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Votes for Women!

For nearly 150 years, American women did not have the right to vote. On August 18, 1920, they won that right, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified at last. To achieve that victory, some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes even broke the law—for more than eight decades. From Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who founded the suffrage movement at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, to Sojourner Truth and her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, to Alice Paul, arrested and force-fed in prison, this is the story of the American women’s suffrage movement and the private lives that fueled its leaders’ dedication. Votes for Women! explores suffragists’ often powerful, sometimes difficult relationship with the intersecting temperance and abolition campaigns, and includes an unflinching look at some of the uglier moments in women’s fight for the vote. By turns illuminating, harrowing, and empowering, Votes for Women! paints a vibrant picture of the women whose tireless battle still inspires political, human rights, and social justice activism.

Votes for Women

Of all the reforms that came out of the progressive era, women's suffrage has the longest history. This forty-eight-page album recovers some of the lost chapters of that history and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Photographs, posters, postcards, and letters presented in the book--most from holdings of the Huntington Library--illustrate the story of two generations of activists. Votes for Women presents not only the familiar story of the eastern suffragists but also the less-familiar stories of the western campaigns and the struggles of women in other countries. Among the items featured are a letter from Susan B. Anthony in which she describes her joy at voting (albeit illegally) in 1872; photographs of suffrage marches in New York and California; advertisements linking various products to votes for women; and suffrage leaflets in German, French, and Italian. The book describes the Huntington's extensive woman suffrage holdings, including the one-thousand-piece Susan B. Anthony Memorial Collection.

The Woman Voter