While women were part of American history from the outset, they did not win the right to vote until 1920. Readers of this engrossing history of the women’s suffrage movement will discover its roots in the abolitionist movement. They’ll read about the Declaration of Sentiments from the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, which stated, “all men and women are created equal.” The book also discusses how the fight for women’s rights continued after the right to vote had been won. An illustrated timeline, map, and treasure trove of historical photos enrich the learning experience.
Gold Medalist, 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the U.S. History Category Finalist for the 2018 Sally and Morris Lasky Prize presented by the Center for Political History at Lebanon Valley College The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York's most powerful men formed the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. Brooke Kroeger explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they did at the behest of the movement's female leadership, and why. She details the National American Woman Suffrage Association's strategic decision to accept their organized help and then to deploy these influential new allies as suffrage foot soldiers, a role they accepted with uncommon grace. Led by such luminaries as Oswald Garrison Villard, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and George Foster Peabody, members of the League worked the streets, the stage, the press, and the legislative and executive branches of government. In the process, they helped convince waffling politicians, a dismissive public, and a largely hostile press to support the women's demand. Together, they swayed the course of history.
August 2020 marked the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women's right to vote across the US. A Vote for Women celebrates this major landmark, combining an in-depth history of the suffrage movement with extensive archival photography and accounts of its legacy up to the present day.
The Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States presents important moments and participants in the history of the American suffrage movement, ranging from the mid-nineteenth century through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The book highlights the many participants in the suffrage movement, including well-known leaders, lesser-known activists, major national organizations, and local efforts across the country. An array of perspectives is examined: the garment factory worker working for protective labor laws, the wealthy wife hoping to control her inheritance, the Black activist seeking voting power for her community, and the temperance worker wanting to vote for prohibition laws. The volume examines the crucial activism of Black suffragists and other women of color, as well as the fraught nature of the cross-racial coalition in the movement. The broad and accessible approach to this important period in history will enable students to consider questions such as: How could suffragists overcome their differences and build community? Were wealthy women who funded salaries, headquarters, and parades afforded more power? What tactics and strategies did suffragists utilize to lobby legislators and win over the public? How did suffragists and anti-suffragists wield racism as a political tactic both in support of and against the Nineteenth Amendment? How and when did women of color finally achieve the right to vote? Students will also be able to consider lessons from the suffrage movement for an inclusive feminist movement today. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in US women’s history, the history of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and those interested in the histories of social movements.
No Votes for Women explores the complicated history of the suffrage movement in New York State by delving into the stories of women who opposed the expansion of voting rights to women. Susan Goodier finds that conservative women who fought against suffrage encouraged women to retain their distinctive feminine identities as protectors of their homes and families, a role they felt was threatened by the imposition of masculine political responsibilities. She details the victories and defeats on both sides of the movement from its start in the 1890s to its end in the 1930s, acknowledging the powerful activism of this often overlooked and misunderstood political force in the history of women's equality.
Includes definitive writings by leading scholars that cover the full scope of the woman suffrage movement in the U.S., up to and including the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. This revised and expanded edition offers new material on the international influences for suffrage, race and racism, and regional issues that affected the suffrage movement and the struggles many women faced trying to vote -- even after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. One Woman, One Vote was first published by NewSage Press in 1975 and is the companion book to the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name. This book continues to be the most comprehensive collection of writings -- contemporary and historical -- on the woman suffrage movement in America. The PBS documentary, produced by the Educational Film Center, has also been updated with an intro by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The 23 essays in the Second Edition focus on aspects of the suffrage movement in greater depth with an extensive opening chapter on the overall suffrage movement, How Woman Won. Many of these prominent contemporary scholars challenge widely accepted traditional theories and illustrate the diversity and complexity of the fight for the Nineteenth Amendment. Together, they tell the fascinating story of woman's suffrage from the failure of the Constitution to enfranchise women to the political engagement of women after 1920. The authors of the essays are scholars in the fields of History, American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, and they help readers "rediscover" the suffrage movement through their engaging writing, offering intriguing and often contradictory interpretations of historical accounts. The editor, Marjorie J. Spruill, Ph.D., is a leading authority in women's and Southern history, and has authored numerous books and essays related to woman suffrage and women's fight for equality. She speaks internationally on these topics and is well respected among historians. Her most recent book, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics has been praised in numerous reviews, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Nation, and more. New material includes an insightful essay by Spruill on racism in the movement, "The Inhospitable South and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage." She describes the long and often frustrating effort beginning in the 1890s by northern and southern suffragists to bring the Southern states into the movement--an effort thwarted by widespread ideas about white supremacy and states' rights among white Southerners who viewed the movement as an unwelcome offshoot of the antislavery movement. Readers of One Woman, One Vote learn how the suffrage movement--from its beginning in 1848 to its conclusion in 1920, and beyond--changed over time in response to changes in American society and politics. In the Second Edition, two new chapters expand on international suffrage efforts as they relate to the U.S. Readers also learn of the growing diversity of the suffrage constituency in terms of region, religion, race, class, ethnicity, and even attitude, and that the suffrage story included both a record of harmony and cooperation but also discrimination and betrayal. For many women of color the struggle to get the vote did not end in 1920, but continued for the next 100 years--and continues today. Above all, Spruill emphasizes that the vote was not "given" to women when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920: generations of suffragists labored long and hard to win the right to vote in the United States.
We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In Recasting the Vote, Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights. Cahill reveals a new cast of heroines largely ignored in earlier suffrage histories: Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša), Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Carrie Williams Clifford, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and Adelina "Nina" Luna Otero-Warren. With these feminists of color in the foreground, Cahill recasts the suffrage movement as an unfinished struggle that extended beyond the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. As we celebrate the centennial of a great triumph for the women's movement, Cahill's powerful history reminds us of the work that remains.
"Every serious student of woman suffrage must take account of this vital contemporary document, which tells the story of the struggle for woman suffrage in America from the first woman's rights convention in 1848 to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Originally published in 1923, it gives the inside story of this remarkable movement, told by two ardent suffragists: Carrie Chapman Catt (of whom the New York Times wrote, 'More than anyone else she turned Woman Suffrage from a dream into a fact') and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Writing from vivid recollection, the authors offer some of their own ideas about what caused the United States to be the twenty-seventh country to give the vote to women when she ought 'by rights' to have been the first"--Unedited summary from book cover.
