Awards

• Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year

Overview

August 18, 2020, marked the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibited states and the US government from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex. See how the 70-year-long fight for women's suffrage was hard won by leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Carrie Chapman Catt and others. Learn how their success led into the civil rights and feminist movements of the mid- and late twentieth century, as well as today's #MeToo, #YesAllWomen, and Black Lives Matter movements. In the face of voter ID laws, voter purges, gerrymandering, and other restrictions, Americans continue to fight for equality in voting rights.

Full Product Details

9781541528154

Table of Contents

Reviews

A history of the struggle for universal suffrage in the United States. Initially suffrage was reserved for white male property owners, and while the property ownership requirement had largely been eliminated by 1800, white women were still disenfranchised, with legal control of their bodies and possessions transferring to their husbands upon marriage. Frazer (Economic Inequality, 2018) details the events and people that brought about incremental change and the eventual passage of the 19th Amendment. Suffragists' advocacy of reform issues--abolition, free love, temperance--are also covered. Frazer does not shy away from naming the underlying racism, nativism, and elitism espoused by early suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the discomfort within the larger movement of black suffragists like Ida Wells-Barnett and Frances Harper, or the complacency of white suffragists in the implementation of Jim Crow laws instituting poll taxes and literacy tests on black men. Frazer ends with warnings about current attempts at voter suppression and calls for the protection of voting rights and the mobilization of female voters. As this is a brief overview, some topics could have benefited from additional nuance and exploration, such as historical shifts in the Republican Party and barriers to Indigenous people's suffrage. Informative sidebars break up the text and offer important context. Offers teens a call to action to protect all voters from disenfranchisement. --Kirkus Reviews --Journal

Author Information

Coral Celeste Frazer has an M.A. in sociology from Princeton University and a long-standing interest in issues of inequality, collective action, and social justice. She writes nonfiction and fiction for teens and adults, as well as reading comprehension items for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). She has lived in Colorado, Oregon, New Jersey, and Boston, and now resides in Norwich, England, with her husband and son.

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