressive Reform was published in 2017 by Westview Press.
Barbara Winslow Professor Emerita, Secondary Education Department, Social Studies Program, School of Education, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Brooklyn College of the City of New York; Founder and Director Emerita of the Shirley Chisholm Project; Coeditor of Clio in the Classroom: A Guide for Teaching U.S. Women’s History.
Susan Goodier PhD lecturer in history at SUNY Oneonta, department of History, Women’s and Gender Studies. She is an Affiliate Editor, New York History Journal and is a Public Scholar for Humanities NY and author of No Votes for Women: The New York State Anti-Suffrage Movement, University of Illinois Press and co authored Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State, with Karen Pastorello, Cornell University Press
NOTE: We are currently working on adding additional scholars to advise on the role of African American women in the movement.
*Ms. Perry passed away after a long illness on November 11, 2018. The film is dedicated to her. Elisabeth’s contribution to After the Vote is invaluable.
DONORS
Foundations
Yip Harburg Foundation
IfundWomen Donors
Maudie McCormick
Libby B
Susan Ware
Miriam Cohen
Margaret Martin
Ann Marie Trnka
Ava Trnka
Beth Kelly
Laurie Weltz
Jane Applegate