Gold Medalist 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the U.S. History Category
Finalist – 2018 Sally and Morris Lasky Prize, presented by the Center for Political History at Lebanon Valley College
“…[a] breezy account … prodigiously researched.” — New York Times
“The Suffragents is one of the first works to fully examine male involvement in the American suffrage movement, an area of historical study that has long been ignored by suffrage historians … [it] is well written, a testament to Kroeger’s skills as a journalist and her ability to weave a compelling story that also flows chronologically.” — H-Net Reviews (H-SHGAPE)
“The historiography of the women suffrage movement has been greatly advanced thanks to this valuable study, which has the potential for being the definitive full-length work on the role men played in this movement. It is a fascinating look at an aspect of the suffrage story rarely considered.” — Hudson River Valley Review
“Among the pleasures of Kroeger’s carefully developed storyline is the view of how important political figures such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson came around to accepting the idea that women deserved the vote, an evolution helped along by arguments by the suffrage movement’s male allies until the righteousness of the cause could no longer be ignored. A vigorous, readable revisitation of the events of a century and more ago but with plenty of subtle lessons in the book for modern-day civil rights activists, too.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The Suffragents is the product of formidable research. It’s a fresh contribution in which the big picture is composed of a vast mosaic of forgotten facts.” Susan Waggoner, Foreword Reviews
The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. Brooke Kroeger explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they did at the behest of the movement’s female leadership, and why. She details the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s strategic decision to accept their organized help and then to deploy these influential new allies as suffrage foot soldiers, a role they accepted with uncommon grace. Led by such luminaries as Oswald Garrison Villard, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and George Foster Peabody, members of the League worked the streets, the stage, the press, and the legislative and executive branches of government. In the process, they helped convince waffling politicians, a dismissive public, and a largely hostile press to support the women’s demand. Together, they swayed the course of history.
James McBride, author of The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction:
“The Suffragents is proof that the clatter of dishes that America’s power brokers were hearing as they sat in their smoking parlors back in the early twentieth century meant more than clean china and emptied ashtrays. Someone was cooking up plans. The book reveals the careful, never-before-told story of how women carefully calculated and planned their own liberation, directing the prominent power brokers in America into action. With smooth efficiency and the touch of a novelist, Brooke Kroeger shows how the suffragist movement, engineered by women from top to bottom, cleverly stitched in the involvement of men from all walks of professional and political life, directed by women who used neither gun nor blade to direct the men, but the weapons of intelligence, cleverness, and when necessary, subterfuge. The collaboration in this balance of power between prominent men who invested in the movement, and the women who directed them, has everything to teach us today.”
Linda J. Lumsden, author of INEZ: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland:
“Not all the suffragists who risked ridicule to march down Fifth Avenue in the big parades touting votes for women wore dresses. Brooke Kroeger meticulously documents the largely unsung role of men who publicly supported their wives, mothers, sisters, or lovers in the final dramatic decade of women’s seventy-year battle for the ballot.”
Michael Kimmel, co-editor of Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1775-1990: A Documentary History
“Women ‘need’ men to get the rights they deserve: after all, men had to vote to let women vote. Brooke Kroeger gives us the first history of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, the “Gentleman’s Auxiliary” of the women’s movement. Eschewing the spotlight, they supported gender equality, as we all should, because it’s quite simply the right thing to do. With this gift, Kroeger gives us back a bit of our history.”
Back in 2013, knowing that the centennial of women’s suffrage was just ahead, I had it in mind to write a book of suffrage history but on an under-explored theme. It occurred to me that for women to have succeeded at last in what turned out to be a 70-year-long campaign, what they needed was the vocal, public, active support of men. Men, except in the western states that had passed suffrage, were the vast majority of voters. Men made the laws. A simple search brought up The Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. The prominent men whose names appeared on the earliest membership rosters made me think these were little more than the equivalent of celebrity endorsers, men willing to do little more than sign a letter or provide a quote for an ad. The research decidedly proved otherwise and that’s how The Suffragents came to be.
