Gilded Suffragists

Gilded Suffragists
Author: Johanna Neuman
Publisher: Washington Mews Books/NYU Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2019-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479806625

New York City’s elite women who turned a feminist cause into a fashionable revolution In the early twentieth century over two hundred of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their names—Astor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney and the like—carried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause. Although they were dismissed by critics as bored socialites “trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris,” these gilded suffragists were at the epicenter of the great reforms known collectively as the Progressive Era. From championing education for women, to pursuing careers, and advocating for the end of marriage, these women were engaged with the swirl of change that swept through the streets of New York City. Johanna Neuman restores these women to their rightful place in the story of women’s suffrage. Understanding the need for popular approval for any social change, these socialites used their wealth, power, social connections and style to excite mainstream interest and to diffuse resistance to the cause. In the end, as Neuman says, when change was in the air, these women helped push women’s suffrage over the finish line.

A Texas Suffragist

A Texas Suffragist
Author: Janet G. Humphrey
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2015-11-30
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1623493676

A leader in the successful fight for woman suffrage in Texas, Jane Yelvington McCallum (1878–1957) left an absorbing written record of an exceptionally productive life. McCallum was a wife, mother, and clubwoman; unlike most, she was also a suffrage leader, lobbyist, journalist, publicist, Democratic Party worker, and secretary of state. A Texas Suffragist brings to print two of Jane McCallum’s most important unpublished diaries, which cover the period from October 1916 through December 1919. They chronicle the struggle of Texas suffragists to win the vote from the viewpoint of one of the movement’s most active participants, and provide insight into a range of progressive causes—including prohibition, honest government, and the independence and integrity of the University of Texas—that women reformers supported in the World War I era. Editor Janet G. Humphrey has supplemented McCallum’s diaries with a selection of her letters, autobiographical fragments, and sketches that help round out the story of her personal and public life through 1919.

The Accidental Suffragist

The Accidental Suffragist
Author: Galia Gichon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2021-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781948018968

It's 1912, and protagonist Helen Fox is a factory worker living in New York's tenements. When tragedy strikes in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Helen is seduced by the Suffragist cause and is soon immersed, working alongside famous activists. As Helen's involvement with the cause deepens, she encounters myriad sources of tension that test her perseverance: estrangement from her husband, who is blindsided by his wife's sudden activism; ostracization by neighbors; unease at working side by side with wealthier suffragettes; and worry about her children as she leaves them to picket the White House in Washington. The narrative spans World War One and concludes with the triumph of 1919. In a time when the obstacles for women, from any background, were insurmountable, Helen discovers her voice as an independent woman and dreams of equality in a male-dominated society.

Suffrage

Suffrage
Author: Ellen Carol DuBois
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501165186

Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this “indispensable” book (Ellen Chesler, Ms. magazine) explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists. Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojurner Truth as she “meticulously and vibrantly chronicles” (Booklist) the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight to the 20th century, and she shows how African American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them. DuBois explains how suffragists built a determined coalition of moderate lobbyists and radical demonstrators in forging a strategy of winning voting rights in crucial states to set the stage for securing suffrage for all American women in the Constitution. In vivid prose, DuBois describes suffragists’ final victories in Congress and state legislatures, culminating in the last, most difficult ratification, in Tennessee. “Ellen DuBois enables us to appreciate the drama of the long battle for women’s suffrage and the heroism of many of its advocates” (Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution). DuBois follows women’s efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women. Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote is a “comprehensive history that deftly tackles intricate political complexities and conflicts and still somehow read with nail-biting suspense,” (The Guardian) and is sure to become the authoritative account of one of the great episodes in the history of American democracy.

The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World

The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World
Author: Lucinda Robb
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-08-31
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 153621454X

Do you have a cause you’re passionate about? Take a few tips from the suffragists, who led one of the largest and longest movements in American history. The women’s suffrage movement was decades in the making and came with many harsh setbacks. But it resulted in a permanent victory: women’s right to vote. How did the suffragists do it? One hundred years later, an eye-opening look at their playbook shows that some of their strategies seem oddly familiar. Women’s marches at inauguration time? Check. Publicity stunts, optics, and influencers? They practically invented them. Petitions, lobbying, speeches, raising money, and writing articles? All of that, too. From moments of inspiration to some of the movement’s darker aspects—including the racism of some suffragist leaders, violence against picketers, and hunger strikes in jail—this International Literacy Association Young Adult Book Award winner takes a clear-eyed view of the role of key figures: Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Ida B. Wells, Alice Paul, and many more. Engagingly narrated by Lucinda Robb and Rebecca Boggs Roberts, whose friendship goes back generations (to their grandmothers, Lady Bird Johnson and Lindy Boggs, and their mothers, Lynda Robb and Cokie Roberts), this unique melding of seminal history and smart tactics is sure to capture the attention of activists-in-the-making today.

Digital Suffragists

Digital Suffragists
Author: Marie Tessier
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262046016

Why women’s voices are outnumbered online and what we can do about it, by a New York Times comment moderator. If you’ve read the comments posted by readers of online news sites, you may have noticed the absence of women’s voices. Men are by far the most prolific commenters on politics and public affairs. When women do comment, they are often attacked or dismissed more than men are. In fact, the comment forums on news sites replicate conditions of the offline and social media worlds, where women are routinely interrupted, threatened, demeaned, and called wrong, unruly, disgusting, and out of place. In Digital Suffragists, Marie Tessier—a veteran journalist and a New York Times comment moderator for more than a decade—investigates why women’s voices are outnumbered online and what we can do about it. The suffragists of the early twentieth century were jailed for trying to vote. Can a twenty-first century democracy be functional when half of the population is not fully represented in a primary form of political communication? Tessier shows that for online comments, it’s a design problem: the linear blog comment formula was based on deeply gender-biased assumptions. Technologies designed with a broad range of end users in mind, she points out, are more successful and beneficial than those that reflect the designer’s own habits of mind. Tessier outlines benchmarks for a more democratic media, all of which stem from one fundamental idea: media must adopt gender and racial representation as key performance indicators. Equal speaking time for women is a measure of democracy.

Around America to Win the Vote

Around America to Win the Vote
Author: Mara Rockliff
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1536246301

“This high-spirited picture book, as engaging as it is informative, follows the women on their journey. . . . A delightful way to introduce two fascinating historical figures.” — Booklist (starred review) In April 1916, Nell Richardson and Alice Burke set out from New York City in a little yellow car, embarking on a bumpy, unmapped journey ten thousand miles long. They took with them a typewriter, a sewing machine, a wee black kitten, and a message for Americans all across the country: Votes for Women! Braving blizzards, deserts, and naysayers, the two courageous friends made their way through the cities and towns of America to further their cause. One hundred years after Nell and Alice set off on their trip, Mara Rockliff revives their spirit in a lively and whimsical picture book, with exuberant illustrations by Hadley Hooper bringing their inspiring historical trek to life.

The Suffragents

The Suffragents
Author: Brooke Kroeger
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2017-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438466315

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.

No Votes for Women

No Votes for Women
Author: Susan Goodier
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252094670

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.