I’m a week late for the celebration of the 19th Amendment. Last week, I watched a play, “Finish the Fight: The Heroes of the Suffrage Movement”. The play, performed virtually, was commissioned by The New York Times. The outstanding production focused on figures that most of us don’t know in the fight for the right to vote. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper refused to give up her seat on a streetcar in the 1850s in Pennsylvania. She was an author, poet, orator, and co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Jovita Idar was a journalist and newspaper publisher in Texas who advocated for women’s suffrage and fair treatment for Mexican Americans. Both of those women were portrayed in the play, along with Mabel Png-Hua Lee, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Zitkala-Sa. But, there are many more women who stood up, and many of them are included in the book published by the staff of The New York Times, Finish the Fight.

It’s a fascinating book, with a diverse group of women. Although I have been to Seneca Falls, to the Women’s Rights National Park, I didn’t know how many women, African American, Native American, Latina, Chinese, Lesbian, were involved in the suffrage movement. Let’s face it. The national park focuses on the history of white women and Frederick Douglass. This book turns that history upside down, and shows the other women involved in getting the vote for women.

One story I found interesting was the opening chapter of the book. It says in 1848, “some women in American already had a say in choosing their leaders.” “The town of Seneca Falls was located in the historic territory of the Haudenosaunee, a confederacy of six Native American nations.” Their form of democracy, their society, was matrilineal, “meaning that the clan you belonged to depended on your mother’s ancestors.” The women made the decisions, and even picked the chief. It’s interesting background for the rest of the book.

And, although women nationally were given the vote in 1920, New Jersey’s constitution, written in 1776, granted the vote to all free “inhabitants,” no matter the gender or race, as long as they had been in the country for at least a year, and had $50 worth of property to their name.

Finish the Fight is a fascinating book. The illustrations and photos are excellent. If you’re reading the book, read the Illustrator’s Note first because it’s important to know about the symbolism in the illustrations.

The play, “Finish the Fight”, was a rabbit hole. It led to this book filled with women I had never heard of. It’s a story filled with courage and strength. It’s a salute to women who fought for their rights, and are still fighting for them. It’s been two hundred years.

Finish the Fight: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote by Veronica Chambers and The Staff of the New York Times. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. ISBN 9780358408307 (hardcover), 132p.

*****
FTC Full Disclosure – I bought a copy of the book