Brooke Kroeger is a journalist, author and professor of journalism at New York University,where she directs GloJo, short for Global and Joint Program Studies. The Suffragents (2017) is her fifth book. Previous works are Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception (2012); Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are (2003); Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst (1999); and Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (1994).
From An Introduction:
On May 6, 1911, under perfect blue skies, ten thousand spectators lined both sides of Fifth Avenue “from the curb to the building line” for the annual New York Suffrage Day parade. Somewhere between three thousand and five thousand marchers strode in a stream of purple, green, and white, from Fifty-Seventh Street to a giant rally in Union Square. Bicolored banners demarcated the groups by their worldly work as architects, typists, aviators, explorers, nurses, physicians, actresses, shirtwaist makers, cooks, painters, writers, chauffeurs, sculptors, journalists, editors, milliners, hairdressers, office holders, librarians, decorators, teachers, farmers, artists’ models, “even pilots with steamboats painted on their banners.” Women’s work was the point. The New York Sun repeated the entire list at the top of its front-page story.
To draw broad attention for this spectacle, the women had help from a single troupe of men in their midst—eighty-nine in all, by most accounts—dressed not in the Scottish kilts of the bagpipers or the smartly pressed uniforms of the bands, but in suits, ties, fedoras, and the odd top hat. They marched four abreast in the footsteps of the women, under a banner of their own.
These men were not random supporters, but representatives of a momentous, yet subtly managed development in the suffrage movement’s seventh decade. Eighteen months earlier, 150 titans of publishing, industry, finance, science, medicine, and academia; of the clergy, the military, of letters and of the law; men of means or influence or both, had joined together under their own charter to become what their banner proclaimed them, the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage. Since the end of 1909, they had been speaking, writing, editing or publishing, planning, and lobbying New York’s governor and legislators on behalf of the suffrage cause. They did so until the vote was won.
. . . This book seeks to retrieve a long-forgotten sliver of history—to tell the story of how, in the course of women’s protracted and hard-fought battle to gain the vote in the United States, men played a consequential role that they did not aggrandize or promote, except when it served the suffrage cause for them to do so. Drawing on biographical sketches, correspondence, and a multitude of references in newspapers and magazines of the period, the book recounts efforts that years later would fail to receive even passing mention in the often prominent published obituaries of the League’s key male figures.
Specifically, this book is about how the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage of the State of New York came to be formed, in 1908, how hard its members worked under the direction of the extraordinary women who led the suffrage charge in that period; and why what transpired may hold some lessons worth reflecting upon, even today. It shows how in that final decade leading up to the passage of the New York State suffrage amendment in 1917, these “Mere Men,” these “Suffragents,” the British moniker by which they were so often disdainfully called, helped inspire a gradual but dramatic tonal shift in response to the larger suffrage movement in the way mass-circulation newspapers and magazines covered it, and in the way politicians, government officials, and both the general and all-male voting public responded to it.
From a contemporary standpoint, it is remarkable to consider that one hundred years ago, these prominent men—highly respected and influential, their exploits chronicled regularly in the national media—not only gave their names to the cause of women’s rights or called in the odd favor, but rather invested in the fight. They created and ran an organization expressly committed to an effort that, up until the point at which they joined, had been seen as women’s work for a marginal nonstarter of a cause. From the beginning of their involvement, these men willingly acted on orders from and in tandem with the women who ran the greater state and national suffrage campaigns. How many times in American history has such collaboration happened, especially with this balance of power?
Aug. 31, 2020
By Joan Michelson
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanmichelson2/2020/08/30/7-career-lessons-for-today-from-the-suffrage-movement/#2b43fe7b2c7b
“Imagine what it must have meant for “the thinking men of our country, the brains of our colleges, of commerce and literature,” in suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt’s phrase, to involve themselves with such gusto in a campaign designed to dilute their preeminence at the ballot box.”
“Brooke Kroeger’s writing style kept me engaged. Although the book was extremely detailed, it read like a story not like a history textbook. The reading experience turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It was a captivating story with a very happy ending.”
