Nashville, August 1920: Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. Join us as author Elaine Weiss discusses her new book “The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote” where she tells the story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth-century battles for civil rights. 

In her book, Ms. Weiss describes the opposing forces in the fight for women’s suffrage, including politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and racists who didn’t want black women voting. Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt also play important roles in this story replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel’s, and the Bible.

This talk is a partnership between Baltimore Heritage and the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion. This program and our speaker series have been funded by Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young and the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts.