As of August 18, it has been one hundred years since the 19th Amendment was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote for (white) women. If you would like to read up on this historic event and the movement that precipitated it, look no further than this book list!
The Woman’s Hour by Elaine Weiss (2018, 404 pages). This gripping account reconstructs the drama of the moment in August 1920 when Tennessee sat on the verge of becoming the deciding state in whether the 19th Amendment was ratified. In Nashville, the pivotal last leg of the race to women’s suffrage lasted six weeks. The halls were filled with suffragists fighting for their rights, as well as Antis– women who opposed their own enfranchisement on moral grounds. Bribery, bigotry, and celebrity cameos by Susan B. Anthony, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt ensue. (Large print) (Ebook on Overdrive/Libby)
Other powers : the age of suffrage, spiritualism, and the scandalous Victoria Woodhull by Barbara Goldsmith (1998, 531 pages). There’s always someone who expresses their frustration at not being able to get what they want by asking for something even more outrageous. Victoria Woodhull was one of those. Her protest at not having the right to vote culminated in a historic run for president in 1872. This book, which took ten years of meticulous research to construct, places her at the center of a lifetime of turmoil, as Black people fought for their rights, white women fought for their own, and the country was swept by a desire to connect with its ghosts.
Lifting as we climb : black women’s battle for the ballot box by Evette Dionne (2020, 170 pages). As I alluded to in my introduction, the date heralded as the onset of women’s suffrage did not grant rights to all women in this country. For women who belong to marginalized races, the fight for voting rights was much longer. The suffragist movement began when many Black women in the United States were still enslaved, and many white suffragist heroines opposed extending equal rights to Black women. This book introduces a new set of heroines, ones who were fighting a different and more complex battle against a society that oppressed them on multiple fronts.
