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The Best Books About the Women’s Suffrage Movement
By: Angela & Melissa
Updated:
As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we may earn a referral fee from qualifying purchases.The women’s suffrage movement transformed the course of American history, but the fight for the vote was far more complex than a single march or amendment. While names like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are widely recognized, there’s so much more to the story.
Whether you found your way here looking for a book about women’s suffrage or as a participant in our American History Challenge, we have curated an inspiring list for you to choose from.
A Brief History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the United States
Many people associate the Women’s Suffrage Movement with the 1910s because the effort gained renewed national momentum when 25,000 women marched up Fifth Avenue in 1915. In reality, though, it took the efforts of countless women over more than seven decades to achieve this milestone. Ultimately, Congress passed the 19th Amendment in 1919, and it was ratified by enough states to become law in 1920. However, the benefits of the constitutional amendment mostly benefited white women at the time.
On paper, the 19th Amendment prohibited denying the right to vote based on sex, however, in practice, Jim Crow laws in the South and various discriminatory practices across the country effectively prevented millions of women (and men) of color from voting for several more decades until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 effectively dismantled the legal barriers that had kept many Black Americans from the polls.
Historical Fiction About Women’s Suffrage
We’ve broken this fiction list into three categories to help you find the book you’ll enjoy most. The first section features books where the fight for the vote is at the center of the storyline; the second section highlights stories in which women’s rights are a significant topic, but suffrage is not the main subject; and the final fiction section includes highly-rated books in which suffrage is a smaller subplot or a background element. We also have a few non-fiction titles in a separate section at the end of the book list.
Books Where the Suffrage Movement Takes Center Stage
The Women’s March: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession
Book Summary
Dedicated suffragist Alice Paul, who fought for women’s right to vote in England, returned home physically weak but determined to reinvigorate the suffrage movement in the US.
On March 3rd, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson (an anti-suffragist) was inaugurated, she led a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. This novel highlights that day through the stories of not only Alice Paul but also others who marched beside her, including civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was born into slavery in Mississippi.
Thoughts on This Book…
While many enjoy this book, it has a lower Goodreads rating than the author’s other books. Most reviewers note that they learned a lot, but some feel it reads more like non-fiction.
If you enjoy audiobooks, we noticed comments that the audio version feels more engaging.
Golden Poppies
Book Summary
In 1894 California, Jordan Wallace and Sadie Wagner are young women from very different backgrounds whose families have been connected for generations. Jordan is the daughter of a Black woman who escaped slavery, while Sadie is the daughter of a white abolitionist family, and both are coming of age at a time when questions of race, gender, and justice are shaping the nation’s future.
As California prepares to vote on women’s suffrage, Sadie becomes involved in the movement for women’s rights, while Jordan confronts the painful reality that the fight for equality does not always include Black women equally.
More About This Book & the Series
Their intertwined stories explore friendship and family legacy, while highlighting both the hope and tensions of the suffrage era. The Suffrage Movement claimed to speak for all women, but racial prejudice largely resulted in the exclusion of Black women from the movement.
This novel is the third in Laila Ibrahim’s Freedman-Johnson series. While it reads well as a standalone, it follows later generations of the families introduced in previous books (Yellow Crocus and Mustard Seed), so you’ll enjoy even more emotional depth and familial context if you have also read the other two books. But many reviewers note reading it before even realizing it was part of the series and report not feeling like they missed anything.
Leaving Coy’s Hill
Book Summary
In 19th-century Massachusetts, Lucy Stone grew up determined to claim a life beyond the narrow expectations placed on women. Intelligent and outspoken, she becomes one of the first women from the state to earn a college degree, then uses her voice as an abolitionist and women’s rights lecturer.
Lucy traveled the country speaking to hostile crowds, and she joined the early fight for women’s suffrage, helping build a movement that challenged laws limiting women’s property rights, education, marriage, and political power.
Her public convictions, however, complicate her private life. She struggles to balance love, motherhood, and activism without surrendering her independence.
