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Seneca Falls Convention. Women's rights, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, Women's suffrage in the United States, Women's suffrage, National Women's Rights Convention, Second Great Awakening, Grimké sisters, Margaret Fuller ... Read more

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"Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement" captures the color and excitement of a central, inspiring, but largely unknown chapter in American history.This beautifully designed clothbound book presents the woman suffrage movement clearly and chronologically, with emphasis on the remarkable personalities and turbulent political campaigns of the early 20th century.

Over 960 photographs, posters, and leaflets, cartoons, campaign buttons and more illustrate the movement's fascinating 72-year history.Large format photographs and a fast paced text highlight key developments starting in 1848, but particularly between 1910 and 1920, including over 50 state electoral campaigns and the final controversial drive for the 19th amendment, ratified in 1920.

"Winning the Vote" shows how women have long been active participants in American history, and how they became politically powerful even without the vote.There are profiles of 78 individual American women and men who led the drive for equal rights.The opening 3 chapters, out of 18, cover efforts in the 19th century, while the rest focus on the early 20th century.An Epilogue follows suffragists into government and other influential areas after 1920. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A visual feast
Watch out - this book will grab you! It is much more than the inspiring story of the 72-year-battle by American women to win the right to vote. It is a visual feast. Every page has something to offer: campaign buttons ("I cast my first vote"), political cartoons ("How can she vote, when the fashions are so wide and the voting booths are so narrow?"), caricatures ("Vote for the Celebrated Man Tamer"), posters, fliers, picture post cards, and even the cover of Life Magazine.Everything is laid out in gorgeous color and black and white reproductions. Photographs jump off the pages: thousands of women marching in parades across the country, white-clothed suffragists selling pennants in Long Beach, CA, proper ladies gluing up suffrage posters in Ohio.
The author's meticulous research adds to the value of this treasury.The leaders of the suffrage movement are highlighted: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Alice Paul.But, the ordinary women are also featured: casting their votes in Wyoming in 1888, giving speeches out west, and picketing the Senate and the White House. Memorable moments are captured:Susan B. Anthony's indictment for daring to vote in 1873, Inez Milholland on a white horse leading the Washington D. C. suffrage parade in 1913, women carried off in paddy wagons for picketing, and, finally, suffragists celebrating victory on August 26, 1920 when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was enacted.
This is the story of the longest war: 72 years from whispered start to triumphant end. Decades during which no one was killed, no shots were fired, no ships were sunk, no bombs exploded. Just women, working to convince men in every way they could imagine to give them the vote.How did they do it? Read this book and find out.

Outstanding and unparalleled
Bob Cooney's wonderful book is an unparalleled pictorial overview of the American suffrage movement, one of very few histories to present both NAWSA and National Woman's Party activities. The degree to which suffragists utilized all the communication media available to them is readily apparent in the range of items Cooney reveals, from broadsides to posters, pins, sandwich boards, apparel, etc. etc. Many of the photographs and illustrations Cooney uses have not heretofore been visible outside archival collections around the country. The balance between graphics and text makes Winning the Vote accessible to young readers as well as adult readers. Even scholars will appreciate some of the rare posters and broadsides.

It's pricey in either the original hardcover or special slipcased edition but either way a volume to be treasured as well as a collector's item. ... Read more

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The woman's movements and work in American history during the second two decades, was dramatic.It dealt with the past, with pageants and politics; with different organizations and with conflict from within.It took on the Democrats, founded a National Woman's Party; it waged a home front war.It dealt with prison, and resolution.It went from equal suffrage to equal rights. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Real Story of Suffragists
This book was a tremendously interesting read.We all remember the stories in high school history class about the Suffragettes marching with placards to secure the vote for women.What we didn't learn was how horribly they were treated and that it took 72 years to secure the vote.This book should be read by every high school girl so that she realizes what these women went through to make sure voting is a right for women as well as men.

To do and dare anything
The publications of the National Geographic Society encompass some of the finest non-fiction titles for kids on the planet.Year after year this company churns out remarkable historical, scientific, and cultural tomes that are not only readable, but also lively, informative, and well-researched."With Courage and With Cloth", one of the very few children's books to delve into women's suffrage in any depth, is no exception.It offers amazing information that everyone should know, and so few do.Unfortunately, it suffers from its format.While the text is brilliant and the pictures sublime, the layout of the book will undoubtedly turn off some readers, while those seeking information about the photographs will be up a tree.A fine fine book that could've used some fine fine tuning.

