Author Biography

Marjorie J. Spruill is Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina, well known for her work on women and politics from the woman suffrage movement to the present. Spruill is the author or editor of six books on woman suffrage including the first edition of One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (NewSage Press), the companion volume to the PBS documentary One Woman, One Vote. Most recently, Spruill wrote Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics (Bloomsbury 2017). In this book, she addresses the rise of the modern women's rights movement to a peak period of success, the mobilization of social conservatives in opposition, and the impact on American political culture. Other edited works on suffrage include VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (University of Tennessee Press). Spruill is also the author of New Women of the New South: The Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (Oxford University Press). She also co-edited a two-volume textbook on the history of the American South and two multi-volume anthologies about the "lives and times" of women in South Carolina and Mississippi. Spruill was the historical consultant for the HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels and has been an advisor to several museums, including the National Archives for its exhibit, "Rightfully Hers," celebrating the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Spruill's work has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a research award from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. She spent a year at the National Humanities Center. During her career, Spruill was a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, Vanderbilt (where she was an Associate Provost) and the University of South Carolina. Recently retired, Spruill lives in South Carolina where she continues to write and consult on a variety of projects.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 1. How Women Won: The Long Road to the Nineteenth Amendment Marjorie J. Spruill 2. Ourselves and Our Daughters Forever: Women and the Constitution, 1787-1876 Linda K. Kerber 3. The Seneca Falls Convention Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, andMatilda Gage, eds. 4. A Feminist Friendship:Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Alice S. Rossi 5. White Women's Rights, Black Men's Wrongs, Free Love, Blackmail, and the Formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association Andrea Moore Kerr 6. Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands:Bradwell, Minor, and Suffrage Militance in the 1870s Ellen Carol DuBois 7. How the West Was Won for Woman Suffrage Beverly Beeton 8. Frances Willard and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union's Conversion to Woman Suffrage Carolyn DeSwarte Gifford 9. Bringing in the South: The Struggle Over Woman Suffrage in the Southern States Marjorie J. Spruill 10. African American Women and the Woman Suffrage Movement Rosalyn Terborg-Penn 11. The International History of the U.S. Suffrage Movement Katherine M. Marino 12. The Suffrage Renaissance:A New Image for a New Century, 1896-1910 Sara Hunter Graham 13. Jane Addams, Progressivism, and Woman Suffrage:An Introduction to "Why Women Should Vote" Victoria Bissell Brown Why Women Should Vote Jane Addams 14. "Better Citizens Without the Ballot":American Anti-suffrage Women and Their Rationale During the Progressive Era Manuela Thurner 15. Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance:Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New YorkWoman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1909 Ellen Carol DuBois 16. A Politics of Coalition:Socialist Women and theCalifornia Suffrage Movement, 1900-1911 Sherry J. Katz 17. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago Wanda A. Hendricks 18. Alice Paul and the Triumph of Militancy Linda G. Ford 19. Carrie Chapman Catt, Strategist Robert Booth Fowler 20. Minnie Fisher Cunningham's Back Door Lobby in TexasPolitical Maneuvering in a One-Party State Judith N. McArthur 21. Armageddon in Tennessee:The Final Battle Over the Nineteenth Amendment Anastatia Sims 22. Across the Great Divide:Women in Politics Before and After 1920 Nancy F. Cott 23. A Century of Woman Suffrage Marjorie J. Spruill Appendix One The Electoral Thermometer: Woman Suffrage Won byState Constitutional Amendments and Legislative ActsBefore the Proclamation of the Nineteenth Amendment Appendix Two Chronology of Congressional Action Appendix Three Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by State Appendix Four Progress of Women's Enfranchisement Worldwide The Contributors Index

Review

One Woman, One Vote has been indispensable to me as I've worked to learn so much of the history that I'd not been taught about the nation and its centuries-long struggle toward full enfranchisement. --Rebecca Traister, Author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger--Rebecca Traister "Author, Good and Mad"
The fight for woman suffrage got under way in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, but it took another 72 years to win the right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of that event, Spruill, an associate professor of history at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi, has gathered 19 thoughtful essays to tell the story of the women and the strategies that won the vote, put in context by her particularly cogent introduction. Linda K. Kerber examines the Constitution's implicit exclusion of women, explaining why suffragists saw the need for a constitutional amendment. Alice S. Rossi's classic essay A Feminist Friendship enlivens the 51-year link between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Andrea Moore Kerr looks at a splinter group of suffragists who actively campaigned to prevent newly freed black men from getting the vote before women, particularly ironic for a movement that had its roots in the abolition movement, while Rosalyn Terborg-Penn surveys the contributions of African American women. Beverly Beeton details progress in the West, beginning with Wyoming's enfranchisement of women in 1869. And Armageddon in Tennessee by Anastasia Sims relates the drama that unfolded when the amendment passed the Tennessee legislature by a single vote cast by a 24-year-old whose mother had adjured him to be a good boy and vote for suffrage. Photos not seen by PW. / Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Composed of well-written, scholarly essays selected and introduced by historian [Marjorie Spruill, this work is the companion piece to a PBS special commemorating the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. It analyzes both positive and negative aspects of the long, complex struggle for suffrage.The writers emphasize the economic, racial, and cultural divisions that split the movement repeatedly. While extolling the courage of Susan B. Anthony, the pragmatism of Carrie Catt and Jane Addams, the militancy of Alice Paul, and the working-class sensibilities of Harriet Stanton Blatch, they also decry the pandering to racist elements that virtually excluded black women from the national movement, the embarrassments of the Kansas campaign and the Woodhull scandal, and the nativist bigotry that colored the last years of the suffrage fight. This excellent, affordable book should be part of every public and academic library.
Rose Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, Pa. / Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--Rose Chichy "Library Journal"
Marjorie Spruill's new edition of One Woman, One Vote is a welcome and timely addition to the expanding body of literature on women's gradual political empowerment. At a time when women have expanded their political influence, when the U.S. not only has its first and long overdue female vice president, Kamala Harris, when the organizing efforts of women of color, especially in Georgia, have shifted the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, and President Joseph R. Biden has appointed the first female-majority Cabinet in history, it's only appropriate that we have this updated re-examination of how we got here, edited by Dr. Spruill with the critical contributions of dozens of other scholars of the domestic and international woman's movement.--Adele Logan Alexander "Historian and Author of Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragist's Story from the Jim Crow South"
Students, scholars, and lay readers alike will be grateful for the clarity with which this book tells the story of the woman suffrage movement in the United States. An important book and a useful one.
--Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History Emerita, State University of New York, Binghamton--Kathryn Kish Sklar "Professor of History Emerita"
Suffragists were the voting rights activists of their day. This revised and expanded edition of One Woman, One Vote tells the story of that hard-fought victory, warts and all. At a moment when questions of gender, race, and citizenship are center stage once again, the history of the women's suffrage movement remains timely and relevant--and a really good read.--Susan Ware "Historian and Author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Rich to Vote"
The study of the woman suffrage movement has flourished since the first edition of the anthology One Woman, One Vote appeared during the celebration of the Nineteenth Amendment's 75th anniversary. Marjorie Spruill's expanded second edition, published as part of the commemoration of the amendment's Centennial, is a deeply satisfying and essential update, attending as it does to the campaign in the South, the international context, and the first hundred years of women voting. As with the first edition, the suffrage story told here will be compelling for both students and general readers.--Louise W. Knight "Historian and Author of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action"

Review Quote

The study of the woman suffrage movement has flourished since the first edition of the anthology One Woman, One Vote appeared during the celebration of the Nineteenth Amendment's 75th anniversary. Marjorie Spruill's expanded second edition, published as part of the commemoration of the amendment's Centennial, is a deeply satisfying and essential update, attending as it does to the campaign in the South, the international context, and the first hundred years of women voting. As with the first edition, the suffrage story told here will be compelling for both students and general readers.

Author Comments

One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement is different in soe ways from other books on the U.S. woman suffrage movement, new or old, in that it is more comprehensive. Many of the newer books assume knowledge of the "standard" suffrage narrative and its major leaders, and focus on specific people who have been overlooked, including women of color and women from outside the Northeastern U.S. This new edition adds a vast amount of information based on new research and new scholarship by others. One Woman One Book offers both: it offers a series of essays by leading scholars who, together, tell the story of the suffrage movement from many perspectives and concerns: from why women did not gain the vote as the United States was founded to the impact of the Nineteenth Amendment to what happened after women got the vote. It includes essays on African American women in the suffrage movement, the suffrage movement in the West, and the global sisterhood of the international struggle for woman suffrage and equal rights. This expanded Second Edition features new essays by experts on the woman suffrage movement in the South (discussing how white supremacy impeded the success of the movement in the region) and on the international context of the U.S. woman suffrage movement. In addition, I have authored or edited many books on woman suffrage, and I have also published on the rise of the modern feminist and anti-feminist movements. In 2017, Bloomsbury Publishing released my book, Divided We Stand: The Battle Over WOmen's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics. In a new final chapter of One Woman, One Vote , "A Century of Woman Suffrage," I bring the suffrage story from 1920 all the way through the 2020 election. I explain why women's initial turnout in the 1920s was low; how women of color finally gained full voting rights through the Voting Rights Act of 1965; how women in U.S. territories gained the vote; how the civil rights movement and the modern women's movement led to vast increases in women's turnout at the polls; how current trends in women's political participation evolved; and how Americans observed the Suffrage Centennial in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and a historic presidential election in which the first woman and woman of color was elected as Vice President of the United States. We have also added some great historic photographs, illustrations, and appendices.

