Women’s Equality Day is August 26th and commemorates the 2020 centennial of the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.

We’re grateful, and inspired―and we hope this list of books honoring the heroes (both well-known and lesser known) of the women’s suffrage movement, will leave you feeling inspired too.


The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight for the Right to Vote by Elaine Weiss

Soon to be a major television event, the nail-biting climax of one of the greatest political battles in American history: the ratification of the constitutional amendment that granted women the right to vote.

Available in Hardcover, eBook, and Audio Editions.

Also Available for Young Adults: The Woman’s Hour (Adapted for Young Readers): Our Fight for the Right to Vote

Click to Read an Excerpt.

Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.

Click to Listen to Author Elaine Weiss in Conversation with Audiobook Narrator Tavia Gilbert.


The Women’s Suffrage Movement Edited by Sally Roesch Wagner; Foreword by Gloria Steinem

An intersectional anthology of works by the known and unknown women that shaped and established the suffrage movement, in time for the 2020 centennial of women’s right to vote.

Comprised of historical texts spanning two centuries, The Women’s Suffrage Movement is a comprehensive and singular volume with a distinctive focus on incorporating race, class, and gender, and illuminating minority voices. This one-of-a-kind intersectional anthology features the writings of the most well-known suffragists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, alongside accounts of those often overlooked because of their race, from Native American women to African American suffragists like Ida B. Wells and the three Forten sisters. At a time of enormous political and social upheaval, there could be no more important book than one that recognizes a group of exemplary women—in their own words—as they paved the way for future generations. The editor and introducer, Sally Roesch Wagner, is a pre-eminent scholar of the diverse backbone of the women’s suffrage movement, the founding director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, and serves on the New York State Women’s Suffrage Commission.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.

 


Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women’s Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall; Illustrated by A. D’Amico

A bold and gripping graphic history of the fight for women’s rights.

The ongoing struggle for women’s rights has spanned human history, touched nearly every culture on Earth, and encompassed a wide range of issues, such as the right to vote, work, get an education, own property, exercise bodily autonomy, and beyond. Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists is a fun and fascinating graphic novel-style primer that covers the key figures and events that have advanced women’s rights from antiquity to the modern era. In addition, this compelling book illuminates the stories of notable women throughout history—from queens and freedom fighters to warriors and spies—and the progressive movements led by women that have shaped history, including abolition, suffrage, labor, civil rights, LGBTQ liberation, reproductive rights, and more. Examining where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going, Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists is an indispensable resource for people of all genders interested in the fight for a more liberated future.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


American Women’s Suffrage: Voices from the Long Struggle for the Vote 1776-1965 (LOA #332) Edited by Susan Ware

In their own voices, the full story of the women and men who struggled to make American democracy whole.

For the first time, here is the full, definitive story of the movement for voting rights for American women, of every race, told through the voices of the women and men who lived it. Here are the most recognizable figures in the campaign for women’s suffrage, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but also the black, Chinese, and American Indian women and men who were not only essential to the movement but expanded its directions and aims. Here, too, are the anti-suffragists who worried about where the country would head if the right to vote were universal.

Expertly curated and introduced by scholar Susan Ware, each piece is prefaced by a headnote so that together these 100 selections by over 80 writers tell the full history of the movement—from Abigail Adams to the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and the limiting of suffrage under Jim Crow. Importantly, it carries the story to 1965, and the passage of the Voting and Civil Rights Acts, which finally secured suffrage for all American women.

Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.


Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis

A powerful study of the women’s liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.

 


Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth

Truth’s landmark slave narrative chronicles her experiences as a slave in upstate New York and her transformation into an extraordinary abolitionist, feminist, orator, and preacher. Based on the complete 1884 edition, this volume includes the “Book of Life,” a collection of letters and sketches about Truth’s life written subsequent to the original 1850 publication of the Narrative, and “A Memorial Chapter,” a sentimental account of her death.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault

The story of how the women’s rights movement began at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 is a cherished American myth.

The standard account credits founders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucretia Mott with defining and then leading the campaign for women’s suffrage. In her provocative new history, Lisa Tetrault demonstrates that Stanton, Anthony, and their peers gradually created and popularized this origins story during the second half of the nineteenth century in response to internal movement dynamics as well as the racial politics of memory after the Civil War. The founding mythology that coalesced in their speeches and writings–most notably Stanton and Anthony’s History of Woman Suffrage–provided younger activists with the vital resource of a usable past for the ongoing struggle, and it helped consolidate Stanton and Anthony’s leadership against challenges from the grassroots and rival suffragists.

As Tetrault shows, while this mythology has narrowed our understanding of the early efforts to champion women’s rights, the myth of Seneca Falls itself became an influential factor in the suffrage movement. And along the way, its authors amassed the first archive of feminism and literally invented the modern discipline of women’s history.

