The 19th Amendment with Dolly Parton

More Perfect

WNYC Studios

Wnyc, Scotus, Perfect, History, Court, More, Documentary, Courses, Supreme, Education, Society & Culture

4.8 • 14.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2018

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode Four begins as all episodes should: with Dolly Parton. Parton wrote a song for us (!) about the 19th Amendment and women (finally) getting the right to vote.Also in this episode: Our siblings at Radiolab share a story with us that they did about how the 19th Amendment almost died on a hot summer night in Tennessee. The 19th Amendment was obviously a huge milestone for women in the United States. But it was pretty well-understood that this wasn’t a victory for all women; it was a victory for white women. People of color have faced all sorts of barriers to voting throughout our nation's history. This includes poll taxes, which were fees people had to pay in order to vote. The 24th Amendment eliminated federal poll taxes in 1964. We hear a song inspired by the 24th Amendment, created for us by Caroline Shaw. Kevin Morby made an excellent song for us about the 24th, too. Check it out here.

Finally, Simon Tam, from the band The Slants tells the story of the Supreme Court case about their name, and talks about the song they wrote about the 18th and 21st Amendments for our album. (It’s a jam!)

In Season Three, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We're taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This episode is best listened to alongside "27: The Most Perfect Album," an entire album (an ALBUM!) and digital experience of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

You can listen to all of the songs on "27: The Most Perfect Album" on YouTube and watch music videos from the album, including this one.

Follow us on Instagram, Threads and Facebook @moreperfectpodcast, and X (Twitter) @moreperfect.

Transcript

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0:06.6	which I know you know. You know that I know you know, which is that more perfect needs you.
0:17.9	The only reason we were able to do this season at all
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0:26.4	Now this project came about because we were looking at the Supreme Court and we wanted to know how did we get here.
0:28.4	It's a question, many of us are asking right now. This season we wanted to take it in a different direction.
0:35.6	We brought you 27 The Most Perfect Album. Kind of an homage to Schoolhouse Rock.
0:41.6	That's how I learned about the government. And the idea was like in
0:44.8	this civics challenge moment that we're all living through, let's get musicians together
0:48.9	to help us bring the amendments to the Constitution to life.
0:54.0	Now in the podcast, we're telling stories about the amendments.
0:57.4	Convening a conversation about this ongoing struggle
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