Author Ann Bausum has this to say about American history. Learning about history in school, "I knew all about Washington and Lee, Marshall and Eisenhower.History seemed to be a progression of stories about men and wars and conquest".How much did any of us learn about women getting the vote in school?As I recall, it consisted of one or two sentences in a textbook amounting to something like, "And then in 1920, women were given the right to vote under the 19th Amendment".Goodnight, everybody!The real story behind that teeny little sentence, however, is immense.It's a story that spans more than seventy-two years and was won with literal blood, sweat, and tears.Through this book we meet great heroes like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth.We hear about how the suffragists repeatedly split into two different factions and how these factions worked separately to bring about an amendment to the constitution.We see the heroism of the women (dealing with particularly disgusting forced feedings, beatings at the hands of sailors, and rat infested cells) and witness their less than shining moments as well (in regards to their treatment of African-American women).By the time the amendment comes to a vote and has to be ratified by thirty-six states, the book has become an edge-of-your-seat thriller.You may know the ending already, but it's a heckuva ride getting there.

Bausum writes in a style befitting of the heroes she's commending.She never shies away from the movement's prejudices and problems, but at the same time it's clear that these women were particularly exceptional.The book even goes so far as to include a section on the Equal Rights Amendment (something I can honestly say I have never before witnessed in a kids' text).On top of that you have profiles of all the major players, a chronology of events, a resource guide, sources and acknowledgements, a bibliography, an index, and a list of books about the suffragists that I spent the better part of last night copying down so that I could read them later.Obviously, I would have liked there to have been some more sections on the African-American women and their take on suffrage.There's an excellent passage quoting Sojourner Truth's, "And Ain't I A Woman" speech and some mild references to racism in the south and within the movement, but these are kind of glossed over.

The layout of the book is the only real problem with it.The photographs that dot almost every page are accompanied by pale light brown captions that will be almost impossible to read if your child has less than stellar eyesight.Also, some of these pictures are stunning or shocking to the point that you'd love to learn more about them.Unfortunately, nine times out of ten the images you see here are given brief three to four line captions and then never mentioned in the text.It makes for slightly frustrating reading.The colors of the book (purple, brown, and white) are lovely, but don't quite make up for the difficult-to-read-text.

But that's neither here nor there.The fact of the matter is that the book fills a very great need.No library in the country is complete without it.If you've children who considers themselves to be experts on American history, brother they don't know nuthin' until they've read "With Courage and With Cloth".A remarkable creation and a necessary read.Perhaps even moreso for adults.

Richie's Picks: WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH
Richie's Picks: WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH: WINNING THE FIGHT FOR A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO VOTE by Ann Bausum, National Geographic, September 2004, 112 pages, ISBN: 0-7922-7647-7

"...a discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with more complacency by many...than would a discussion of the rights of women."
--Frederick Douglass speaking about the public's response to the Seneca Falls women's convention of 1848 which he had attended.

"Though we adore men individually
we agree that as a group they're rather stupid."
--"Sister Suffragette" from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins.

The part of the story that they left out of the Mary Poppins movie is when Mrs. Banks is abused by a mob of men and young boys and arrested for causing a disturbance even though she and her sisters-in-arms are quietly assembled--holding banners that quote the US Constitution and the current President's own words--and it's the men who are causing all the disturbance.They also left out the part where Mrs. Banks is abusively dragged into a dark prison, thrown in with rats, common criminals, blankets that get laundered once a year, and a bucket for a toilet.Nor do they show prison employees shoving the hose up Mrs. Banks's nose to force feed her when she decides to go on a hunger strike.

" 'These women have raised neither hand nor voice,' wrote one female reporter who eventually stood on the picket line herself and was arrested.'They speak no word and do not attempt to defend themselves if attacked,' she explained."

But those omissions and discrepancies could be attributed to the fact that Mary Poppins takes place in jolly, old England, and it was in America during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson that all of these abuses were being endured by the informed women who had resolve to organize and question how the US could be fighting for democracy in Europe while simultaneously denying democratic participation--the Vote--to women at home.

Being able to speak freely is what America is all about, right?

But students of American history know that there are times when Freedom of Speech seems to be reserved for only SOME Americans, those who agree with the government.

"Now, however, the growing nationalism of wartime made such protests seem, as reported in newspapers, 'unwomanly,' 'unpatriotic,' 'dangerous,' 'undesirable,' even 'treasonable.' "

(Sound familiar?)

The central focus of WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH: WINNING THE FIGHT FOR A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO VOTE is on the years of widespread activism and protest directly preceding the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.And it is during those final years of a fight that began in earnest back in Seneca Falls in 1848 that we so clearly see the parallels between the suffering of those brave Americans involved in the Women's Suffrage Movement and the violence and repression faced by those in the Civil Rights Movement; those images that so many of us watched either on television or firsthand; those images that so many of us will never forget.

Another parallel that I found interesting involves the fact that:

"The period from 1896 to 1910 (during which no states adopted woman suffrage) became known as the 'doldrums' of the movement.The wind seemed to go out of the sails of the cause.No matter how hard suffragists argued in support of votes for women, they could not muster the momentum to overcome the anitsuffragists, or 'Antis,' who opposed them."

It would seem to me not to be coincidental that the same year that the US Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" was permissible, leading to baseball owners successfully conspiring to eliminate people of color from the Major Leagues for half a century, and leading to the growth of all those other insidious tentacles of apartheid that spread across America and took hold of it, that American women would face a similar fate at the hands of white paternalism.

"It's grand to be an Englishman in 1910
King Edward's on the throne;
it's the age of men"
--"The Life I Lead," from Disney's Mary Poppins

It is during this period that several award-winning historic novels dealing with oppressed young women are set: Jennifer Donnelly's A NORTHERN LIGHT and Jennifer Holms's OUR ONLY MAY AMELIA quickly come to mind.To read that scene in A NORTHERN LIGHT where the well-educated "Miss Wilcox" is offered the choice by her husband of either complying with his demands or being institutionalized as mentally unfit provides an understanding of what kind of power men wielded over women.WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH will make a great companion for these books.

Thank goodness for the Senator we meet in WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH, a man who listened to his mother and allowed this particular phase of injustice by the minority of the American population against the majority to come to an end.

Of course, eighty-four years (and 15 white male Presidents) later, some readers will surely pause to wonder why there remain such wide disparities between the portion of the population that is female (the majority) and that meager portion of America's decision making elite (President, Congress, state legislators and governors, top jurists, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, presidents of major universities, generals, and presidential advisors) who are women.

That's a debate we won't be seeing tonight.
(written the day of the first Presidential debate of 2004) ... Read more

Product Description
In the wake of the Nineteenth Amendment, Republican women set out to forge a place for themselves within the Grand Old Party. As Catherine Rymph explains, their often conflicting efforts over the subsequent decades would leave a mark on both conservative politics and American feminism.

Part of an emerging body of work on women's participation in partisan politics, Republican Women explores the dilemmas confronting progressive, conservative, and moderate Republican women as they sought to achieve a voice for themselves within the GOP. Rymph first examines women's grassroots organizing for the party in the decades following the initiation of women's suffrage. She then traces Marion Martin's efforts from 1938 to 1946 to shape the National Federation of Women's Republican Clubs, the party's increasing dependence on the work of women at the grassroots in the postwar years, and the eventual mobilization of many of these women behind Barry Goldwater, in defiance of party leaders.

From the flux of the party's post-Goldwater years emerged two groups of women on a collision course: a group of party insiders calling themselves feminists challenged supporters of independent Republican Phyllis Schlafly's growing movement opposing the Equal Rights Amendment. Their battles over the meanings of gender, power, and Republicanism continued earlier struggles even as they helped shape the party's fundamental transformation in the Reagan years. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Activist Women
Growing up as one of Jane H Macauley's daughters, I heard all the great backroom and campaign stories, but I never put them in the wider context of the growing engagement of women in politics until reading Rymph's fascinating account.My mother and her friends are passionate believers in the grassroots and the precincts, and crisscrossed the country to get out the vote. Feminist slogans peppered my childhood, and the ERA was the grail. The hijacking of the progressive and moderate Republican women's organization is an enlightening chapter -- let's hijack it back, ladies!

An endorsement from a Democrat
Examining how different factions of women sought access to and within the GOP, thisbook was a gripping read.

Beginning in the aftermath of the 19th Amendment's ratification, the book chronicles women's political activity. Rymph then goes on to explain how different factions developed different definitions of 'women' and 'Republicanism' as the decades subsequently passed.

The rise of the modern conservative movement came through the 1964 campaign. Many of the women party activists independently mobilized behind Barry Goldwater's campaign. They demonstrated that they would not just rubber stamp whomever the party bosses had wanted to receive the nomination.

Such action also illustrated that conservative Republican women were (if not necessarily how I and colleagues would immediately think of it) leaders with political power of their own which would effectively be flexed. Researched from a strictly nonpartisan and scholarly perspective, this work concedes that conservative women are politically effective.

I've read many other books on women and politics, but this work provided a never-before-read perspective. Prior to reading this book, I honestly had no idea that women's role in the Republican party was so complex.
... Read more

Product Description
"The latter days of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. are given immediacy and interest in this brief, easy chapter book" (The Horn Book). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Prefer American Girls Series
The Once Upon America series book "A Long Way To Go" is just ok.It's an easy chapter book geared for 4th-5th graders and takes actual history and presents it in a fictionalized setting hoping that it will beeasier to understand.