Historical Context
Lucy Stone was a real women’s rights activist and suffragist. This historical fiction novel is based on actual events from her life. A graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio in 1849, Lucy was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She also became known for keeping her birth name after marriage, which was very unusual at the time.
One Step Forward
Book Summary
Matilda grew up in a politically divided family, with a sister who fought for suffrage. Now, Matilda is ready to fight for the cause, even though taking a stand for women’s rights could tear her family apart.
What to Expect in This Book
Told in verse, One Step Forward is a powerful YA coming-of-age novel based on the true story of Matilda Young, who was the youngest American suffragist imprisoned for picketing the White House.
Matilda’s story highlights the mental and physical battles the protestors faced leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
The Once and Future Witches
Book Summary
Historical fiction meets magic and fantasy in this unique novel from the author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
The story centers around the Eastwood sisters – Juniper, Agnes, and Bella. They’ve been estranged from one another for most of their lives. But on the day of the equinox in 1893, the sisters all find themselves at the same suffragist rally in New Salem. Reunited, the sisters now fight for women’s rights, as well as the right to practice witchcraft.
Intermixed within this historical fantasy are a few well-known, real-life historical women from the Suffrage Movement, which lends a layer of realism to the fantasy elements.
Consider This Before Reading
This dark and moody novel is over 500 pages, so be sure to pick it up when you have the time to devote to it.
In the Company of Like-Minded Women
Book Summary
In 1901, Denver, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell lives a life of professional purpose and hard-earned independence in a state where women had already won the right to vote. But when her younger sister, Vina, returns home after years away, Elizabeth is forced to confront the family wounds and personal choices she has tried to leave behind.
Against the backdrop of Colorado’s progressive women’s suffrage history, the novel follows women who are using their political voice, education, and professional ambitions to reshape what is possible at the turn of the 20th century.
Historical Context
Colorado women won the right to vote in 1893, allowing those who met the legal voting requirements to participate in local, state, and national elections (including for President) well before the 19th Amendment. Male voters approved a statewide referendum that granted women the same voting rights as men, but discriminatory voting practices continued to exclude many Native Americans, Asian immigrants, and other marginalized people of both genders.
The 1893 referendum made Colorado the first state to enact women’s suffrage by popular vote, but it was not the first state in which women could vote. Several Western territories had already granted women full voting rights through their territorial legislatures. Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote in 1869, so when Wyoming became a state in 1890, it did so with women’s suffrage already in its state constitution.
Utah Territory granted women the right to vote in 1870, though Congress later revoked it with the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887. Utah women regained the right to vote when Utah became a state in 1896. Washington Territory approved women’s suffrage in 1883, but the territorial supreme court later struck it down. Washington women did not permanently regain the vote until 1910.
Ann Vickers
Book Summary
As a reformer, suffragist, and social worker, Ann Vickers is a woman who believes in that promise. She pours herself into causes larger than herself, from women’s rights to prison reform. But the world she fights to improve is also the world she must navigate as a woman determined to live entirely on her own terms.
As Ann moves through decades of American life, she faces the tension between her public ideals and her private desires. From the careers she builds to the loves she pursues, she consistently has to compromise, leading her to wonder whether it’s possible to reform a world that remains so determined to define what a woman should be.
Our Thoughts on This Book
If you’ve read Becoming Madam Secretary, you’ll recognize Ann Vickers as the novel that Francis Perkins (and many in the public) believed was partially based on her work as a reformer. The book was scandalous at the time due to topics of abortion, extramarital affairs, and a woman pursuing her own sexual and professional life on her own terms. However, the attention it received is thought to have influenced Lewis’ receipt of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Hope Chest
Book Summary
Eleven-year-old Violet is shocked to discover that her parents have been hiding letters from her older sister, Chloe, who left home after rejecting her family’s traditional expectations for her. Determined to find Chloe, Violet runs away and follows her trail from New York to Tennessee, where she discovers that her sister has joined the fight for women’s suffrage.