“To commemorate that centennial, this Women’s History Month, I sat down with one of the foremost chroniclers of the suffrage movement, Brooke Kroeger, to tell us how it happened and glean lessons for women today. “
How ‘Suffragents’ Helped Women Get the Vote
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By James Worsham | National Archives News
WASHINGTON, November 14, 2019 —The drive for women’s suffrage in the early 20th century got a big boost from men who were sympathetic to the cause—“suffragents”—a panel of authors told an audience at the National Archives recently.
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Women and men marched in the ...
The panel, moderated by Betsy Fischer Martin, Executive Director, Women and Politics Institute, American University School of Public Affairs, includes Brooke Kroeger, author of The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote,; Johanna Newman, author of Gilded Suffragists; Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched; and others.
“What can those with visibility and influence do–beyond stating support for a particular movement–to combat injustice? Can those with power and privilege advance the interests of others–without hijacking or getting in the way of the efforts of the marginalized groups they mean to support?”
“Brooke Kroeger notes in her study of the men allies or suffragents that such public support by men of women’s concerns and issues is unprecedented in US history, then as well as now. This is something to consider today as the women’s movement is encountering road blocks in its struggle to put equal rights as a ...
“Was their participation as ‘suffragents’ lost in recall because of the fullness of the subsequent twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years in most of their lives? Or was the downplaying deliberate, a postchivalrous response to obscure their role in the great women’s epic, as good allies should; that certainly has been the effect. It would ...
“But there’s an elemental and patronizing weirdness behind this urge to parcel out the calendar demographically, and I won’t even begin to touch on international (fill-in-the-blank) days. I worry that zeroing in on the One Designated Month makes it easier to ignore certain constituencies and histories the remainder of the year.”
“Suffragents is one of the first works to fully examine male involvement in the American suffrage movement, an area of historical study that has long been ignored by suffrage historians.”
“Brooke Kroeger gave engaging remarks about the suffrage movement and some of its striking personalities . . . and shared with us a wonderful summary, video, and commentary about the evening, the exhibition, and the history.”
“The historiography of the women suffrage movement has been greatly advanced thanks to this valuable study, which has the potential for being the definitive full-length work on the role men played in this movement. It is a fascinating look at an aspect of the suffrage story rarely considered.”
“. . . called The Suffragents, and it’s about how men, mostly husbands of the women in the suffrage movement, worked to help get women the vote. It’s about equality. They’re part of the equation.”.”
“From a contemporary standpoint, it is remarkable to consider that 100 years ago, these prominent men not only gave their names to the cause of women’s rights or called in the odd favor, but invested in the fight.”
Only Eastman pondered the emotional forces that had been at play for him. “There was nothing harder for a man with my mamma’s-boy complex to do than stand up and be counted as a ‘male suffragette,’” he later wrote. Such passionate engagement with a women’s cause not only signified an assertion of his manhood, he ...
What’s indisputable is the spectrum of men who joined with the coalition of rural, immigrant, black and radical women who were at the forefront of the movement.
“Professor Kroeger’s prodigiously researched book traces the role of men (who provided credibility to a movement financed by wealthy women) at least as far back as 1875, when Thomas ...
“All of this should remind us that the flip-side of outrage or protest is a vision of what should exist in its stead. An important lesson of suffrage is that men’s support, both in and outside legislatures, is essential to correcting the gender inequalities that still fester. As Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the ...
“Quite a few editors did not like this idea,” she says. “Responses came back like, ‘I’d like to work with Brooke but never about this.’ I’m not kidding. Or, ‘Who cares what the men did?’ That was pretty typical.”
“A vigorous, readable revisitation of the events of a century and more ago but with plenty of subtle lessons in the book for modern-day civil rights activists, too.”
“Immortalized in bronze on a statehouse plaque are 83 veterans of the New York State women’s suffrage campaign—and nearly one fifth of those names also appear in the 1917 Social Register.”
“Part of the little-known women’s history that is men’s history, too. As civic-minded New Yorkers, as major religious leaders . . . became key figures on opposing sides.”
