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Exhibition Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote

Events & Resources

Tours

Public Tour: Shall Not Be Denied

Fridays and Saturdays at 1 pm

Participants will explore the changing nature of the suffrage movement over its 72 year history, from conventions to a state-by-state strategy to confrontational tactics and a federal amendment. These docent-led tours will begin from the exhibition entrance.

Group tours for ten or more visitors will be available by request during the Library’s business hours via the group tour request form.

Talks

Suffrage Cookbooks

Friday, March 20 at 11 am
Programs Lab, LJ-G27, Ground Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building

Connie Carter of the Science, Technology and Business Division and founder of the Library’s long-running Cooking Club will discuss cookbooks from the suffrage movement. The presentation will include samples of suffrage recipes.

Mothers and Daughters in the Movement

Friday, May 9 at 11 am
Whittall Pavilion, Ground Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building

Exhibition curator Elizabeth Novara will discuss the multigenerational nature of the suffrage movement.

Declaring Independence

Wednesday, July 1 at 11 am
Whittall Pavilion, Ground Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building

Exhibition curator Elizabeth Novara will discuss the ways in which suffragists throughout the movement used the language of the Declaration of Independence in their call for equal rights and full political participation for women.

Panel Discussions

Diverse Voices in the Suffrage Movement

Thursday, May 14, 5:00-6:15 pm
LJ-119, First Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building

A panel of scholars will discuss journalists and suffragists Miriam Michelson, Luisa Capetillo, and Ida B. Wells, who advocated for equal rights in print. Elizabeth Novara, Women’s History specialist in the Library’s Manuscript Division, and co-curator of the exhibition Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote, will moderate a conversation with Lori Harrison-Kahan, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Boston College; Nancy Bird-Soto, Associate Professor of Latin American Literature at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and Jacqueline Jones Royster, Professor of English at Georgia Tech.

Keynote Address: A Century of Votes for Women

Thursday, May 14, 6:30-7:30 pm
LJ-119, First Floor, Thomas Jefferson Building

Christina Wolbrecht, Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, will discuss her book, A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage.

Classroom Resources

Publications

Crowdsourced Transcription

An online crowdsourcing campaign to transcribe documents within the Library’s unique suffrage-related collections to make them more searchable and accessible will be ongoing during the exhibition. For more information visit the By the People website at crowd.loc.gov and become a virtual volunteer.

Online Resources including Digitized Collections

Read More About It

  • Baker, Jean H., ed. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  • Cooney, Robert P. J., Jr., in collaboration with the National Women’s History Project. Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement. Santa Cruz, CA: American Graphic Press, 2005.
  • Finnegan, Margaret Mary. Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture & Votes for Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
  • Flexner, Eleanor, and Ellen F. Fitzpatrick. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.
  • Keyssar, Alexander. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
  • Library of Congress. Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2019.
  • Lunardini, Christine A. From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, 1910–1928. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
  • Roberts, Rebecca Boggs. Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2017.
  • Ruth, Janice E., and Evelyn Sinclair. Women of the Suffrage Movement. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2006.
  • Stevens, Doris, and Marjorie Julian Spruill. Jailed for Freedom: The Story of the Militant American Suffragist Movement. Chicago: Lakeside Press/R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 2008.
  • Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850–1920. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998.
  • Tetrault, Lisa. The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848–1898. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
  • Weatherford, Doris. A History of the American Suffragist Movement. With foreword by Geraldine Ferraro. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, ca. 1998.
  • Weiss, Elaine F. The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. New York: Viking, 2018.

For Young Readers

  • Bausum, Ann. With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for Woman’s Right to Vote. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2004.
  • Conkling, Winifred. Votes for Women!: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Young Readers, 2018.
  • Kops, Deborah. Alice Paul and the Fight for Women’s Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment. Honesdale, PA: Calkins Creek, an imprint of Highlights, 2017.
  • Rappaport, Doreen. Elizabeth Started All the Trouble. Los Angeles; New York: Disney Hyperion, 2016.
  • Rockliff, Mara. Around America to Win the Vote: Two Suffragists, a Kitten, and 10,000 Miles. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2016.
  • Stone, Tanya Lee. Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2008.
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