It follows an 8 year old girl whose grandma isinvolved in the Womens Movement.The historical events are mildlyinteresting but I prefer the American Girls Series.I feel those booksreally seem to bring history to life.I was sort of bored reading thisbook,I felt like it was an assignment. ... Read more

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Dramatic and defining moments in American history come vividly the life in the Cornerstones of Freedom series. ... Read more

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Discusses the people and events connected to the struggle to achieve women's rights, including the right to vote, from its origins in the mid-1800s through the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. ... Read more

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The book you are about to read tells the story of one of the great social movements in American history. The struggle for women's voting rights was one of the longest, most successful, and in some respects most radical challenges ever posed to the American system of electoral politics...It is difficult to imagine now a time when women were largely removed by custom, practice, and law from the formal political rights and responsibilities that supported and sustained the nation's young democracy...For sheer drama the suffrage movement has few equals in modern American political history.

--From the Preface by Ellen Fitzpatrick

Customer Reviews (3)

Great history of American Women
This new edition of Flexner's Century of Struggle is excellent. She covers American woman's history since the beginning of American colonization up until the 1970s. She touches on the development of woman's education, job occupation, and political awareness through their activities in abolition. I recommend this book to every American. This book covers many missing holes in our male dominated histories.

Required reading
I agree fully with Jane Eliosoff's review and just wish to add that this wonderful book should be required reading in high schools and colleges.One of its best features is that it is truly multicultural in its treatment of the "first wave" of the women's rights movement, even though this book was written before the word "multicultural" was coined.

The single best history of the US suffrage movement
This recent paperback edition of Century of Struggle, Eleanor Flexner's classic history of women's suffrage and the work to expand women's rights, has a splendid new introduction by her friend and collaborator Ellen Fitzpatrick, who relates the major events in Flexner's own life to Flexner's deep understanding of the complex social and political problem confronting 19th- and early 20th-century American suffragists. There is no better account than Flexner's of the dogged determination of US women to achieve their political aims, or of the genius of their political inventiveness in a time in which both law and custom were against women's full participation in civic life. The achievement of the vote for women was extraordinarily difficult, infinitely more so than most people realize. In her own preface to Century of Struggle, Eleanor Flexner quotes from Carrie Chapman Catt and Nettie Rogers Schuler: "Hundreds of women gave the accumulated possibilities of an entire lifetime, thousands gave years of their lives, hundreds of thousands gave constant interest and such aid as they could. It was a continuous, seemingly endless chain of activity. Young suffragists who helped forge the last links in that chain were not born when it began. Old suffragists who forged the first links were dead when it ended . . . It is doubtful if any man, even among suffrage men, ever realized what the suffrage struggle came to mean to women before the end was allowed in America." ... Read more

Product Description
Created Equal begins with the early suffragist movement of the late 19th century, telling of the state of women's rights as they were at the time. The reader will learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and the other women of the Seneca Falls Convention. Having helped to start the suffragist movement, women such as Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone fought long and hard for the rights of women. Braving the turmoil of the Civil War era, these women formed organizations such as the American Equal Rights Association and helped to push for equal rights for not only themselves, but for African Americans as well. The turn-of-the-century saw a growth in the anti-suffragist movement, and new ladies appeared on the scene ready to fight hard for their beliefs.Alice Paul and her contemporaries reinvigorated the suffragist movement and spurred an organized political effort to win the vote. Through protests, parades, journalistic pieces, and even jail sentences, these women pushed the government to pass the 19th Amendment that would give women the right to vote.Their fight was difficult and long, but the suffragist movement prevailed. By 1920, American women across the country were able to vote in a national election for the first time. Like the others in the series, Created Equal is illustrated with period photographs, paintings, and drawings. Also included are a glossary and an index. ... Read more

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There was a time that girls and women in the United States could not: wear pants; play sports on a team; ride a bicycle; or go to college.

That all began to change in 1848, when American women (and some men) met in Seneca Falls, NY, at the first convention for women's rights held anywhere in the world.

In the familiar question-and-answer format, this installment in the acclaimed If You Lived... history series tells the exciting story of how women worked to get equal rights with men, culminating in the 19th amendment to the Constitution and giving women the right to vote.

Readers find out what life was like for girls in those days and meet the pioneering figures in the movement, including Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and Alice Paul.

Anne Kamma has written several books in the series including If You Lived When There Was Slavery in America and If You Lived with the Indians of the Northwest Coast, both illustrated by Pamela Johnson

... Read more

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In the two decades since Feminism and Suffrage was first published, the increased presence of women in politics and the gender gap in voting patterns have focused renewed attention on an issue generally perceived as nineteenth-century. For this new edition, Ellen Carol DuBois addresses the changing context for the history of woman suffrage at the millennium. ... Read more