Voting Now: Turning Rights into Reality

Elaine Weiss: What can we learn from history?

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Episode notes

“The contributions of thousands of black women are being discovered. It’s not just Ida B Wells, it’s not just Mary Church Terrell — it’s women in every city, in every state,” said Elaine Weiss in our interview. Weiss is the author of, “The Women’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote,” an award-winning book that re-frames the 19th amendment. 
 
2020 is the centennial of ratification of the 19th amendment and of that Weiss said, “What the centennial has done is stimulate this broader deeper more diverse research.” Her book presents a panoramic view of the decades long struggle to win the right to vote. She writes about how women of color lost the right to vote, the whitewashing of history, and what modern movements can learn from the suffragists. Weiss reflected on the current political climate saying, “I think that we are in that period of organizing, educating, and agitating what Susan B. Anthony talked about... The protest is important, the education is essential, but there has to be a strategy, what exactly are you going to work towards?