Women's Suffrage: Part I

Most history places the beginning of the suffrage movement in July 1848, when a group of women gathered in Seneca Falls, N.Y., to write the declaration of women’s rights, demanding their right to vote. The movement ended in 1920 when the vote was secured for all women. Or did it? The history of women voting is much more complex. Certainly, many women were voting before 1920 and certainly, all women did not earn the vote in 1920. There were states who recognized women’s right to suffrage early, then those black women who could not truly vote until 1965.

Yes, Seneca Falls popularized the women’s voting struggle and cemented it in the mainstream, but the suffrage struggle was so much more.

In this podcast, I tell the story of women’s fight to vote in America. I show how women’s suffrage was a continuation of a thousand-year struggle for women to overcome male domination. In part one of this two-part series, I center the story on the idea of patriarchy and the beginnings of women’s suffrage in America.

RESEARCH & RESOURCES: