From the birth of our nation to the recent crushing defeat of the first female presidential candidate, this book highlights women’s impact on United States politics and government. It documents the fight for women’s right to vote, drawing on historic research, biographies of leaders, and such original sources as photos, line art, charts, graphs, documents, posters, ads, and buttons. It presents this often-forgotten struggle in an accessible, conversational, relevant manner for a wide audience.

Here are the groundbreaking convention records, speeches, newspaper accounts, letters, photos, and drawings of those who fought for women’s right to vote, all in their own words, arranged to convey the inherent historical drama. The accessible almanac style allows this entertaining history speak for itself.

It is full of little-known facts. For instance: When the Constitutional Convention of the thirteen colonies convened to draft the Constitution, Abigail Adams admonished her husband John Adams to “remember the ladies” (write rights for women into the Constitution!).

Important for today’s discussions, REMEMBER THE LADIES does not extract women’s suffrage from the inseparable concurrent historic endeavors for emancipation, immigration, and temperance. Its robust research documents the intersectionality of women’s struggle for the vote in its true context with other progressive efforts.

This lecture made possible in part by a grant from Mass Humanities.