"Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.”
Written by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women’s rights activists used this rallying cry to demand voting equality. But the suffrage movement included far more voices and perspectives than these two well-known names: throughout the fight for women’s right to vote, generations of diverse activists demanded full access to the ballot box. Hosts Rosario Dawson and Retta guide us through this seven-part series from the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, the National Park Service, and PRX, bringing us the stories we didn’t learn in our history books. And Nothing Less: The Untold Stories of Women’s Fight for the Vote is the official podcast commemorating 100 years of the 19th Amendment and women's constitutional right to vote. Listen to And Nothing Less using the links below, or subscribe and download wherever podcasts are found.
Episodes
Episode 1. The Cult of True Womanhood
To understand what the suffragists were up against, we have to look at why men -- and even some other women -- didn’t want women to have the right to vote at all.
Guests:
Martha Jones, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
Elaine Weiss author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Allison Lange, professor of History at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, consultant to the WSCC
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 2. Myths & Legends
Susan B. Anthony invented women’s suffrage, right? At least that feels like we were taught in school. The truth is much more complicated: Native American women had rights long before white settlers arrived. And, during the suffrage movement, Anthony actually faced a rival organization run by Lucy Stone (our suffragist pictured with this week’s episode), with different priorities about how suffragists and abolitionists should work together.
Guests:
Sally Roesch Wagner, Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, author of the anthology The Women’s Suffrage Movement
Lisa Tetrault, author The Myth of Seneca Falls, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University
Martha S. Jones, Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University, author of author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
Further reading:
Fact-checking feminism
The Myth of Seneca Falls by Lisa Tetrault
Suffrage before 1848
How Native American Women Inspired the Women’s Rights Movement
Fraught Friendship: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglas
Nineteenth Century Activism
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 3. Truth is of No Color
This is more than a story about women’s rights. It’s a story about civil rights. And women like Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, our pictured suffragist this week, understood that the suffrage fight was as much about race as it was gender.
Guests:
Michelle Duster, author, public historian, and the great-granddaughter of suffragist and civil rights icon Ida B. Wells
Martha Jones, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
Lisa Tetrault, history professor at Carnegie Mellon University
Alison Parker, professor of history at the University of Delaware
Marjorie Spruill, professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina
Further Reading:
https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/6/4/fraught-friendship-susan-b-anthony-and-frederick-douglass
https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/1/a-noble-endeavor-ida-b-wells-barnett-and-suffrage
https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-women-and-the-nineteenth-amendment.htm
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ida-B-the-Queen/Michelle-Duster/9781982129811
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 4. Suffrage in Translation
From New Mexico to New York, there were women separated by language, culture, religion, and citizenship, but united by a desire for equality. Pictured with this episode: Mabel Lee was Chinese immigrant and figure in the New York Suffrage scene; she was also the first Chinese woman to receive her PhD.
Special thanks to Sandra Lopez-Monsalve for gathering sound at the Mabel Lee Post Office.
Further Reading:
More about Mabel Lee
More about New Mexico and the 19th Amendment
How Native American women inspired the women's rights movement
Guests:
Cathleen Cahill
Sally Roesch Wagner
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Mabel Lee PO Fieldwork: Sandra Lopez-Monsalve
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 5. Sister Suffragette
It wasn’t just the United States -- women around the world were fighting for their voting rights, and they weren’t so polite about it. Pictured with this episode is Alice Paul, who learned from suffragists in Britain, and brought some of their techniques back home.
Sources:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-internationalist-history-of-the-us-suffrage-movement.htm
https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/8/alice-paul-woodrow-wilson-and-the-battles-for-liberty
https://www.womensvote100.org/the-suff-buffs-blog/2020/4/1/the-great-suffrage-parade-of-1913
Guests:
Ellen DuBois, a research professor at UCLA and the author of Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote
Elaine Weiss, author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 6. Southern Discomfort
Suffragists needed three fourths of the states on board to get victory for the whole country. But that meant winning over the south, where zero states were in. Pictured with this episode: Carrie Chapman Catt, who came to Nashville to manage the strategy on the ground.
Sources:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318833/the-womans-hour-by-elaine-weiss/
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/new-women-of-the-new-south-9780195082456?cc=us&lang=en&
https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-in-the-southern-states.htm
Guests:
Marjorie J. Spruill is Professor Emerita of History from the University of South Carolina and author of VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation.
Elaine Weiss author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.
Allison Parker, professor at University of Delaware and author of Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell.
Lisa Tetrault, author The Myth of Seneca Falls, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University.
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos
Episode 7. Failure is Impossible
The episode title is a line from a speech Susan B. Anthony gave a few months before she died in 1906; she didn’t live to see the 19th amendment added to the Constitution in 1920. But the 19th amendment wasn’t -- and isn’t -- the end of the voting rights story. Pictured with this episode: Zitkala-Sa, who fought for Native Americans' right to vote after 1920.
Sources:
Beyond 1920: The Legacies of Woman Suffrage
Guests:
Allison Parker, professor at University of Delaware and author of Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell.
Kristi Andersen is a political scientist and the author of After Suffrage.
Martha Jones, professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All.
Lisa Tetrault, author The Myth of Seneca Falls, associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University.
Elaine Weiss, author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.
Credits:
And Nothing Less was envisioned by WSCC Executive Director Anna Laymon, with support from Communications Director Kelsey Millay.
Executive Producer: Genevieve Sponsler
Producer and Audio Engineer: Samantha Gattsek
Writer and Producer: Robin Linn
Original Music: Erica Huang
Additional Support: Ray Pang, Jocelyn Gonzales, Jason Saldanha, John Barth
Marketing Support: Ma’ayan Plaut, Dave Cotrone, Anissa Pierre
Booker: Amy Walsh
Logo: Stephanie Marsellos