
Recasting the Vote
How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement
Cathleen D. Cahill(Author)
The University of North Carolina Press
Published on 30. August 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
376 pages
978-1-4696-6612-9 (ISBN)
Description
We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In Recasting the Vote, Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights. Cahill reveals a new cast of heroines largely ignored in earlier suffrage histories: Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Carrie Williams Clifford, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and Adelina "Nina" Luna Otero-Warren. With these feminists of color in the foreground, Cahill recasts the suffrage movement as an unfinished struggle that extended beyond the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
As we celebrate the centennial of a great triumph for the women's movement, Cahill's powerful history reminds us of the work that remains.
As we celebrate the centennial of a great triumph for the women's movement, Cahill's powerful history reminds us of the work that remains.
Reviews / Votes
"Written to coincide with the centennial of the 19th Amendment, this important book reminds us that the familiar stories of women's suffrage are woefully incomplete. . . . An essential work; highly recommended for scholars of the period and general readers interested in women's history." - Library Journal"A much-needed perspective on the efforts to gain full suffrage for American women at the start of the 20th century. . . . An impressive corrective for those so long left out of this history." - CHOICE
"This spirited history situates the campaign for female suffrage within the broader narrative of civil rights. . . . Cahill's widened focus links the battle for enfranchisement to currents of exclusion and empowerment that continue to shape the vote today." - The New Yorker
"Cathleen D. Cahill's narrative-supplanting book . . . challenges the reductive, whitewashed accounts of how the 19th amendment was ratcheted through the political process. . . . Cahill's text doesn't merely add minority figures to the story of women's enfranchisement, it proves it is impossible to tell the story without them." - Tribal College Journal
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
24 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
636 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-6612-9 (9781469666129)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
09/2020
The University of North Carolina Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Cathleen D. Cahill is associate professor of history at Penn State University and the author of Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933, winner of the 2011 Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award and finalist for the 2012 David J. Weber-Clements Prize, Western History Association.