“An essential history of the struggle by both Black and white women to achieve their equal rights.”—Hillary Rodham Clinton
The Nineteenth Amendment was an incomplete victory. Black and white women fought hard for voting rights and doubled the number of eligible voters, but the amendment did not enfranchise all women, or even protect the rights of those women who could vote. A century later, women are still grappling with how to use the vote and their political power to expand civil rights, confront racial violence, improve maternal health, advance educational and employment opportunities, and secure reproductive rights.
Formidable chronicles the efforts of white and Black women to advance sometimes competing causes. Black women wanted the rights enjoyed by whites. They wanted to protect their communities from racial violence and discrimination. Theirs was not only a women’s movement. White women wanted to be equal to white men. They sought equal legal rights, political power, safeguards for working women and immigrants, and an end to confining social structures. There were also many white women who opposed any advance for any women.
In this riveting narrative, Dr. Elisabeth Griffith integrates the fight by white and Black women to achieve equality. Previously their parallel struggles for social justice have been presented separately—as white or Black topics—or covered narrowly, through only certain individuals, decades, or incidents. Formidable provides a sweeping, century-long perspective, and an expansive cast of change agents. From feminists and civil rights activists to politicians and social justice advocates, from working class women to mothers and homemakers, from radicals and conservatives to those who were offended by feminism, threatened by social change, or convinced of white supremacy, the diversity of the women’s movement mirrors America.
After that landmark victory in 1920, suffragists had a sense of optimism, declaring, “Now we can begin!” By 2020, a new generation knew how hard the fight for incremental change was; they would have to begin again. Both engaging and outraging, Formidable will propel readers to continue their foremothers’ fights to achieve equality for all.
"An engaging, relevant and sweeping chronicle of women’s fight for equality in the United States. Books of true feminist history are rare. Rarer still are these histories intersectional; feminist history tends to be synonymous with white women’s history. Not this book. Griffith delivers a multiracial, inclusive timeline of the struggles and triumphs of both Black and white women in America. A profoundly illuminating tour de force."
"This is an intersectional account of what it has meant to be a woman in America for the past century. Griffith forces us to consider the complexity of women and acknowledge that we have been 'oppressors, progressives, enslaved, activists, adversaries and allies.' Griffith has found the words for us and does an exemplary job of showing how women have always discovered ways to be powerful, regardless of obstacles."
"Formidable is an essential history of the one-hundred-year struggle between 1920 and 2020 by both Black and white women in America to achieve their equal rights. Griffith surveys the successes and setbacks that remained relevant and pressing across the century: voting rights, racial violence, health care, reproductive rights, working conditions, education, race, and gender discrimination, electoral office. Through her comprehensive survey of the people, events, and movements that marked this history, she highlights the women, and men, who were both pushing for change and those who resisted it. The final outcome of that struggle is not yet decided."
"Historian Griffith proves herself up to the formidable task she sets forth to achieve in this thorough and thoughtful look at a century of change — which she cautions might seem more radical than it actually is, given how long it’s taken to realize the demands of early feminists of all races. The author gives a great deal of attention to intersectionality and specific identities and interests, taking care to note that the fight doesn’t belong to any one group."
