The passing of the 19th amendment occurred in my home city of Nashville, Tennessee, yet even though I went to college in Tennessee and minored in history as an undergrad, I didn’t learn about Tennessee’s contribution until after I’d graduated. I remedied this lack of knowledge by reading, and it’s now one of my favorite periods of history to study. The movement encompasses many of the main social and political events of the 19th and 20th centuries, from abolition to WWI to the treatment of Native Americans and the advent of industrialism and worker’s rights. In many respects, the movement was built on the backs of people of color, yet these women were often excluded from the process when their support was deemed too costly. White women used the efforts and labor of abolitionists and Native American women to determine the most effective ways to protest, but almost all of the major white women in the movement, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, placed white women’s suffrage above that of women of color—particularly African American women—and were willing to use racist tactics to ensure white women won the right to vote. I’ve endeavored to make the 20 books on this list inclusive, diverse, and representative, but while I found many books about African American women’s roles in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, I only know of one book that addresses Native American women’s roles, and none that focus specifically on how lesbian women influenced the movement, though Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner does address that in her collection of primary sources The Women’s Suffrage Movement. Despite a plethora of books on the topic, still more is needed to get a full understanding of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.
20 Books About The Women’s Suffrage Movement
Adult Nonfiction
Adult Fiction
YA and Middle-Grade Nonfiction
Children’s Books
For more books about women’s suffrage, check out my post on women’s literary activism during the movement, and these recommendations about the British suffragettes.