Along the way, Violet befriends Myrtle, a Black orphan also seeking freedom from societal expectations. As the girls become caught up in the tense final push to ratify the 19th Amendment, Violet begins to question what she has been taught about obedience, fairness, and a woman’s place in the world.
Great for a Quick Read
This book was recommended to us by Angela’s sons, who both read it in school. It’s written at a middle-grade level, but adult readers describe it as a fast-paced coming-of-age adventure, showing how the suffrage movement challenged expectations for girls and women across class and race. It’s perfect if you’re looking for a quick read packed with historical details.
Stories from Suffragette City
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
On October 23, 1915, tens of thousands marched in NYC for the right to vote. Each woman was there for her own reasons and with her own story. This collection of historical fiction short stories all take place on that day, and together, they form a portrait of a very important moment in history.
These stories come from some of the biggest names in historical fiction, including Fiona Davis, Paula McLain, and Lisa Wingate, with an introduction by Kristin Hannah.
Collection of Short Stories
While the stories in this book all take place on the same day, they are not connected in plot or character. Each is written as a stand-alone story by a different well-known author.
Novels Where Suffrage and Women’s Rights Shape Some Element of the Story
The Way of Beauty
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Vera, the daughter of German immigrants in New York City, finds her life upended when the man she loves becomes engaged to another woman. But Angelo has also inadvertently opened up Vera’s life to unexpected possibilities. Angelo’s new wife, Pearl, the wealthy daughter of a clothing manufacturer, has defied her family’s expectations by devoting herself to the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
In Pearl, Vera finds an unexpected dear friend…and a stirring new cause of her own. But when Pearl’s selfless work pulls her away from Angelo and their son, the life Vera craved is suddenly within her reach—if her conscience will allow her to take it.
Thoughts on This Book
Watch our interview with author Camille Di Maio! Melissa rated this book 4 stars, and Angela gave it 4.5 stars. We both enjoyed looking into the suffrage movement in New York City and learning about the work that went into constructing the tunnels under NYC, all woven into an easy-to-read historical romance.
The Lions of Fifth Avenue
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
94% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
It’s 1913, and Laura’s husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library. The job comes with an apartment in the grand building for the couple and their two children. Laura seems to have it all, but after she enters journalism school at Columbia, her worldview is rocked. She discovers a radical, all-female group where women loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother.
But when valuable books are stolen at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, Laura is forced to confront her shifting priorities head-on.
Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie landed her dream job as a curator at the NY Public Library, but her grandmother Laura’s legacy looms over her until she can no longer ignore it.
Thoughts on This Book
Fiona Davis is one of our favorite historical fiction writers because of her strong female characters. Her novels are set in famous NYC buildings and combine history, a little romance, and a mystery.
The Girls with No Names
Book Summary
In 1910s New York, sisters Effie and Luella Tildon grow up in a wealthy family where appearances matter, and young women are expected to obey. But beyond the walls of their comfortable home, the city is changing as suffragists march, labor activists demand reform, and women begin questioning the limits placed on their lives.
Luella is drawn to this world of protest and possibility, while Effie, who has always been protected because of a childhood illness, longs for the same freedom. But Luella’s rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning she mysteriously disappears. Effie suspects her father has made good on his threat to send Luella to the nearby House of Mercy – a real-life institution where “wayward” girls could be confined for defying social expectations. Effie hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister.
Historical Context
The book largely focuses on class politics and institutions like the House of Mercy. While the Women’s Suffrage Movement plays a significant role in the novel’s narrative, it is woven into the story to represent the broader social rebellion against patriarchal expectations. Real suffragist Inez Milholland plays a pivotal role in this part of the story, and other real-life suffragists are also incorporated.
The Engineer’s Wife
Book Summary
Emily was determined to make changes in the world and was an active participant in the women’s suffrage movement. But when her husband, Washington Roebling, was injured on the job as the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Emily put her own work on hold to take over for her husband. As the bridge rises, Emily wonders if she’s building her own legacy or that of her husband.