“Ms. Kroeger, in true journalistic fashion, details the various conversations, correspondence, and setbacks of the campaign, as well as the eventual success the National American Woman Suffrage Association had in gaining the vote.”
“From a contemporary standpoint, it is remarkable to consider that one hundred years ago, these prominent men — highly respected and influential, their exploits chronicled regularly in the national media — not only gave their names to the cause of women’s rights or called in the odd favor, but rather invested in the fight.”
“These men of the press did not stay out of the fray. They stood up, spoke up, and acted up. They took sides to help right a wrong. They were prescient about the course history was poised to take, indeed, needed to take, and they helped history to take it.”
“Bly’s point was this: intellectual or not, for a woman, neglect of appearance is a weakness, not a strength. “And in working for a cause,” she went on, “I think it is wise to show the men that its influence does not make woman any the less attractive.” Even more to the point, she said, ...
“A remarkable new book has appeared on the World War I scene, one that traces the origins of the Women’s Suffrage movement in America, and it’s relationship to America’s war effort 100 years ago.”
” . .. . But a would-be feminist champion like Ashton Kutcher might have avoided a few common mistakes if he had read NYU journalism proefessor Brooke Kroeger’s latest book, which relates lessons from the little known story of how a group of powerful men offered themselves as foot soldiers in the fight for women’s ...
“Was memory of these actions lost in the fullness of the next 20 to 50 years of their large lives? Or did the men deliberately downplay their role in the movement all good allies should? The latter would be consistent with the League’s comportment throughout the decade of its existence, but we’re left to wonder.”
8 Janvier 2018
http://www.jamaissanselles.fr/2018/01/08/les-suffragents/
Les Suffragents : ces hommes puissants, humbles alliés du droit de vote des femmes
On 8 janvier 2018
Il y a à peine plus d’un siècle, 150 hommes se mobilisaient aux États-Unis à l’initiative des suffragettes pour défendre le droit de vote des femmes, et se faisaient leurs auxiliaires dans les dernières années ...
“Most of the great and wondrous ideas of the suffrage movement were either New York-born or New York-borne creations,” said New York University journalism professor Brooke Kroeger, the author of “The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote.”
Advance Praise for THE SUFFRAGENTS:
James McBride, author of The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction:
“The Suffragents is proof that the clatter of dishes that America’s power brokers were hearing as they sat in their smoking parlors back in the early twentieth century meant more than clean china and emptied ashtrays. Someone was cooking up plans. The book reveals the careful, never-before-told story of how women carefully calculated and planned their own liberation, directing the prominent power brokers in America into action. With smooth efficiency and the touch of a novelist, Brooke Kroeger shows how the suffragist movement, engineered by women from top to bottom, cleverly stitched in the involvement of men from all walks of professional and political life, directed by women who used neither gun nor blade to direct the men, but the weapons of intelligence, cleverness, and when necessary, subterfuge. The collaboration in this balance of power between prominent men who invested in the movement, and the women who directed them, has everything to teach us today.”
From Linda J. Lumsden, author of INEZ: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland:
“Not all the suffragists who risked ridicule to march down Fifth Avenue in the big parades touting votes for women wore dresses. Brooke Kroeger meticulously documents the largely unsung role of men who publicly supported their wives, mothers, sisters, or lovers in the final dramatic decade of women’s seventy-year battle for the ballot.”
From Michael Kimmel, co-editor of Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1775-1990: A Documentary History
“Women ‘need’ men to get the rights they deserve: after all, men had to vote to let women vote. Brooke Kroeger gives us the first history of the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, the “Gentleman’s Auxiliary” of the women’s movement. Eschewing the spotlight, they supported gender equality, as we all should, because it’s quite simply the right thing to do. With this gift, Kroeger gives us back a bit of our history.”
James McBride, author of The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction:
Linda J. Lumsden, author of INEZ: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland:
Michael Kimmel, co-editor of Against the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1775-1990: A Documentary History
