#SuffrageCentennialBookClubCYF
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Book Club Reading Guides & Media
Click on the poster to be redirected to gallery of photos featured in The Woman's Hour by Elaine Weiss.
READERS GUIDE
In the summer of 1920, one of the pivotal political battles in United States history unfolded in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote, was on the cusp of victory—or, possibly, defeat. The enfranchisement of half of the citizens of the nation was at stake, and it all came down to Tennessee. The Woman’s Hour details the dramatic climax of the suffragists’ seven-decade struggle for equal citizenship, bringing into focus the powerful forces arrayed against their cause. Employing all the color and drama of a great political novel, Elaine Weiss shows how the core themes of American history and current-day affairs—race, class, money, gender, states’ rights, power, and democracy—all came into play in Nashville, Tennessee, as the Nineteenth Amendment was on the cusp of being ratified. Rich with vivid characters, including appearances by Susan B. Anthony, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman’s Hour reveals what it took for activists to win this crucial battle and how close they came to losing. The Woman’s Hour is more than just a vivid work of history, it is an inspiration for everyone who continues the fight for justice and equal rights today.Questions and Topics for Discussion
1. The two branches of the American suffrage movement—the National American Woman Suffrage Association (led by Carrie Catt) and the National Woman’s Party (led by Alice Paul)—took different approaches towards their mutual goal of winning the vote. Do you think one group was more effective than the other? Why?
2. If you were a suffragist in 1920, do you think you’d align yourself with the NAWSA or the Woman’s Party? (Both women and men were supporters). Why? What attracted women, on the other hand, to the “Antis”? Do you think their fears were unfounded?
3. The suffragists campaigned before there were cell phones; no internet, no social media, not even radio. Can you imagine trying to promote today’s causes with these limitations?
4. The Woman’s Hour describes an important step in our country’s evolution as a democracy. What other steps does our democracy still need to take?
5. Although we treasure our self-image as a nation built upon the bedrock of participatory democracy, our history proves we’re conflicted about who has the right to participate. Voter suppression is a hot topic today. Do you think we consciously make it harder for some citizens to vote? Is voter suppression a threat to our democracy, or just the usual game political parties play?
6. Hundreds of suffragists were assaulted, attacked, and jailed for demanding the right to vote. Have you ever participated in a protest against government policies? Did you suffer any consequences for your actions? Would you be willing to go to prison to protest injustice or to promote a cause you think important?
7. Those opposed to woman suffrage often used religious arguments to warn that expanding women’s rights, including the vote, violated Biblical teachings and went against “God’s Plan” (women belong in the home, not in the public sphere). Do you think religious rationales should be used in forming public policy today?
8. Were the suffragists correct in keeping their eyes on the prize—pursuing the vote for the majority of American women—even if that meant making moral compromises and abandoning some of their own ideals? Can the suffragists’ use of racist rationales to win the support of Southern legislators be justified? What are your thoughts on the suffragists’ use of racist rationales to win the support of Southern legislators?
9. Some corporations clearly felt threatened by the prospect of women voters, and worked to influence public opinion and legislative action. The suffragists often complained that corporate interests were secretly financing anti-suffrage campaigns around the country. Do you see any similarities in what the suffragists faced then and the modern phenomenon of “dark money” entering political campaigns today?
10. The suffragists touted the benefits of allowing women to vote by maintaining that women would clean up corruption in politics and insist upon better laws protecting families and children. Carrie Catt believed women voters would bring about an end to war. Do you think women voters have improved our political system? In what ways?
11. If the issue of women’s political equality—specifically the right to vote—was being decided today, and, as in 1920, only men were given the power to decide, do you think the amendment would pass?
12. Voter participation in the United States is well below other democratic nations. Many Americans, like the suffragists and subsequent civil rights workers, fought long and hard to win the right to vote. Many have died defending our freedoms. Some democracies impose a fine for not voting. Do think voting should be a mandatory responsibility of every eligible U.S. citizen?
13. Do you think the U.S Constitution should be changed in any way? What amendments would you like to see considered?
- The Woman's Hour Reader's GuideView the printable PDF version of the Reader's Guide here.
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Unfortunately, the video file for this book discussion recording was corrupted. You can view a video of author and historian Joanna Neumann discussing women's suffrage and fashion here:
Book Club Schedule & Catalog Links
July 28, 2020 at 1PM: The Woman's Hour by
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.
Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. The opposing forces include politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and a lot of racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis"—women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation. They all converge in a boiling hot summer for a vicious face-off replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel's, and the Bible.
Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, along with appearances by Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman's Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights.
ISBN: 9780143128991Publication Date: 2019-03-05
August 20, 2020 at 1PM: Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? by
In this "heroic narrative" (The Wall Street Journal), discover the inspiring and timely account of the complex relationship between leading suffragist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson in her fight for women's equality. Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC, in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. He is surprised by the modest turnout. The crowds and reporters are blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue in a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country." Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? weaves together two storylines: the trajectories of Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson, two apparent opposites. Paul's procession of suffragists resulted in her being granted a face-to-face meeting with President Wilson, one that would lead to many meetings and much discussion, but little progress for women. With no equality in sight and patience wearing thin, Paul organized the first group to ever picket in front of the White House lawn--night and day, through sweltering summer mornings and frigid fall nights. From solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and the psychiatric ward to ever more determined activism, Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? reveals the courageous, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Alice Paul's leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America. "A remarkable tale" (Kirkus Reviews) and a rousing portrait of a little-known feminist heroine, this is an eye-opening exploration of a crucial moment in American history one century before the Women's March.
ISBN: 9781501177781Publication Date: 2019-03-05
September 22, 2020 at 1PM: Why They Marched: Untold Stories of Women Who Fought For The Vote by
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. Ware's deeply moving stories provide a fresh account of one of the most significant moments of political mobilization in American history. The dramatic, often joyous experiences of these women resonate powerfully today, as a new generation of young women demands to be heard.
ISBN: 9780674986688Publication Date: 2019-05-06
November 17, 2020 at 1PM: Suffrage: Women's Long Battle For The Vote by
Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists. Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight into the 20th century, and she shows how African American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them. DuBois explains how suffragists built a determined coalition of moderate lobbyists and radical demonstrators in forging a strategy of winning voting rights in crucial states to set the stage for securing suffrage for all American women in the Constitution. In vivid prose DuBois describes suffragists' final victories in Congress and state legislatures, culminating in the last, most difficult ratification, in Tennessee. DuBois follows women's efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women. Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote is sure to become the authoritative account of one of the great episodes in the history of American democracy.
ISBN: 9781501165177Publication Date: 2020-02-25
December 15, 2020 at 1PM: Gilded Suffragists by
New York City's elite women who turned a feminist cause into a fashionable revolution In the early twentieth century over two hundred of New York's most glamorous socialites joined the suffrage movement. Their names--Astor, Belmont, Rockefeller, Tiffany, Vanderbilt, Whitney and the like--carried enormous public value. These women were the media darlings of their day because of the extravagance of their costume balls and the opulence of the French couture clothes, and they leveraged their social celebrity for political power, turning women's right to vote into a fashionable cause. Although they were dismissed by critics as bored socialites "trying on suffrage as they might the latest couture designs from Paris," these gilded suffragists were at the epicenter of the great reforms known collectively as the Progressive Era. From championing education for women, to pursuing careers, and advocating for the end of marriage, these women were engaged with the swirl of change that swept through the streets of New York City. Johanna Neuman restores these women to their rightful place in the story of women's suffrage. Understanding the need for popular approval for any social change, these socialites used their wealth, power, social connections and style to excite mainstream interest and to diffuse resistance to the cause. In the end, as Neuman says, when change was in the air, these women helped push women's suffrage over the finish line.
ISBN: 9781479837069Publication Date: 2017-09-05
Suffrage Book Club Newsletter
#SuffrageCentennialCYF Book Mark
Book Club Title & Event Link: October 27, 2020 1PM
Suffrage by 
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ISBN: 9781501165160Publication Date: 2020-02-25Honoring the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, this exciting history explores the full scope of the movement to win the vote for women through portraits of its bold leaders and devoted activists. Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered through the Jim Crow years into the reform era of Progressivism. She introduces new champions Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul, who brought the fight into the 20th century, and she shows how African American women, led by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, demanded voting rights even as white suffragists ignored them. DuBois explains how suffragists built a determined coalition of moderate lobbyists and radical demonstrators in forging a strategy of winning voting rights in crucial states to set the stage for securing suffrage for all American women in the Constitution. In vivid prose DuBois describes suffragists' final victories in Congress and state legislatures, culminating in the last, most difficult ratification, in Tennessee. DuBois follows women's efforts to use their voting rights to win political office, increase their voting strength, and pass laws banning child labor, ensuring maternal health, and securing greater equality for women. Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote is sure to become the authoritative account of one of the great episodes in the history of American democracy.