This novel is based on the true story of how Emily Roebling transformed this project of monumental scale. Her work took her into the bowels of the East River, to suffrage riots, and into the halls of Manhattan’s elite.
Historical Context
Despite making a name for herself in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and shattering gender barriers in engineering, few people at the time openly recognized Emily’s efforts toward completing the Brooklyn Bridge. She’s finally getting recognition today, both within this novel and in the second season of the HBO drama The Gilded Age.
Note that while most of this historical fiction novel stays pretty true to Emily’s life, one aspect that the author notes is pure fiction is the storyline involving PT Barnum. The two did become friends in real life, but anything more is a work of the author’s imagination.
Uprising
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Uprising tells the story of three women. Bella arrived in New York from Italy and was one of the hundreds of immigrants hired to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The hours are long, and the conditions are grueling. Her coworker, Yetta, is crusading for a union and convinces the workers to strike. Jane is a young, wealthy socialite who learns the plight of the factory workers and becomes invested in their cause.
On March 25, 1911, Bella and Yetta were both at work, and Jane was visiting the factory when a spark ignited some cloth. The building was quickly engulfed in flames. This historical fiction novel draws on extensive research to bring the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to life.
Seven Days in May
Book Summary
As WWI rages in continental Europe, two New York heiresses, Sydney and Brooke Sinclair, are scheduled to set sail for England. Brooke is engaged to marry an aristocrat in the society wedding of the year. Sydney is drawn to the burgeoning suffrage movement, which is a constant source of embarrassment to her proper sister.
As international tensions flare, the German embassy issues a warning that any ships crossing the Atlantic are at risk. Undaunted, Sydney and Brooke board the Lusitania for the seven-day voyage, not knowing that disaster lies ahead.
The Invention of Wings
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
97% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1803, when middle daughter Sarah was eleven, she received a gift that is hard to comprehend today. Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimké was taken from the slave quarters she shared with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah.
While Sarah knows her next move will create trouble, she also knows she cannot accept this gift. In alternating voices between Hetty and Sarah, we see the next thirty-five years of their lives and painfully experience the realities of slavery and how it contrasts with the lives of plantation owners and their children.
Why This Book Made the List
This novel is a fictionalized account inspired by the real-life Grimké sisters, who were pivotal early pioneers in both the abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements.
Highly-Rated Reads Where the Women’s Suffrage Movement is a Background Element
Becoming Madam Secretary
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
At the turn of the century, Frances Perkins arrived in NYC determined to make a difference in the world. She worked with children in the crowded tenements of Hell’s Kitchen and befriended an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists in Greenwich Village.
When Frances meets Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a young lawyer, she judges him as nothing more than rich and arrogant, getting by on his good looks and a famous name. His opinion of her is not much more favorable. Neither of them can imagine that over the next twenty years, they’ll form a historic partnership that will lead them both to the White House.
The story delves into Perkins’ critical role in shaping New Deal policies, including Social Security, minimum wage laws, and labor protections. As the economy crumbles and unemployment soars during the Great Depression, Perkins navigates the male-dominated world of politics, using her intellect and determination to fight for workers’ rights, economic recovery, and social justice.
Why This Book Made the List
This historical fiction novel details the real-life of Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to serve in a presidential cabinet. While the book spans several decades, the stories of her early life, including her activism during the Women’s Suffrage Movement, provide an important backdrop to her later achievements during the Great Depression. Additionally, Perkins’ close friend (in real life and in the novel) is Florence Kelley, who served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and believed suffrage was intertwined with workers’ rights.
Finding Dorothy
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
99% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
This historical fiction follows the life of Maud Baum, the wife of the author of The Wizard of Oz. She was raised by a suffragist mother in the late 1800s, attended college when it was rare for girls to be educated, and then met Frank. He was a big dreamer in a time when creativity was not praised as a career path.
