It is not well known but some American women went to jail for their right to vote. In a prison that had been discarded ten years earlier as “unfit to hold a human being,” they were subjected to insect-infected food, sunless cells and in some cases brutal attack. A few went on hunger strikes and […]
Young Women Leading Revolutions? Ask 20-Something Women’s Suffrage Activist Alice Paul
A meme making its way around the Internet speaks volumes to the marvel that young students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — not yet eligible to vote — are leading a revolution in the politics of guns. Note this list contains no women — not even Betsy Ross, who at 24, as a trained […]
Restoring Black Suffragists to Feminist History
A few weeks ago my great-niece came home from school in distress. “The teacher said I was white,” she told her mother. “But we’re not white!” In the eyes of a six-year-old, people are the color she will need to find in her crayon box to draw them — peach or beige or cocoa […]
When White Suffragists Campaigned Against Black Voting Rights
It was a shock to me to learn, when I was researching my new book, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote, that the two matriarchs of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States — Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony — campaigned against black voting rights in […]
Black Suffragists Who Persevered Against White Racism
As the nation’s capital readied for Woodrow Wilson’s first inauguration in March of 1913, activist Alice Paul made plans for a large suffrage parade of floats, marchers and theatrical representations. As I note in my new book, Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote, states often serve as incubators for […]
When Gilded Suffragists Reached Out to Black Activists
The history of the white women’s suffrage movement in America is a succession of attempts by black activists to join the parade — only to be pushed aside by expediency or bigotry. As we approach Black History Month, it is important to honor the insistence of African-American women that they had earned a place in […]