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

摘要

84 History is a chronicle of what has happened and what is happening. American history starts, technically, on July 4, 1776, and is still unfolding. The full history of the Nineteenth Amendment begins in Adams, Massachusetts, with the birth of Susan B. Anthony on February 15, 1820, and reaches its culmination just a bit over a century later, in Tennessee, on August 18, 1920. A lot goes on in one hundred years, and author Elaine Weiss tells us about all of it.85 The story in The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote begins in mid-July 1920, as the representatives of the suffragists (Suffs) and those opposed (Antis) begin their travels to Nashville. The immediate backstory begins with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment-"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex"-by Congress in 1919. In the ensuing months, thirty-five of the thirty-six states needed for ratification approved the amendment. The greatest part of Weiss s book takes place in the weeks between the thirty-fifth ratification (Washington state on March 22, 1920) and Tennessee's momentous vote in mid-August.