UT Tower Fellow’s Project Highlights Southern Women’s Suffrage Movement
Ellen Temple’s documentary film, “Citizens at Last,” shines a light on how women won the right to vote in Texas
Ellen Temple has years of experience documenting Texas women’s history — in fact, she is a pioneer in the field. She collaborated with researchers and academics to publish “Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas,” a seminal work that compiled over 30 key documents illuminating the stories of the women who fought for and won the right to vote in Texas. But, when she came to Tower Fellows, Temple had a new vision for bringing these women’s stories to life: a documentary film.
Like many Tower Fellows candidates, Temple found herself at a career crossroads after accomplishing many professional goals in publishing, women’s history, education, and conservation. “I was at a stage in my life where I was looking for a change,” she says. “I thought that it would be a lot of fun to come here and have a chance, at my period in life, to learn something new.” The Tower Fellows program welcomes a small community of accomplished individuals like Temple to The University of Texas at Austin for a year of specialized coursework, events, and collaboration with experts across fields, helping Fellows create a path for their next chapter in life.
Upon entering the program, Tower Fellows are given the space to explore new passions and set ambitious goals for their coursework. For Temple, this meant finally pursuing her long-held dream of filmmaking. “I’d always dreamed about filmmaking, but I didn’t have the skills. It takes a tremendous amount of technical and artistic skill,” she says. During a special film screening for Tower Fellows, she encountered Nancy Schiesari, a member of UT’s filmmaking faculty and an award-winning independent filmmaker. Temple was deeply moved by Schiesari’s film “Canine Soldiers: the Militarization of Love,” and her program advisers encouraged her to reach out to Schiesari and pursue an independent filmmaking study.
The pair met for coffee to discuss what kind of film they could make together, and the idea for a film based on Temple’s book was born. “I initially had another kind of film in mind. But, Nancy had read my bio, and she said, ‘Well, have you thought about a film about the suffrage movement?’ We agreed to make a documentary film about the suffrage movement in time for the celebration of the passage of the 19th Amendment.” The rest was history — and hard work, too.
Throughout the project, Temple embraced the role of co-producer, collecting research, primary sources, and interviewees, while also taking the lead on the film’s funding and promotion. Meanwhile, Schiesari brought experience from directing two previous award-winning historical documentaries for PBS, and used her storyboarding and cinematography skills to bring their shared vision to life. The two made a formidable team and worked closely together from start to finish, while also collaborating with experts across academia to the arts and beyond. Temple gathered the expertise of leading scholars in Texas women’s history — many of whom were old friends from her publishing career and her work with the Texas State Historical Association — and Ph.D. candidates and academics based in UT’s Department of History and other Southern institutions. They also tapped into dramatic talent, including collaborating with local theater director Melba Martinez as associate producer and casting director, to bring the women suffragists’ stories and words to life through reenactment and voiceover.
The final product is a testament to the tireless dedication and creative synergy of female artists and scholars, united in their mission to shine a light on the stories of the women who won the right to vote in Texas and advanced the broader suffrage movement in the South. Framed by the backdrop of the Texas Capitol — which symbolized an insurmountable fortress for women in the 19th and 20th centuries — “Citizens at Last” depicts the struggles and victories of women’s suffragists through narration, dramatization, and expert interviews. The film focuses on six Texas women who organized, demonstrated, and won the right to vote for women: Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Christia V. Daniels Adair, Annette Finnigan, Mariana Thompson Folsom, Jovita Idár, and Maude Craig Sampson. Notably, many of these women’s efforts didn’t stop with the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave only white women the right to vote in Texas. They continued to fight for civil rights for Black Texans and immigrants from Mexico, ensuring that all could exercise their right to vote without repression or intimidation.
Before Temple and her peers undertook the work of documenting the suffragists’ activism, many of their stories were left untold. Much of the information about these women and their work was discovered from their personal correspondence and decades-old newspaper archives. One of the biggest challenges that the filmmakers faced was to weave together the fragments of their subjects’ lives into one cohesive story of the women’s suffrage movement in Texas — but, with the of voice actors, reenactors, visual and effects artists under Schiesari’s direction, translating the source material of “Citizens at Last” from page to screen was one of the biggest emotional payoffs of the project. “To see them come to life for the first time on a big screen with sound effects and voices was a huge thrill,” Temple says. “I listened to the voiceover of a letter that Minnie Fisher Cunningham wrote, and I was so moved. You can read, but to hear it said aloud — it just fills you with emotion.”
Although most of the events in the documentary took place nearly a century ago, Temple and Schiesari hope that the suffragists’ stories continue to resonate with and inspire audiences in 2024 — especially as Texans gear up to vote in the upcoming November election. “These women didn’t have armies. They didn’t fight a civil war. They used a hundred years, generations of struggle and talent and moments of brilliance, failures to achieve that. And because they knew that they needed the tool of voting to make lives better for their families, for themselves,” Temple says. “It took generations of courage, talent, and persistence to get the Voting Rights Act. So that’s the message of the film: Never give up. We’ve seen that laws can change, so how can we keep them moving forward to make the promise of democracy a reality?” The triumph and promise of the voting rights movement is captured by Temple’s favorite quote from suffragist and former Texas Secretary of State Jane Y. McCallum: “With what high hopes and enthusiasm, women stepped forth into a world in which they were citizens at last!”
The feature length version of “Citizens at Last” is available to stream for free on PBS Austin. In addition, the Briscoe Center for American History will screen the film alongside four other short films on Texas women as part of their “Hidden from History” program on Oct. 3. Doors open at 6:00 PM and the screenings will begin at 6:30.
To learn more about becoming a Tower Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, visit the program’s website.
Story by Amanda Waxman
