UNLADYLIKE: The Change Makers

Karnath: We take many things for granted today

without recognizing how many shoulders these were built upon.

Lindsey: Life in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century

is quite a complicated story.

Rapid industrialization,

urbanization,

immigrant communities,

new employment opportunities,

educational opportunities,

but also racial violence.

Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow,

xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment.

And so being able to have a voice politically

became increasingly important.

Women are organizing everywhere,

committed to these different struggles --

voting rights, anti-lynching campaigns,

racial uplift.

Women demanded new space and pushed the boundaries

of what being a lady means.

Kimberley: In 1895, there are women being arrested

for wearing pants in public

and actually being jailed for it.

Unger: The notion that mothers should not work outside the home

was omnipresent.

The percentage of women working

rises from 15% in 1870

to about 24% in 1920.

So it really tells you how much there was a taboo.

González: Men were representatives

of their families in the public square.

They were the ones who had access to the vote.

They were the ones that could run for office.

Kimberley: People believed at the time

that if women participate in education,

all of their energy will be sucked out

of their reproductive system,

which would eventually render the United States infertile.

González: There were women who left the home,

justifying their activities as reform

that needed to happen in a society

where the politicians were not paying attention

to issues that women cared about.

Margulies: 100 years ago, many women defied the odds

to assume leadership

without a roadmap --

to fight for suffrage, serve in government,

and lead the struggle for civil rights.

Among them, five courageous changemakers

whose impact continues to shape U.S. society today.

Unger: These women are facing an enormous amount of criticism,

efforts to silence them,

tell them to go back to their rightful place.

This is an era of firsts.

It's really quite remarkable what they were able to achieve.

Margulies: Few women in the 19th century

had run for public office, let alone won.

But some decided that getting elected

was the best way to effect change,

and Martha Hughes Cannon --

the country's first woman state senator --

was one of them.

Martha "Mattie" Hughes was born in Wales in 1857,

to a family that converted to the new religion of Mormonism.

They emigrated to the U.S. when she was 2 years old,

seeking religious freedom,

and joined church settlements in the Rocky Mountains.

Reeder: The second half of the 19th century

was a really exciting time for Mormon women.

Martha grew up in a time

where suffrage had been given to Utah women in 1870,

in local elections.

They were the second territory that gave women suffrage.

Wyoming was the first.

The West gave women different experiences, in the sense

that they are building their frontiers,

their settlements from scratch.

Margulies: Starting at the age of 15,

Hughes worked as a typesetter for The Woman's Exponent,

a newspaper published by women

of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Reeder: When Mattie Hughes walked to work

in the muddy streets of Salt Lake City,

she would wear men's boots and tuck up her skirt

so she didn't get muddy.

Margulies: In the paper, Hughes read

that the University of Michigan

had opened its medical school to women.

She resolved to become a doctor.

Reeder: Mattie saw her baby sister die.

She saw her father die three days after they arrived

in Salt Lake City.

And she saw in the early settlement of Utah,

many women and children die.

And I think this was a huge influence on her decision

to become a doctor.

Cannon: "Let us strive to become women of intellect

and endeavor to do some little good

while we live in this protracted gleam called life."

Margulies: After studying chemistry at Deseret University,

Hughes attended medical school in Michigan

and a graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reeder: She was the only female in a class of 75,

and she was often asked to sit apart

from her male counterparts, so as not to distract them.

Margulies: Hughes returned to Salt Lake City

with her medical degrees in 1882,

and at age 25 opened a private practice

out of her mother's home.

Reeder: Women in Utah soon realized

that they needed a space

where they could practice medicine and care for women,

and so they created the Deseret hospital,

with female doctors and female nurses.

In 1882, Martha Hughes became the head surgeon.

She also practiced midwifery,

and she had the fastest horse that she could find

so that she could get to women who were in labor

as quickly as she could.

Cannon: "I would be one of the toughest

and most rugged women in the Rocky Mountains."

Margulies: Hughes fell in love with a prominent church leader

serving on the board of the hospital,

who already had three wives and 21 children.

Reeder: Angus Cannon was 23 years older than she was,

and she was married to him as his fourth wife.

Mormon women, because they were polygamist,

interestingly enough, they were able to let go

of some of their domestic duties

and allow their sister wives to do more

public and civic and political things.

Cannon: "A plural wife is not half as much a slave

as a single wife.

If her husband has four wives,

she has three weeks of freedom every single month."

Reeder: Only 30% of the population in Utah

actually practiced polygamy,

but plural marriage at this time was a tricky thing for Mormons.

While they firmly proclaimed their right

to religious freedom,

federal legislation put serious repercussions on polygamy.

Margulies: In 1882, the U.S. passed the Edmunds Act,

which made polygamy a crime punishable by 5 years in prison.

Reeder: As a result, when Mattie was married in 1884,

she had to do so in secret.

She couldn't even tell her parents.

Margulies: As part of a federal crackdown

against polygamous families,

Angus Cannon was arrested and put on trial in 1885.

Hughes was summoned to testify against him

and other Mormon fathers whose children she had delivered.

Cannon: "I am considered an important witness,

and if it can be proven that these children

have actually come into the world,

their fathers will be sent to jail."

Reeder: She didn't want to testify against her husband.

And the way to counter this was to go into hiding,

or what was known as "the underground."

Margulies: In 1886, Hughes fled with her first child,

under a false name -- Maria Munn --

while her husband served his prison sentence.

She lived in hiding in England for two years

among other Mormons in exile.

Cannon: "You could never realize my present situation

unless you were suddenly banished 7,000 miles,

your identity lost, afraid to audibly whisper your own name.

My nervous system has received a shock

that it will never entirely recover from, I fear."

Reeder: She also learned through letters,

always written in coded words,

that her husband Angus had taken both a fifth wife

and then later a sixth wife.

She was very discouraged in her marriage.

Cannon: "I grow heartily sick and disgusted with polygamy.

I should have given the whole plural system a wide berth.

If, after a marriage of nearly four years,

a man can't provide a wife and child with a home,

he isn't worth having."

Margulies: Despite her ambivalence about polygamy,

Hughes resumed her marriage to Cannon

upon her return from England in 1888.

But she briefly went into hiding again

when their second child was born.

In 1887, the federal government

increased its pressure on the church

by passing more anti-polygamy legislation.

Reeder: This act actually removed suffrage

from all women living in Utah,

whether they were plural wives or not,

and put serious repercussions on all those

who were practicing polygamy.

Margulies: In order to protect its own survival

and help the Utah Territory achieve statehood,

the church officially repudiated polygamy.

The Manifesto of 1890 prohibited new plural marriages,

but allowed existing polygamists to live more openly.

Hughes came out of hiding

and dedicated herself to social reform.

Reeder: Suffrage still had not been given back to Utah women.

So Mattie Hughes became actively involved