‘The Woman’s Hour’: A nation’s epic power struggle

March is Women’s History Month, and one of the most important milestones for those with two X chromosomes was getting the right to vote.

In the United States, women’s suffrage became the federal law of the land with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified Aug. 18, 1920. The 14-month journey was not an easy one, but the climax came when suffragists worked tirelessly to secure the 36th state ratification required.

That little-known battleground was Tennessee. The epic struggle to secure the vote for half the American population is chronicled in The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking, 340 pp., ★★★☆).

Author Elaine Weiss presents both sides’ arguments and the challenges each faced. Suffragettes and their male allies felt the right to vote had belonged to American women since Abigail Adams first asked her husband to “remember the ladies” before the U.S. declared independence in 1776.

That European countries — including Germany, which the U.S. had fought in the recently ended Great War — had seen fit to give their female citizens the vote made it all the more important to the so-called Suffs.

Opponents — called Antis — were vocal about their fear that women would be sullied by engaging in the man’s world of dirty politics; there were even women among their ranks.

What the Antis didn’t discuss as loudly were male politicians’ fears that women who opposed their positions would vote them out of office, along with the reluctance of Americans — of both genders, but of one color — to give AfricanAmerican women the vote. (Black men’s suffrage became official when the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870.)

And that monumental clash came down to a state better known for liquor and railroads than cutting-edge public policy, a state in the Jim Crow South, a state with enough regional conflicts and political infighting to make Gen. John J. Pershing queasy.

Weiss’ reportage clearly shows she did a huge amount of research, which enables her to add splashes of color to what could have easily become a snooze-worthy political-science tome. Bits about the special pin suffragettes who went to prison were awarded by their colleagues and the various main characters’ prefight histories add wonderful dimension to this important tale.

But much of the drama seeps out of the book, the result of too many unnecessary details and chapters that bounce between themes and timelines. And an explanatory list at the front of the book of important players and the similarsounding organizations on both sides of the issue would have helped.

Author Elaine Weiss