On March 7, the Library of Congress marked the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Award-winning journalist Elaine Weiss joined Colleen Shogan, Assistant Deputy Librarian and the Library of Congress’s designee on the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, at the Kluge Center for a conversation on Weiss’s book, The Woman’s Hour. The book details the final weeks of the fight to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, affirming that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex.” The Woman’s Hour is soon to be a major television event from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television.
Weiss discussed her use of the Library’s collections on women’s suffrage, and how important even “a little note saying a check had bounced,” could be in understanding the movement. She talked about the divisions between women at the time, from radical and moderate pro-suffragists to those women who opposed the 19th Amendment. Weiss also told Shogan about her decision to hone in on Nashville, Tennessee, during the summer of 1920, and even one specific hotel, in order to tell the story of suffrage.
Watch the whole talk here:
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