Description for Sales People

The second edition includes four new chapters, additional historic photos, and appendices, in addition to the material that was in the first edition of One Woman, One Vote . This is the companion book to the PBS American Experience documentary by the same name. (The updated video, produced by the Educational Film Center, includes an intro by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.) The first edition, published in 1995, continues to be the most comprehensive collection of writings on the woman suffrage movement in the U.S. and is used in university, college, and advanced high school classes. There are twenty-three chapters in the new edition, focusing on different aspects of the woman's suffrage movement, emphasizing the racism, sexism, and political struggle for the vote and for equality. Through their engaging essays, scholars in the fields of History, American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, help readers "rediscover" the suffrage movement in all its diversity and complexity, offering intriguing and sometimes contradictory interpretations. New material in the Second Edition includes an in-depth piece on the international history of suffrage and its influences on the U.S. fight for woman suffrage. Also, how women worldwide collaborated across national borders--many of them women of color fighting equality and for the right to vote. New chapter on the Southern states' resistance to the woman's vote, "Bringing in the South: Southern Ladies, White Supremacy, and State's Rights in the Fight for Woman Suffrage." Spruill describes the long and often frustrating campaign to build support for woman suffrage in a decidedly inhospitable climate--an effort shaped by widespread ideas about white supremacy and state's rights among white Southerners. Above all, the essays in this book illustrate that the vote was not "given" to women when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920: generations of suffragists labored long and hard to win the right to vote in the United States.

Introduction or Preface

The Woman Suffrage Movement Rediscovered The essays in this anthology focus on different aspects of the suffrage story but, presented in roughly chronological order, together tell the intriguing story of the woman suffrage movement--from the failure of the Constitution to enfranchise women to the participation of women in politics after 1920. In addition, a new concluding essay continues the story of woman suffrage past 1920 through the 2020 presidential election. The authors of the essays, scholars in the fields of History, American Studies, Political Science, and Sociology, each advance our understanding of the movement's history and offer intriguing and sometimes conflicting interpretations, and challenge widely accepted theories about the movement's history. The book's editor, historian Marjorie J. Spruill, starts off the book with a thorough overview of the woman suffrage movement that provides background for the essays that follow. Together, the essays describe why a suffrage movement was necessary, how the movement began, and how it changed over time in response to changes in American history and politics. Through them we are introduced to several generations of suffrage leaders and learn of the supportive relationships as well as tensions that developed among them. We learn of the growing diversity of the suffrage constituency in terms of region, religion, race, class, ethnicity, and even attitude, and that the suffrage story included both a record of harmony and cooperation between diverse groups of suffragists, and a disturbing record of discrimination and betrayal. We come to a better understanding of the reasons that some American men and women opposed woman suffrage, and how--despite so many obstacles--suffragists finally prevailed. In addition, we discover that after the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution, the diverse coalition known as the suffrage movement did not--and indeed, could not--turn into a united voting "bloc." However, women continued to be politically active in a wide range of organizations and movements. Some women, including women in the U.S. territories, immigrant women, many Native American women, and African American women living in the Southern States, had to continue to fight for enfranchisement well after 1920. Above all, we learn that the franchise was not given to women when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified one hundred years ago: generations of suffragists labored long and hard to win this acknowledgment of woman's right to vote in the United States. And women have had to continue to fight for full voting rights and political equality. After 1920, cultural as well as deliberately constructed obstacles to women voting kept the numbers of women who turned out to vote low relative to that of men for decades. But over time the women's vote became ever more extensive as women overcame these barriers. For forty years, women have turned out to vote at higher rates than men. The woman's vote is not, and never has been, united but it is recognized as massive and highly influential in American politics.

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