The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

This was a thoroughly-enjoyable book. Weiss’s prose really breathes life into history, so much so that you feel like you really understand what makes so many of the women and men she writes about tick. Weiss also does a nice job of applying an intersectional and critical lens to the history of women’s suffrage. It was fascinating to read about the deep and complex relationships between Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony in particular. I found it a bit spooky (and comforting?) to learn just how closely the US political and social environment in the early 1900s parallels where we are today. Down to a 1920s Kellyanne Conway(!). It was so powerful to come away with a sense of just how many women have contributed (and continue to contribute) to the advancement of women’s rights since the birth of our nation. I feel more connected to the ongoing American story than ever before. After reading this book I purchased 10 copies for girlfriends of mine. It is an absolute travesty that women are essentially erased from the American historical narrative. If we actually learned the full story of America during our civic lessons in school, we’d be a much better nation for it.

Elaine Weiss has written a blockbuster just in time to help celebrate the Centennial of Woman Suffrage, i.e., passage of the 19th Amendment. She stayed in our city of Nashville, TN several months over a period of years, to do extensive research about the final push that occurred in the summer of 2019. Her research is excellent and the book is a compelling read. As one with a minor degree in women's studies, I thought I had read all about women's history. However, I learned several new things by reading this book. I am most excited that she included a full page picture of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument that stands in Centennial Park in Nashville, TN where that vote took place when Tennessee became the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment. . I am the founder of the Woman Suffrage Monument, Inc. that raised the money and commissioned the statue to create a memorial for future generations so that the work of the Tennessee suffragists will not be forgotten. I highly recommend this book.

I was horrified when my children came home from 2nd grade (6 years apart, same school, same teacher in a solid Seattle Public school) and each gravely told me that they were learning the first use of civil protest was by the Civil Rights Movement for their MLK Day celebration assembly. Each time, I asked if their teacher had mentioned the Suffragettes. Each time, she had not. While as immensely crucial, invaluable and ongoing as the Civil Rights Movement is and must remain, I have accounts of ancestors who were suffragettes and who were arrested and imprisoned for daring to say that women are not property, have equal intellect and should have the agency to vote. My great-grandmother took my grandmother as a school girl to Washington DC from the Willamette Valley just after women won the right to vote so that her child would have an understanding of where her vote as an adult would go, why it is so important and precious and hard-earned. While my daughters were both able to meet my grandmother before her death, they will only be the 4th generation of women in the USA who will reach their majority being assured of a federal vote. As the treatment of women across our globe demonstrates, this should not be glossed over. It's vital we acknowledge all of our history and I commend this book for its effort to do so as well as for laying out the interconnections between the Women's and Civil Rights Movements.

This is a momentous book about the fight for women’s suffrage in the early 20th Century in the USA and the amazing women who made it happen against all the odds, not least of those being the opposition of other women to their own enfranchisement. It’s hard to believe that women are still fighting today for equal rights and that the Equal Rights Ammendment which was proposed by Alice Paul of the Woman's Political Party in 1923 has never been ratified. It is unforunate that we still see so many women work against their own sex as witnessed by the support given to Trump by apparently educated women but who as Weiss suggests are the direct political descendents of those wok worked against women's suffrageIt has done my heart good in this period of despair to be reminded of these brave, beautiful and thoughtful women. Carrie Catt, twice President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, whose political awakening came at the tender age of thirteen when she came face to face with the galling reality that women were prohibited from voting, devoted the rest of her life to changing this injustice. The book recounts the thrilling story of the fight to get Tennesse to become the needed 36th State to ratify the 19th Amendment to the American Constitution. It inform, enrages, amuses and thrills at every turn. I can only imagine the suppressed feelings of outrage the women felt at having to rely on the goodwill of men, many of whom proved duplicitious, to attain what ought to have been an inalienable right from the outset. Weiss's description of the political machinations of the men and women involved in trying to deprive women of their just rights is priceless and a judicious lesson for those women recently elected to the House of Representatives if they can only fond time to read it. Catt and her colleagues were miraculously helped in their noble quest by a healthy donation from an unexpected and deliciously satisfying source. The shameful attempts by some to ignore the rights of black women is ably recounted by Weiss, an issue that resonates down to the present day. Elaine Weiss has done us all a favour in thoroughly researching her subject, in the electrifying manner in which she has recounted this history, and in bringing home to at least this reader the enormous gratitude we owe these women who worked so tirelessly and courageously and who in spite of the forces who worked against thme fought and won the good fight with style and humour. In the current climate we need to be reminded and if this book doesn't galvanise women to continue the fight to ensure that we are properly represented in the decision making process of our societies then I have to wonder what will? Best and most uplifting book I have read on the subject of women in ages.