Delaware-Specific
Boylan, Anne M., Votes for Delaware Women. University of Delaware Press, 2021; 169 pages.
Eminent historian and riveting storyteller, Dr. Boylan traces Delaware’s suffrage story in four Chapter segments, “Beginnings,” “Energy and Fracture: 1914-1917,” “Suffrage in Wartime,” and “Delaware: The Final State?” The titles reflect the pulse and pace of a movement uniting Black and white women challenging the status quo in a uniquely small, neighborly, proud and self-aware state.
Histories of Woman Suffrage
American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Susan Ware
Emphasizes the diverse experiences of American women as they were shaped by race, class, religion, geographical location, age, and sexual orientation, and tracing changing historical and cultural constructions of roles assigned to American women; includes excellent material on woman suffrage.
Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States.
Author: Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick
The longtime standard history of the fight for women’s suffrage in the U.S., recently enlarged; a first-rate and comprehensive history, thoroughly researched and well written.
The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections from History of Woman Suffrage, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and the National American Woman Suffrage Association
Authors: Mari Jo Buhle and Paul Buhle
Carefully chosen primary documents originally published in the classic six-volume History of Woman Suffrage originally compiled by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and their successors between 1887 and 1922.
The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Author: Elaine Weiss
A colorful history of the struggle for ratification of the 19th amendment waged in Tennessee to tell the larger history of the final stages of the battle for woman suffrage.
Suffrage Leaders and Workers
Carrie Chapman Catt: A Public Life
Author: Jacqueline Van Voris
Biography of the woman who led the National American Woman Suffrage Association to victory and helped found the League of Women Voters. Focusing on Catt’s public life and faith in the human race.
A Colored Woman in a White World
Author: Mary Church Terrell
A compelling autobiography detailing the extraordinary life of one of the most formidable women’s rights and racial justice activists in U.S. history. From advocating for universal suffrage to pushing for the racial desegregation of public accommodations, Terrell played an integral role in propelling the U.S. towards becoming a more just and equitable society. This thought-provoking autobiography offers unmatched insight into the lived experiences of one of the most notable suffragists in modern American history.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life
Author: Lori Ginzberg
Biography of a woman of great charm, enormous appetite, and extraordinary intellectual gifts who turned the limitations placed on women like herself into a universal philosophy of equal rights. But she was no secular saint, and her positions were not always on the side of the broadest possible conception of justice and social change.
Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
Author: Susan WareBiographical sketches of nineteen activists and the artifacts linked to them, illustrating some of 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.
To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells
Author: Mia Bay
Bay meticulously and incisively delves into the life of the incomparable suffragist, anti-lynching activist, and civil rights activist in U.S. history. Wells risked her life on numerous occasions via her efforts to secure inalienable rights for black people of all genders and women of all races. Her work as a suffragist often demanded that both white women and black men listen to and support black women.
Women of Color, Race and the Woman Suffrage Movement
African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920
Author: Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
One of the most comprehensive books on the history of African American women and suffrage, Terborg-Penn uncovers a less-celebrated history of women’s activism. This book details how and why black women demanded voting rights. The book also presents tensions within suffrage and voting rights movements to underscore the unique position of black women within the fight for universal suffrage.
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America
Author: Paula Giddings
Suffrage activism is an important chapter of black women’s history. Although not solely focused upon black suffragists, this book highlights the importance of suffrage to black women and explores the contours of black women’s suffrage activism. The book is an excellent teaching resource for anyone interested in understanding black women’s activism from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement.
Women, Race and Class
Author: Angela Davis
Davis is one of the pioneers of Black Women’s Studies. This book centers on black women in her analysis of how race, class, and gender operate. More specifically, Davis examines anti-black racism within the suffrage movement and explores how black women navigated racial tensions. Davis also discusses the roles of sexism, patriarchy, and misogyny in the denial of voting rights to all women. The book is at once accessible, powerful, and unflinching in its analysis of the racial, gender, and class oppression.
Woman Suffrage in the Larger World
Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question
Author: Alison Sneider
An exploration of the connections between woman suffrage and American imperialism; suffragists believed it was the "duty" of U.S. women to help lift the inhabitants of its new island possessions up from "barbarism" to "civilization," a project they hoped would demonstrate the capacity of U.S. women for full citizenship and political rights.
White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United State
Author: Louise Newman
Examination of the impact of racism and ethnography on feminist thought from the end of the Civil War to 1920, this book traces the impact of Darwinian theories on the white middle-class women who led the movement, advocating for the preservation of white bourgeois civilization and the education of primitive peoples.
Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement
Author: Leila J. Rupp
Exploration of the "first wave" of the international women's movement, from its late nineteenth-century origins through the Second World War, it examines the histories and accomplishments of three major transnational women's organizations to tell the story of women's struggle to pursue suffrage and construct a feminist international collective identity.
Adapted from reading list on Ohio LWV which was compiled by Dr. Carol Lasser & Dr. Treva Lindsey.
