Next Wednesday, August  26th marks the 95th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States.  If that isn’t worth celebrating, dear readers, I don’t know what is.  To join the fun, here are a few suggestions.

1.  Host a Suffragist Memorial Party.  If, by chance, you end up dressing up as a suffragist for the occasion, please share your photos with your favorite librarians.

2.  Watch a documentary.  Try One woman, One Vote, narrated by Susan Sarandon that covers the full 70 year battle for the enfranchisement of women.

3. Check out Hollywood’s take on the final days of the fight for suffrage.  Iron Jawed Angels with Hilary Swank, Frances O’Connor, Julia Ormond, Anjelica Huston and others is a well done dramatization that will stick with you well past your first viewing.

4.  Read some history.  Far from being dull, the stories of the suffrage movement are often intriguing, surprising and sometimes scandalous.  Try one or more of these historical accounts:

Sisters: the lives of America’s suffragists by Jean H. Baker.  Discover the personal lives and political struggles of the heroines of the suffrage battle: Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Francis Willard and Alice Paul.

The Scarlet Sisters: sex, suffrage and scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra MacPherson.  Victoria Woodhull, spiritualist, owner of a women’s brokerage house and the first woman to run for president in the United States, had none of the respectability that other suffragists tried so hard to cultivate.  But her story makes for highly entertaining reading!

Speaking of interesting and controversial women, Peabody’s Mary Upton Ferrin was quite scandalous in her day.  Luckily for us, local historian, S.M. Smoller has recorded her story.

And no consideration of the women who won us the right to vote would be complete without mention of the first woman elected to Congress.  Jeannette Rankin: a political woman by James J. Lopach chronicles Rankin’s election to office (years before women could vote nationally), her social activism and her staunch pacifism through both world wars.

5.  Give your suffrage celebration a fictional flare, with one of these novels:

In a Gilded Cage by Rhys Bowen.  Female detective Molly Murphy finds herself solving yet another mystery after she and some fellow Vassar alums are arrested for participating in a suffrage parade.

 

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  If you need another reason to try Follett’s epic and much-loved Century trilogy here’s one: it is, among many other things a tale of the suffragist movement.

 

Harriet and Isabella by Patricia O’Brien.  The members of the real-life Beecher family were quite well known in their time.  Brother Henry Ward was a famous (eventually disgraced) preacher.  Equally well known were his sisters, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and the suffragist, Isabella Beecher Hooker.  This fictionalized account of their family, looks at Henry’s fall from grace and his sisters very different reactions to it.

6.  For bonus points, share some suffrage history with the children and teens in your lives.  The youngest in the family will appreciate Marching with Aunt Susan by Claire Rudolf Murphy, while older elementary school aged children can enjoy A Time for Courage: the suffragette diary of Kathleen Brown by Kathryn Lasky.  For the middle or high school set, try With Courage and Cloth: winning the fight for women’s right to vote by Ann Bausum.