Michael Monks, host of WVXU’s “Cincinnati Edition,” interviewed me about my new book, And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote. In the interview, we talked about why it took two centuries of agitation before the political establishment made room for female voters, and the role of the states, and even […]
Motherhood Moment Blog Features New Book — And Yet They Persisted
Thanks to Bekah Jorgensen, a blogger at the Motherhood Moment, for a wonderful interview about my new book, And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote. Check it out here and let me know what you think. You can reach me at johanna.neuman@me.com. And in case you missed it, some of […]
How Social Change is Made: Object Lessons From the Long History of Women’s Suffrage
There is no formula for making social change, no elixir that propels a culture toward progress. But as a historian who specializes in the study of women’s suffrage, and author of Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote, I believe there were several elements that distinguished the cause. One was a […]
Women Banding Together, To Win the Vote Then, To Make Social Change Now
When I first looked at GirlCrew.com, I likened it to Facebook for women — a website that facilitates reunions, eases life transitions and creates online communities. And it is all of that. But the harder I explored this new “platform for women to make new friends,” the more I realized that it also promised the […]
When Women Went to Jail for the Right to Vote — in America
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 […]
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 […]