The Women’s Suffrage Movement

By: Sally Roesch Wagner - editor and introduction, Gloria Steinem - foreword

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 22 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

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, with a foreword by Gloria Steinem

Comprised of historical texts spanning two centuries, The Women's Suffrage Movement is a comprehensive and singular volume that covers the major issues and figures involved in the movement, with a distinctive focus on diversity, incorporating race, class, and gender, and illuminating minority voices. In an effort to spotlight the many influential voices that were excluded from the movement, the writings of well-known suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are featured alongside accounts of Native American women who inspired suffragists like Matilda Joslyn Gage to join the movement, as well as African American suffragists such as Sarah Mapps Douglas and Harriet Purvis, who were often left out of the conversation because of their race. The editor and introducer Sally Roesch Wagner is a preeminent 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.

©2019 Introduction, notes, afterword, and selection copyright 2019 by Sally Roesch Wagner; Foreword copyright 2019 by Gloria Steinem (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

The Importance of Women's HerStory

This perspective of 'The Women's Suffrage Movement' is incredibly important today. Understanding the struggles of women who fought tirelessly for decades, realizing the harsh reality of the more unsavoury aspects, including racism as well as white supremacism of those key women leading this suffrage movement is essential in healing the issues we face today.

It is also important to consider the question; what if the key women who fought for voting rights had focused their efforts on inclusivity, human rights, freedom and education for all people, how might that have changed the unjust systems that are in place now?

We need this HerStory more than ever. We need younger generations to understand how their foremothers fought and suffered, so that we have what freedom we have today, and how fragile those rights still are, as those with money and power are still attacking those hard won rights women do have. We are living in an age where religious conservatives are still calling the shots, and creating barriers to women's freedom, regardless of what's best for the individual or our collective humanity.

Schools must teach this HerStory from an early age, so that future voter's will appreciate fully the struggles that freedom and democracy cost still today. We all must understand that our future depends on every one of us voting and taking an active part in our democracy, no matter what!

Please, listen to this book, share this information with other's. If democracy is to flourish it will only be when we reflect on where we've been, where we're going, and as we create a positive vision for our future for all life on our fragile Earth.

History that wasn’t taught in school

This is such an important telling of the history of suffrage in America! We are headed backwards right now and MUST keep fighting for the rights we have won, for women and all people of color.
Timely and provocative!

Southern white men

Kind of ironic that southern white men rather than northern white men were the ones who gave women that final state for ratification. Kudos to Midwest and West. Northeast should be ashamed.