The couple’s life was fascinating, even before he wrote The Wizard of Oz. Finding Dorothy switches between Maud’s earlier years and her quest in 1939, when she was in her late 70s, to ensure the Wizard of Oz movie stayed true to the book. She becomes determined to protect the actress playing Dorothy, Judy Garland.
Historical Context
Suffrage plays a role in this story because Maud Gage Baum is the daughter of prominent suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Maud’s upbringing shapes her independence. But the book is more about Maud, L. Frank Baum, and the making/legacy of The Wizard of Oz.
Beautiful Little Fools
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
98% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Revisit the glittering Jazz Age with this atmospheric novel that reimagines The Great Gatsby from the perspective of three alternating female voices. When Jay Gatsby was found shot dead in his swimming pool in August of 1922, and a local mechanic was found dead in the woods nearby, the police viewed it as an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide.
But then a diamond hairpin is found in the bushes around the pool, and three women suddenly become suspects – Daisy Buchanan, who once thought she’d marry Gatsby; Jordan Baker, who has a secret that could derail both her golf career and her friendship with Daisy; and Catherine McCoy, a suffragist who’s fighting for women’s rights and to protect her own sister from a terrible marriage.
This is a tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately murder.
For Fans of…
Reviewers say this entertaining retelling of The Great Gatsby is perfect for fans of Big Little Lies. The story reflects the post-suffrage-era atmosphere and changing expectations for women in the 1920s, and the suffrage movement serves as a thematic backdrop rather than the central focus.
The Downstairs Girl
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
96% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
Set in the American South of the 1890s, this YA social drama tells the story of 17-year-old Jo Kuan. By day, she works as a lady’s maid for the cruel daughter of one of the richest men in Atlanta, Georgia, but by night, she is the author of a newspaper advice column for genteel Southern ladies.
Writing under the pseudonym “Dear Miss Sweetie,” she uses her popular column to address some of society’s ills. But when she dares to challenge ideas of race and gender, she is unprepared for the backlash she faces. Jo Kuan struggles to keep her identity a secret while also searching out the truth about her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby.
What to Expect in This Book
This novel is more about race, gender, class, and identity, but suffrage and who gets included in women’s progress are meaningful themes.
The Girls in Navy Blue
Book Summary
In 1918, the US Navy allowed women to join as yeomanettes for the first time. Ten thousand women answered the call with various motivations.
Marjory, a German-American, was motivated by a desire to prove her patriotism toward the US. Blanche was a suffragist and wanted to prove that women are equal. But Viv, the shy preacher’s daughter, joined in an attempt to escape the police. The trio finds friendship and sisterhood as yeomanettes, but when Viv’s dark past catches up to her, they find themselves in chaos.
In 1968, Peggy inherits a beach cottage from her estranged aunt, Blanche. Shortly after, she receives mysterious postcards dating from 1918 during Blanche’s service. As Peggy digs into her aunt’s past, it begins to collide with the present.
Suffrage Plays a Smaller Role in This Novel
Before selecting this book, be aware that only a small portion is explicitly about the suffrage movement. The core of the book is a dual-timeline mystery focusing on three Navy yeomanettes during World War I, one of whom is a suffragist who joined up to prove that women are equal to men. As a result, the suffrage movement serves as a thematic motivator rather than the main plot.
The Rebel of Seventh Avenue
Book Summary
In 1910, young Scottish seamstress, Maisie McIntyre, leaves behind a life of poverty and sets sail for New York City with little more than stolen silk, stolen money, and an extraordinary talent for dressmaking.
In Manhattan, her skill opens doors into the glamorous world of couture, where fashion becomes a way for Maisie to claim not just self-expression, but also independence and power. As she builds a name for herself among the city’s elite, she also falls in love with Joseph Jackson, a gifted Black architect whose ambitions are constrained by racism.
Set against the grit and glamour of early 20th-century New York, the novel weaves Maisie’s rise through the fashion world with major social changes of the era, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the emerging women’s rights movement.
