Do you have a cause you’re passionate about? Take a few tips from the suffragists, who led one of the largest, longest, and least well-known 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 clear-eyed view takes in 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.
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“A quick guide showing how suffragists changed the country by securing women’s voting rights…The White authors do not shy away from addressing racism within the movement…Each chapter title is a synopsis of a strategy, and each chapter begins and ends with sage advice to readers about how to apply the successful tactics of the suffragists to today’s political struggles. An outstanding and inspirational guide to women’s history for today’s political activists.”
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Kirkus Reviews (starred review)