The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
(Viking, $28) Though we all know that American women secured the right to vote only about a century ago, “most modern readers will be astonished to learn exactly how it all went down,” said Marjorie Kehe in CSMonitor .com. In the summer of 1920, the fate of the 19th Amendment hung in the balance when pro- and anti-suffrage forces converged on Tennessee for a crucial showdown. Just one more state was needed to ratify the constitutional amendment, but even suffragist leaders believed Tennessee might bury the cause, perhaps for years. Though the “Suffs” were out in force, the “Antis” were just as visible, led by Josephine Pearson, a professor determined to prevent her state from becoming the first in the South to endorse the measure. “There was scheming, double-dealing, and flip-flopping up to the last moment,” and in her new book, author Elaine Weiss has made the drama “an outand-out nail-biter.” Weiss initially rewinds to 19th-century America, and “it is hard to believe how powerless women were,” said Mims Cushing in the Jacksonville, Fla., TimesUnion. When the suffrage movement began, married women had no rights to property or to their children, and many accepted the notion that society benefited when women remained uncorrupted by engagement in the public sphere. In 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt and other suffragists were still battling that idea. But anxiety about maintaining woman’s purity wasn’t the only obstacle, said Zlati Meyer in USA Today. The Antis reminded white Tennesseans that extending suffrage to women would increase the total number of African-American voters. And because Tennessee depended on its liquor industry, the Antis plied lawmakers with free whiskey and warned that women voters would push for the passage of Prohibition. In a book that “could have easily become snooze-worthy,” such color is welcome. But because so much information is packed in, “much of the drama seeps out.”
Then comes the final act, however, providing a starring role to one determined and lovable mother, said Jean Zimmerman in NPR.org. With the Tennessee legislature nearly deadlocked, the deciding vote fell to Harry Burn, a young delegate who was wearing a red rose to signify his support for the Antis. But in his pocket he was carrying a note that read “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ‘ratification’... With lots of love, Mama.” On Aug. 26, 1920, a dutiful son voted just as his mama asked, giving 27 million Americans the right to vote and change the nation’s direction. Ninety-eight years later, “every election is woman’s hour.”