6 May 2019 ROSES AND RADICALS: THE EPIC STORY OF HOW AMERICAN WOMEN WON THE RIGHT TO VOTE by Susan Zimet, Viking, January 2018, 168p., ISBN: 978-0-451-47754-5

“The history of mankind is a history of injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”

--from the Declaration of Sentiments, drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and adopted at the Seneca Falls Women’s Convention (1848)

“Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life...The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”

-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, concurring in Bradwell v. Illinois (1873)

“I would not object to marriage if it were not that women throw away every plan and purpose of their own life, to conform to the plans and purposes of a man’s life.”

-- Susan B. Anthony

“There are many definitions of ‘sexism,’ but all of them describe discrimination against a group of people--almost always women--based on their sex. Sexism is a prejudice that is often ingrained and institutionalized. And in nineteenth century America the belief that men were superior to women ran very deep, so deep that most people--men and women--didn’t think twice about it; they simply assumed that a society in which women had fewer rights than men was ‘just the way things are.’

Put differently, sexism was so prevalent in the United States in 1852 that there wasn’t even a word for it. Indeed, the word ‘sexism’ wouldn’t become widely used until the 1960s! But maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, we don’t have a term for living in a world in which gravity is always at work. Why would we? It’s just the way things are.

But Susan B. Anthony refused to accept the way things were. In 1853 she left the temperance movement and joined forces with Elizabeth Cady Stanton to battle this thing so huge, so widespread, and so common it didn’t even have a name. Their historic alliance would last more than half a century and change the United States forever.”

Women getting the right to vote in America may seem to some young people like ancient history. But it’s not so! For people my age, 1920 is the same distance in the past as is the Reagan administration to my preschool grandkids. And, from my point of view, those eight years of Reagan are not all that long ago.

What now seems like a medieval concept--women having no input into the laws under which they are governed; and husbands having immense power over their wives’ behavior and finances--was the state of affairs into which my grandmothers were born. My Italian-immigrant grandmother Rosa was already a 36 year-old mom when women finally won the right to vote.

“Why, you may be asking, did all this take so incredibly long?” poses author Susan Zimet. “Why was opposition to women’s suffrage so difficult to overturn? How could so many people deny women this basic right for so long?”

What Ms. Zimet shows in ROSES AND RADICALS is that it was--and is--a matter of sexism:

“These women were fighting for more than just the right to vote; they were challenging the basic status of women in the United States...The very way people thought about women--at home, at work, in schools, and in government--had to change...Suffrage activists had to fight for every last one of these changes and each one took time. In truth, considering that women still on average earn less than men for doing the same work, or the fact that only one out of every five US senators is a woman, it is clear that the larger struggle continues today.”

There are several widely-known American suffragettes. ROSES AND RADICALS delves deep into the lives and works of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul.

But the author makes it clear that throughout the course of American history there have been so many more women playing pivotal roles in battling the sexism that still keeps the 51 percent from fully enjoying the same rights as men. Among the characters we meet here are Anne Hutchinson; Abigail Adams; Lucretia Mott; Mary Wollstonecraft; Amelia Bloomer; the Grimké sisters; Sojourner Truth; Lucy Stone; Victoria Woodhull; Matilda Joslyn Gage; Carrie Chapman Catt; Lucy Burns; Inez Milholland; and Ida B. Wells.

One of the most fascinating and shocking aspects of the story is the racism attributed to some of these important women. Many of them had a big blind spot and bought into the notion that black Americans were inherently inferior because of their race.

In clear, honest, and memorable terms, ROSES AND RADICALS presents a history of women in America seeking and fighting for the same inalienable rights that their male counterparts were guaranteed under the Constitution. Author Susan Zimet does this in a manner that makes it readily accessible to middle school kids. With the 2020 centennial rapidly approaching, this is an important book to have and to know.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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