What to Expect in This Book
Reader reviews say that this book moves through multiple historical events, including the Shirtwaist fire, the suffrage movement, and the World Wars, so keep in mind that suffrage is one thread among several that paint a picture of New York CIty throughout the eary decades of the 20th century.
Relative Fortunes
Book Summary
Julia Kydd is a sophisticated book lover living in Manhattan with aspirations to launch a new private press. She views women’s suffrage as old news and believes life is too short for politics, but as a woman, she still must fight for what is hers, including the inheritance that her estranged half-brother, Philip, is challenging.
Julia is skeptical when another woman, Naomi, an ardent suffragist from a wealthy family, dies of an apparent suicide. Philip is unsure but proposes a wager – if Julia can prove that Naomi was murdered, he’ll drop his claims to Julia’s inheritance. However, Julia soon discovers just how turbulent Naomi’s life was, and as she gets closer to the truth, she realizes there is much more at stake than her inheritance.
The Book Girls Say…
Many readers find this novel to start a bit slow, but the social and economic issues women faced in this era were woven into the story exceptionally well.
The suffrage movement itself is not the main event in this book; rather the story focuses on the post-suffrage reality. Set four years after the 19th Amendment, the Suffrage Movement serves as the historical backdrop and thematic catalyst for the story, focusing on the ongoing, everyday battles women faced for financial independence and sexual freedom in the 1920s.
Non-Fiction Women’s Suffrage Reads
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
100% Would Recommend to a Friend
Book Summary
In 1920, after a seven-decade crusade for the right of women to vote, thirty-five states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve had rejected or refused to vote, and one last state, Tennessee, was needed.
The suffragists face vicious opposition from politicians, clergy, corporations, racists who don’t want black women to vote, and even the “Antis” – women who oppose enfranchisement, fearing the nation’s moral collapse.
Thoughts on This Book
Following a handful of remarkable women who led the charge, this is the non-fiction history of how America’s women won their own freedom. In a period when some are yet again challenging voting rights for women, this story is more important than ever.
Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box
Book Summary
This is a nonfiction account of Black women’s long fight for voting rights in America. The book highlights how activists such as Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, and other Black suffragists challenged both racism and sexism as they worked for political equality.
While white suffrage leaders often ignored or excluded Black women, these reformers continued organizing through clubs, churches, journalism, and public protest. In broad strokes, Dionne connects the suffrage movement to abolition, civil rights, and modern voter suppression, showing that the battle for the ballot did not end with the 19th Amendment.
Thoughts on This Book & Another to Consider
Although written for young readers, Lifting as We Climb is a strong, accessible nonfiction choice for readers of all ages who want to understand Black women’s role in the suffrage movement.
You might also want to read Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones. This non-fiction is written in a more scholarly style, providing a sweeping history of Black women’s political lives from the earliest days of the republic through the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond. It takes a deeper look at not just suffrage, but also abolition, civil rights, political leadership, and Black women’s long fight for citizenship and equality.
Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the Right to Vote
Book Summary
When Woodrow Wilson landed in Washington, DC, on March of 1913, a day before taking the presidential oath of office, he was surprised by the modest turnout for his arrival. That’s because the crowds and reporters were blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.”
This non-fiction tells the story of Paul, who helped lead the final push for the 19th Amendment. While President Woodrow Wilson publicly promoted democracy abroad during World War I, Paul and the National Woman’s Party demanded that women receive the same democratic rights at home.
Their protests outside the White House led to arrests, imprisonment, solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and even the psychiatric ward. Author Tina Cassidy highlights the courageous, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Alice Paul’s leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America, and how the suffrage movement forced the nation to reckon with its own ideals of equality.
This list was created in connection with our American History Reading Challenge, so we only included titles on this list that related to the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the US. If you are interested in a book that surrounds the suffrage movement in England, we recommend The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams.
In Honor of the Semiquincentennial
The United States is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. Join us for our Reading Through US History Mini Reading Challenge to explore six pivotal moments in the country’s history.
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