Throughout history, women in many countries have been denied suffrage, or the right to vote. Women's suffrage was first highlighted as an issue in Britain with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. In the following century, people advocated for women's suffrage more and more. In the United States, leaders of the women's suffrage movement included Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. As a result of their hard work, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevented women from being denied suffrage. They now had the same voting rights as men. Primary sources in the form of photographs, first-hand accounts, publications from the movement, and drawings allow readers to gain insight into the difficulties women faced in their fight for voting rights. Sidebars encourage readers to ask and answer questions pertaining to women's suffrage.

This contextual narrative of the 70-year history of the woman suffrage movement in the United States demonstrates how an important mass political and social movement coalesced into a political force despite class, racial, ethnic, religious, and regional barriers. Votes for Women! provides an updated consideration of the questions raised by the mass movement to gain equality and access to power in our democracy. It interprets the campaigns for woman suffrage from the 1830s until 1920, analyzes the impact of the Nineteenth Amendment, and presents primary documents to allow a glimpse into the minds of those who campaigned for and against woman suffrage. The book's examination of the 70-year woman suffrage campaign shows how the movement faced enormous barriers, was perceived as threatening the very core of accepted beliefs, and was a struggle that showcased the efforts of strong protagonists and brilliant organizers who were intellectually innovative and yet were reflective of the great divides of race, ethnicity, religion, economics, and region existing across the nation. Included within the narrative section are biographies of significant personalities in the movement, such as militant Alice Paul and anti-suffragist Ida Tarbell as well as more commonly known leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Author is an alumna of Evanston Township High School, class of 1941.

Presents facts about the women0́9s suffrage movement, covering the fight for the right to vote, from its origin in the abolition and temperance movements, through the split after the Civil War, to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

"Every serious student of woman suffrage must take account of this vital contemporary document, which tells the story of the struggle for woman suffrage in America from the first woman's rights convention in 1848 to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Originally published in 1923, it gives the inside story of this remarkable movement, told by two ardent suffragists: Carrie Chapman Catt (of whom the New York Times wrote, 'More than anyone else she turned Woman Suffrage from a dream into a fact') and Nettie Rogers Shuler. Writing from vivid recollection, the authors offer some of their own ideas about what caused the United States to be the twenty-seventh country to give the vote to women when she ought 'by rights' to have been the first"--Unedited summary from book cover.