One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Women's Suffrage Movement

The fight for woman suffrage got under way in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, but it took another 72 years to win the right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of that event, Spruill, an associate professor of history at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi, has gathered 19 thoughtful essays to tell the story of the women and the strategies that won the vote, put in context by her particularly cogent introduction. Linda K. Kerber examines the Constitution's implicit exclusion of women, explaining why suffragists saw the need for a constitutional amendment. Alice S. Rossi's classic essay "A Feminist Friendship" enlivens the 51-year link between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Andrea Moore Kerr looks at a splinter group of suffragists who actively campaigned to prevent newly freed black men from getting the vote before women?particularly ironic for a movement that had its roots in the abolition movement?while Rosalyn Terborg-Penn surveys the contributions of African American women. Beverly Beeton details progress in the West, beginning with Wyoming's enfranchisement of women in 1869. And "Armageddon in Tennessee" by Anastasia Sims relates the drama that unfolded when the amendment passed the Tennessee legislature by a single vote cast by a 24-year-old whose mother had adjured him to "be a good boy" and vote for suffrage. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Composed of 19 well-written, scholarly essays selected and introduced by historian Wheeler, this work is the companion piece to a PBS special commemorating the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. It analyzes both positive and negative aspects of the long, complex struggle for suffrage. The writers emphasize the economic, racial, and cultural divisions that split the movement repeatedly. While extolling the courage of Susan B. Anthony, the pragmatism of Carrie Catt and Jane Addams, the militancy of Alice Paul, and the working-class sensibilities of Harriet Stanton Blatch, they also decry the pandering to racist elements that virtually excluded black women from the national movement, the embarrassments of the Kansas campaign and the Woodhull scandal, and the nativist bigotry that colored the last years of the suffrage fight. This excellent, affordable book should be part of every public and academic library.
Rose Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.