Boston Book Festival 2019

Although most Americans regard the right to vote as essential to democracy, voting rights have been, and continue to be, a contested issue. In honor of the upcoming anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, the BBF presents a session dedicated to the subject of voting rights and the movements and people who have championed the cause. Susan Ware’s Why They Marched profiles nineteen of the largely overlooked women of diverse background and race who crusaded for women’s suffrage, a right that took a hundred years to win. Their stories provide insights into the ecosystem of the abolitionist, feminist, worker’s rights, and suffrage movements. Holly Jackson, whose American Radicals has been called an “electric debut” by Publishers Weekly, provides context by discussing radical American movements with a focus on those that reshaped American life, including the women’s rights movement. In Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?, Tina Cassidy describes the heroic efforts of a young Quaker woman, Alice Paul, who used radical tactics borrowed from the British suffragettes. Paul’s efforts were inclusive of black women, even as the movement subtly endorsed the strategy of using women’s suffrage as a bulwark against the votes of blacks and immigrants. Gloria Browne-Marshall’s book, The Voting Rights War, covers the NAACP’s fight to bring voting rights cases before the Supreme Court. From the 1896 Plessy v Ferguson to today’s battles over felony disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and photo ID laws, the NAACP has been a prominent advocate for extending and defending voting rights. Join our panel of experts in a spirited discussion of this perennially timely issue, moderated by Colby College professor Lydia Moland, author of the forthcoming Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism.