18 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

amendment’s significance,” Jennifer Schuessler wrote in an

August article in the New York Times, which discussed three

new Washington, D.C., exhibitions on women’s suffrage.

Indeed, in practice, the 19th Amendment only guaranteed

protections for white women; women of color, and many men,

BATTLE

BALLOT

Publishers mark a watershed moment in women’s voting rights

By Sarah J. roBBinS

O

ne hundred years after the passage and ratifi-

cation of the 19th Amendment to the

Constitution, which prohibits the govern-

ment from denying citizens the right to vote

on the basis of their sex, historians, educators,

and publishers are considering the complicated milestone,

reflecting on a political revolution that is still underway.

Several observers acknowledge major gaps in public under-

standing, and in their own, about the fight for women’s

voting rights. “The centennial gives us an excuse and an

opportunity to go back and learn as much as we can,” says

Angela P. Dodson, author of the 2017 suffrage history

Remember the Ladies, which Center Street released in paperback

in March. “It’s an opportunity to delve into the history of

people who haven’t even been discovered yet and have cross-

cultural conversations, too.”

Dodson is among those who, in the past few years, have

focused on the untold stories of the suffrage movement,

many of which center on women and men of color. “Even

before the centennial year began, there have been tensions

over who and what to celebrate—or even how to sum up the

FOR THE