Path Breakers

Path Breaking

Tenacious advocate for women's rights Abigail Scott Duniway offers her life story, describing the intense, decades-long struggle to attain voting rights for American women. Although the author recalls her own upbringing and ascendance to a position of leadership in the Women's Suffrage movement of the late 19th century, she is emphatically clear almost from the start that this nationwide goal was a team effort consisting of many talented people, male and female alike. Portraits and anecdotes of these figures, many of whom are now obscured by time, are present that readers may appreciate how rallying support behind votes for women was the combined work of many. Abigail describes having to doggedly persist against numerous stumbling blocks and personal difficulties; the notion of women voting was then a topic of great controversy, and she found herself shunned and sidelined for her campaigns. Although her state of residence, Oregon, had a generally progressive outlook and culture, it took many years of sustained protest and pressure to make votes for women a serious reform for consideration. Finally in 1912, Oregon approved an amendment for women's suffrage - Abigail Scott Duniway, by that time elderly, was present when Governor Oswald West signed the amendment into law.

Specifications and Drawings of Patents Relating to Electricity Issued by the U. S.

Ten Stars

Ten Stars is a nonfiction narrative -- part biography, part oral history -- of the life story of Gary Cooper, an African American born in the depths of Jim Crow to an Alabama family that challenged the rule of segregation. The Cooper extended family, described in interludes at points within the book, has made a national mark in politics, arts, education, health care, and the military. Graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1958 as one of three African Americans in a class of 1,500, Cooper went on to become the U.S. Marines' first black commander of a combat infantry company in Vietnam. He later became the Corps' first black general from Infantry, an Alabama state legislator and governor's cabinet official, an Air Force civilian four-star who promoted the Tuskegee Airmen, and the first black U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica.