And yet They Persisted

"This scholarly-based, popularly written text engages students with the history of how women overcame two centuries of discrimination, property foreclosures, rotten eggs, jail time, state and federal defeats and racism to win the right to vote. How Women Won the Vote will serve as a welcome text in courses in U.S., Women's Political, or Cultural history. It will also be useful as a reference for graduate seminars or colloquia"-- And Yet They Persisted traces agitation for the vote over two centuries, from the revolutionary era to the civil rights era, excavating one of the greatest struggles for social change in this country and restoring African American women and other women of color to its telling. Author Johanna Neuman demonstrates that American women defeated the male patriarchy only after they convinced men that it was in their interests to share political power. Reintegrating the long struggle for women's suffrage into the metanarrative of U.S. history, Dr. Neuman sheds new light on such questions as why it took so long to achieve equal voting rights for women, how victories in state suffrage campaigns pressured Congress to act, why African American women had to fight again for their rights in 1965, and how the struggle by eight generations of female activists finally succeeded.-- taken from book cover