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Welcome to your Honors American Studies blog. We will use this tool throughout the course to discuss current events and reflect upon class discussion.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

LWV Gifts Suffrage Book to Public Libraries

My current event was about the Juneau League of Women Voters giving a book about women suffrage to public libraries in the United States. The book includes different generations of suffragists in their struggles. The name of the book that was donated to public libraries is Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Women Suffrage Movement. It was written by Robert Cooney, Jr. The LWV wanted people to know how long the struggle was for women to gain voting rights.

The suffrage movement began in 1840 and ended in 1910. The women of the LWV worked to get the 19th amendment. The women had to fight for their voting rights state by state.
  • 19th Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote are not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

The Juneau League of Women Voters was organized by Carrie Chapman Catt in 1920. The LWV are active participants in the CBJ campaigns, public forums, education, and voter registration. The CBJ (citizens for better judge) has been around for about 21 years. The organization has a "commitment to the proposition that the public is entitled to a competent, conscientious and professional judiciary," according to Daniel T. Goyette.
  • The League of Women Voters first goal was to teach women how to exercise their new right to vote.
  • These women take action by monitoring elections and government activities, as well as by testifying at legislative hearings.
If you were to search for the topic of women's rights or suffrage movements, you would not find many biographical books about women in the suffrage movement during the 19th century. If you searched "Women Suffrage" you would only see 73 titles; for "Women's History" only 107 titles; for "Feminism" you would see 1,623 titles about the topic.
  • Feminism is "the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes."
The author of the book about women suffrage used information from manuscripts, subject titles, and photo archives from both public and private places. The main places that Robert Cooney, Jr. took information were the Schlesinger Library, the Library of Congress, and the Huntington and Bancroft Libraries in California.

Article Link:

Sources I used:


Probing Question: Why do you think that there aren't many books that address women suffrage?

21 comments:

  1. I think it could be due to the lack of women writers at the time of womens suffrage. i don't think a man would write a book that promotes womens voting. women who wrote about it were taking a risk that most women did not want to take therefore you have a lack of books written on this subject.

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  2. I believe that there are not many books about women suffrage because of the role of men at the time. Men were the majority of the writers when suffrage was a large issue and most of them did not approve of women's rights. If one was to write a book about this topic they would often be ostracized. Also the publishing agencies may not approve of these books because this topic was not deemed popular at the time. Instead many people would chose to ignore these books so publishing agencies would not want to spend the money making them.

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  3. I believe that there aren't many books upon women's suffrage because; at the time, women weren't really "allowed" to express their free thoughts through writing. This was one of the causes to the suffrage movement, of course, but, alot of women didn't write books upon this, they merely wrote posters and such. I believe that even after the movement was through with, women still didn't write because they thought it was probably not needed.

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  4. I think that there isn't that many books about womens suffrage because at the time this was going on this topic was very controversial to the world view of women and the subject of voting. At the time even if a woman did write a book about womens suffrage who would publish it? No men in that time period would publish such a book because most men were against it. Not to mention it was thought of as the norm for women not to be writing at all, no one would have taken interest in the book. So with all these women that could have written first hand accounts about suffrage, none of them did. Since none or barely any first hand accounts of the suffrage movement were written there wasn't much to go off of for other people to write about the movement.

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  5. I think it is because women's suffarage was a topic that people did not want to address. Most people who did want to talk about this were women and most of the people who would publish books were men. If a man did not support the movement than he would not approve the book and it would not be published. You would have to find soemone who did because this was such a big topic. Most men did not support this and women did so they would write it and men did not wnat to publish it because they would be shunned in the community.

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  6. I think that this is because women really had no power back then. How could someone with no power or rights (women) get a book published about how they need more rights? I really don't think men would let that happen, probably because they wanted to keep the excessive power they had. Also, I like Brian's response. I completely agree that most women probably did not want to take the risk of publishing a book about this subject.

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  7. I don't think that there are many woman's books about suffrage because although it is typically of the "norm" for woman to vote now, it is a sore topic that many people don't like to recall. Also, people back then would never casually write a book about that just to write. Society would completely frown upon that person. For the brave people who did-good for them, however, I think it was very cautious move. That's why many woman avoided it.

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  8. I think that the reason there aren't that many books on women's suffrage is because the beliefs of the women in the League don't agree with the views of some of the public. It would be like looking back again and seeing that there are anti-suffrage movements that don't approve of women voting. Not to mention that people are still under the impression that men continue to dominate history rather than women. There are more history books on men and their achievements than women and their suffrage movements, which was also a major event in our history. I believe that it's all just a matter of bias against women suffrage, and the publishers that sell the books.

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  9. I think its mainly due to men not wanting to see these books being published. Many men worked in the publishing business and more than likely were against publishing books on women's suffrage. I mean it pretty much would make those men look bad so they wouldn't want the world to read books like that.

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  10. I believe that there are not many books about womens suffrage because when it was going on people did not want to write about it. At the time woman writers were not that common and the ones that were, were not going to write about something that would get them disrespected. The men at that time did not want people to know that other women were fighting for their rights. The men at the time were trying to make sure that the other people kept the laws the way they were.

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  11. I think that there are probably not many books that address women’s suffrage for many reasons. Mainly because during the time period that women were gaining their voting rights it was just as controversial for them to be writers. Therefore a man would have had to write the books, which would essentially be a socially suicide. Also men were publishing and financing the books at that time, and would have had no interest in a women’s suffrage book. Because this was also such a controversial time for women, there would be no readers interested in purchasing the books.

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  12. I dont think that there are many books of Womens Sufferage because of the people who published books. If men were the ones who worked in some of these business's then they would not want to publish a book with something that they do not agree with. As time moved on, books still may not of been published because people moved on from the sufferage, and books were then being published about more important issues at the time, instead of writing about the past..

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  13. I believe there are not many book about women's suffrage because of the social factors that were still happening while the movement was going on. Men were controlling most jobs which put them in control of money and what they would buy or not buy. This does not create a market that would make publishers want to pay to publish i book on something people don't want to read about. That mentality has continued i little bit because there isn't much first hand knowledge anymore and no one wants to research and write about something people might not want to read about.

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  14. I believe the roles of men and women alike contribute to the lack of suffrage books published at the time. During this time period, women's suffrage was a hot and controversial topic and women that wrote these novels weren't very popular. Men mostly dominated the publishing companies and so they weren't fond of women trying to equalize the power that the men already had. Most men thought womens suffrage was a joke and they would certainly not promote it by publishing their work. I also think that a lot of women at the time were hesitant to write books because there would have been a lot of negative attention towards that certain writer.

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  15. The fact of the matter is is that men don't want to recognize their wrong doings. Many men have a hand in publication of texts and thus a lack of recognition accures it's a sad but true fact. It's human nature not to want to admit they did something wrong and that's why men don't want these texts published. Another reason is even though womens rights were given men still were against the idea in some cases. So these first hand acounts of the movement were unavailable because women who may of wrote these texts were never published and te text was lost in time.

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  16. For a long time after women were given the right to vote, they still lacked societal approval. Similar to what Marissa said, who would publish a book about womens suffrage back when it was happening? With womens suffrage being such a sensitive topic, a publisher may be afraid of ruining their reputation. The book, the author, and the publisher would probably be greatly criticized. Perhaps women knew this and that is why very few wrote books. Then, maybe by the time women had a chance at being published, it was such old news that few people wrote about it in fear of nobody buying it.

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  17. I think that there are not many books on women suffrage because like many other people said, men controlled most jobs and most financial situations within families. Most men would not ruin their reputation by publishing a womens suffrage book, or they wouldn't publish it because publishers look for books that have a high chance of succeeding, and with womens suffrage being such a controvercial topic at the time, the publishers might not have been sure if the books would sell good.

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  18. In terms of our history, Women's Suffrage is a relatively unheard of cause. We've had voting for a period of time now, so it isn't present in today's literature. Often times, it is as though women's books didn't get published. Male authors weren't fond of ruining their reputation by writing in favor for the women, however they were completely wrong in doing so. I agree with most people on this, Society as a whole wasn't on board with the movement.

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  19. I believe that womans suffrage is something that many people overlook even woman. Thats why there aren't many books on the subject. As cassia had said there were a lot of men writers during this time and most men would not want to get caught writing a book on womans suffrage. Also i believe that woman today are still suffering in some ways that people don't see. Which effects the outcome on books being published on womans suffrage.

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  20. There are not many books written about women's suffrage. This, I believe is because the idea of writing books about women's suffrage was unheard of, it was just improper to write about women's suffrage, especially if you were a male writer which the majority wore in the eighteen hundreds. Also, women's suffrage was not an issue that would make books written about it "fly off the shelves" of bookstores. Writing about women's suffrage, in the eighteen hundreds was not an economically bright thing to do.

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  21. I think that there arent as many books that adress womans suffrage because we dont have enough first hand sources. At the time period of this history making, womans surrage was frowned apon in society. An example is in the movie we watched in class how the senators wife had a secret handbook of her thoughs because she was scared to express them in fear that her husband wouldnt accept her then society wouldnt accept her husband. Then when her husband found the diary he threw it away because he didnt want his wife to be found with the thoughts of suffrage when he opposited it. So it was probably very hard for historians to find exact copies of womans ideal thoughts and actions that they proposed for the change of womans suffrage.

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