Civic Engagement Resources
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The Woman’s Hour – Elaine Weiss Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have approved the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote; one last state -Tennessee- is needed for women’s voting rights to be the law of the land. The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, and racists who don’t want black women voting. And then there are the “Antis”–Women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the nation’s moral collapse. And in one hot summer, they all converge for a confrontation, replete with booze and blackmail, betrayal and courage. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, The Woman’s Hour is the gripping story of how America’s women won their own freedom, and the opening campaign in the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights |
Vanguard – Martha S. Jones
Popular accounts of the suffrage crusade often begin in Seneca Falls in 1848 and end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women’s movement did not win the vote for most Black women. To secure their rights, Black women needed a movement of their own. In Vanguard, prizewinning historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of Black women who were the vanguard of women’s rights: the pioneering lecturer Maria Stewart, abolitionist and suffrage advocate Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, community organizer Fannie Lou Hamer, and many more. She shows how these women again and again called on America to realize its best ideals as they set the pace in the quest for justice and collective liberation. In the twenty-first century, Black women’s power at the polls and in our politics is undeniable. Vanguard reveals that this power is not at all new. It is the culmination of two centuries of dramatic struggle that transformed America for the better.
Women Making History: The 19th Amendment
The National Park Service is excited to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished sex as a basis for voting and to tell the diverse history of women’s suffrage-the right to vote-more broadly. The U.S. Congress passed the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919. The states ratified the amendment on August 18, 1920, officially recognizing women’s right to vote. This handbook demonstrates the expansiveness of the stories the NPS is telling to preserve and protect women’s history for this and future generations. The essays included within tell a broad history of various women advocating for their rights. Sprinkled throughout are short biographies of notable ladies who devoted their time to the women’s suffrage movement along with summaries of events important to the cause
The Once and Future Witches – Alix E. Harrow
In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters―James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna―join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote―and perhaps not even to live―the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.