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Summary
Summary
"An essential history of the struggle by both Black and white women to achieve their equal rights."--Hillary Rodham Clinton
The Nineteenth Amendment was an incomplete victory. Black and white women fought hard for voting rights and doubled the number of eligible voters, but the amendment did not enfranchise all women, or even protect the rights of those women who could vote. A century later, women are still grappling with how to use the vote and their political power to expand civil rights, confront racial violence, improve maternal health, advance educational and employment opportunities, and secure reproductive rights.
Formidable chronicles the efforts of white and Black women to advance sometimes competing causes. Black women wanted the rights enjoyed by whites. They wanted to protect their communities from racial violence and discrimination. Theirs was not only a women's movement. White women wanted to be equal to white men. They sought equal legal rights, political power, safeguards for working women and immigrants, and an end to confining social structures. There were also many white women who opposed any advance for any women.
In this riveting narrative, Dr. Elisabeth Griffith integrates the fight by white and Black women to achieve equality. Previously their parallel struggles for social justice have been presented separately--as white or Black topics--or covered narrowly, through only certain individuals, decades, or incidents. Formidable provides a sweeping, century-long perspective, and an expansive cast of change agents. From feminists and civil rights activists to politicians and social justice advocates, from working class women to mothers and homemakers, from radicals and conservatives to those who were offended by feminism, threatened by social change, or convinced of white supremacy, the diversity of the women's movement mirrors America.
After that landmark victory in 1920, suffragists had a sense of optimism, declaring, "Now we can begin!" By 2020, a new generation knew how hard the fight for incremental change was; they would have to begin again. Both engaging and outraging, Formidable will propel readers to continue their foremothers' fights to achieve equality for all.
Author Notes
Elisabeth Griffith earned her PhD from The American University and an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College. She has been a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics and a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia Teachers College. Dr. Griffith has spent her career working for women's rights as an activist and an academic, teaching women's history at the secondary and college level and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post , and professional journals. She is currently teaching courses in women's history at the Smithsonian Associates and Politics & Prose. She is the author of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which was the inspiration for Ken Burns' PBS documentary, Not For Ourselves Alone.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Griffith (In Her Own Right) provides an informative survey of women's gains and setbacks since the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Focusing on the "interwoven" struggles for equal rights and civil rights, Griffith's diverse roster of profile subjects includes antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells; legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality; early 20th-century Native American activist Zitkala-Ša; and Dolores Huerta, a schoolteacher of Mexican descent who turned to labor union activism in the 1960s. Griffith also traces the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment from its launch in the 1920s to its defeat 50 years later by Republican operative Phyllis Schlafly, and the quest for reproductive rights, which flourished from the 1920s through the 1970s before experiencing a strong backlash after the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Scattered throughout are brisk portraits of pioneers including Black astronaut Mae Jemison, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Noting that women's achievements have been both hard-won and fragile, Griffith laments how racial, class, and political divisions have slowed the path to equality, but strikes an appealing note of optimism in the book's final pages. This is an impassioned and inspiring introduction to how far the women's movement has come, and where it still needs to go. Illus. (Aug.)
Kirkus Review
A history of a century of change for American women. Griffith, the author of a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, offers an encyclopedic overview of women's advocacy for issues they believed crucial to their lives. Beginning with the suffrage movement, different constituencies often saw those issues differently: Black and Jewish women, for example, feeling excluded by White, Protestant suffragists, formed their own organizations. Jewish women focused on ending immigration quotas; Black women, on anti-lynching laws. Passage of the 19th Amendment gave White women hope that by voting, they would gain power to achieve reforms such as workplace safety and child labor laws. Although Black women were enfranchised, too, their right to vote was not protected, leading to "panic" at the polls. Ending racial violence and discrimination became, for Black women, the most significant issue. Griffith follows women's lives decade by decade, identifying important figures in politics, social movements, popular culture, and the arts who inspired or incited change, from Ida Wells-Barnett to Hilary Clinton, Carrie Chapman Catt to Stacey Abrams. Throughout the century, Griffith notes a fragmentation of alliances. By the 1990s, she reveals, myriad organizations formed "around causes like childcare, domestic violence, economic inequality, environmental toxins, food deserts, health care, incarceration, labor conditions, maternal mortality, police accountability, and women with disabilities, among many other concerns. Groups formed around shared identities--lesbians, Latinas, librarians, women on welfare, women in physics, Native Americans, and so many others." Conservative women have supported the tea party, anti-abortion activism, and candidates such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. From the 1913 suffrage parade to the #MeToo movement, divisiveness persists. Women's optimism about the power of the vote has been tempered by reality. "When you start at barely any and advance to more, the line on a graph tracking women's progress might suggest dramatic improvement," writes Griffith. "If you amortize those changes over a century, the pace is slower and the line is flatter." A hefty, thoroughly researched contribution to women's history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Historian and women's-rights activist Griffith (In Her Own Right, 1984) provides an engrossing, extremely detailed survey of the rights women have both gained and lost from 1920 to 2020. This well-researched tome opens with the suffrage movement and runs through the civil-rights era to modern movements such as #MeToo. Women's rights are examined decade by decade through a myriad of lenses, including political movements, pop-culture representation, civil rights, war, economics, and health care. The formation of united fronts in pursuit of change is delved into, as is the fragmentation of movements as various avenues and causes are pursued, sometimes putting activists at odds. Women of all walks of life and of every race and culture--whether Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Jewish, lesbian, working class, or upper class--are examined and extolled in the long fight for women's rights in America. This is a perfect text for feminists, activists, and readers of history and sociology.
Library Journal Review
The history of women's rights in the U.S. is messy, and historian Griffith's (In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton) book dives into the tangle of personalities, politics, and passions and surfaces with a great narrative. The author presents both the inspiring and ugly sides of the struggle for equality, including suffragettes who used racism to promote their cause, some in-fighting, and many disagreements on strategies. Excluded from white organizations, women of color formed their own. The fight for women's rights is presented as a swath of battles by people of different races, classes, and lived experiences, all with different goals reflecting the various needs of women. The book also presents those who stood and still stand opposed to issues like the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive rights. The book wraps up with a comparison of major issues in 1920 and 2022. VERDICT This is a fantastic and enjoyable book tracing 100 years of work and struggle for women's equality. A great book for general readers and a must read for anyone interested in women's and American political history.--Susanne Caro
Table of Contents
| Author's Note: Story Lines | p. xiii |
| 1 "Now We Can Begin" | p. 1 |
| 2 Flappers & Feminists, 1920-1928 | p. 19 |
| 3 The Eleanor Effect, 1928-1945 | p. 59 |
| 4 From Rosie to Rosa Parks, 1945-1959 | p. 96 |
| 5 Pillboxes & Protests, 1960-1972 | p. 132 |
| 6 Battle Lines, 1972-1980 | p. 176 |
| 7 Factions & Firsts, 1980-1992 | p. 217 |
| 8 Isolation & Intersectionality, 1993-2008 | p. 253 |
| 9 Leaning In & Losing, 2009-2016 | p. 287 |
| 10 Enraged & Empowered, 2017-2020 | p. 323 |
| Epilogue: Not Enough | p. 361 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 387 |
| Endnotes | p. 391 |
| Bibliography | p. 475 |
| Index | p. 485 |