Available in Trade Paperback and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote by Susan Ware

Looking beyond the national leadership of the suffrage movement, an acclaimed historian gives voice to the thousands of women from different backgrounds, races, and religions whose local passion and protest resounded throughout the land.

For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.

Ware tells her story through the lives of nineteen activists, most of whom have long been overlooked. We meet Mary Church Terrell, a multilingual African American woman; Rose Schneiderman, a labor activist building coalitions on New York’s Lower East Side; Claiborne Catlin, who toured the Massachusetts countryside on horseback to drum up support for the cause; Mary Johnston, an aristocratic novelist bucking the Southern ruling elite; Emmeline W. Wells, a Mormon woman in a polygamous marriage determined to make her voice heard; and others who helped harness a groundswell of popular support. We also see the many places where the suffrage movement unfolded—in church parlors, meeting rooms, and the halls of Congress, but also on college campuses and even at the top of Mount Rainier. Few corners of the United States were untouched by suffrage activism.

Available in Hardcover.


African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn

This comprehensive look at the African American women who fought for the right to vote analyzes the women’s own stories and examines why they joined and how they participated in the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. Terborg-Penn shows how every political and racial effort to keep African American women disfranchised met with their active resistance until black women finally achieved full citizenship.

Available in Trade Paperback.

 


Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones

The epic history of African American women’s pursuit of political power—and how it transformed America.

In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended 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. Securing their rights required a movement of their own.

In Vanguard, acclaimed 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—Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more—who were the vanguard of women’s rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

Available in Hardcover.


For Kids:

Who Was Ida B. Wells? by Sarah Fabiny and Who HQ; Illustrated by Ted Hammond

The story of how a girl born into slavery became an early leader in the civil rights movement and the most famous black female journalist in nineteenth-century America.

Born into slavery in 1862, Ida Bell Wells was freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Yet she could see just how unjust the world she was living in was. This drove her to become a journalist and activist. Throughout her life, she fought against prejudice and for equality for African Americans. Ida B. Wells would go on to co-own a newspaper, write several books, help cofound the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and fight for women’s right to vote.

Available in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.

Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.


Who Was Susan B. Anthony? by Pam Pollack, Meg Belviso and Who HQ; Illustrated by Mike Lacey

A bright young girl who loved reading books.
A courageous schoolteacher who fought to change the rules.
The most famous leader of the women’s rights movement.

Susan B. Anthony may be an international icon but her campaign for women’s rights had personal roots. Working as a school teacher in New York, Anthony refused to settle for less pay than her male colleagues which ignited her lifelong devotion to women’s equality. Anthony toured the United States and Europe giving speeches and publishing articles as one of the most important advocates of women’s rights. Learn more about the woman behind the movement in Who Was Susan B. Anthony?

Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.

Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.


With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote by Ann Bausum

An award-winning author chronicles the story of the women’s suffrage movement in America, using compelling period photographs–including some never before published—to illustrate the vivid narrative.

Available in Hardcover.

 

 


Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box by Evvette Dionne

An eye-opening book that tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement—when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle.

Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. The Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. The 1913 Women’s March in D.C. When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white.

That’s not the real story.

Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn’t just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity—and safety—in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks.

Lifting as We Climb is the empowering story of African American women who refused to accept all this. Women in black church groups, black female sororities, black women’s improvement societies and social clubs. Women who formed their own black suffrage associations when white-dominated national suffrage groups rejected them. Women like Mary Church Terrell, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women and of the NAACP; or educator-activist Anna Julia Cooper who championed women getting the vote and a college education; or the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, a leader in both the suffrage and anti-lynching movements.

Available in Hardcover and eBook Editions.

Click to Read an Excerpt.


Bold & Brave:Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote by Kristen Gillibrand

From United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand comes an inspiring picture book about ten suffragists who fought for women’s right to vote.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was inspired by her own great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother to be bold and brave–to stand up and fight for what she believes in. But who inspired them? The long chain of women before them who spoke out for what’s right–women who taught each generation that followed how to be bold and brave.

Here are the stories of ten leaders who strove to win the right to vote for American women–a journey that took more than seventy years of passionate commitment. From well-known figures, such as Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth to lesser known women such as Alice Paul and Mary Church Terrell, these are heroes who dreamed big and never gave up. Senator Gillibrand highlights an important and pithy lesson from each woman’s life–from “dare to be different” to “fight together.”

On the eve of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women suffrage, Bold & Brave looks both backward and forward. It introduces children to strong women who have raised their voices on behalf of justice–and inspires them to raise their own voices to build our future.

With gorgeous illustrations by renowned artist Maira Kalman, this is a book that will inspire and uplift, a book to be cherished and shared.

Available in Trade Paperback, eBook, and Audio Editions. 

 

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