The 19th Amendment at 100: A Centennial Reassessment, Focusing on Sex, Race, and Memory

The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which removed “sex” as a legal reason to disqualify citizens from voting. Centennial celebrations have revealed how little most Americans know about the history of women’s rights and how contested this history remains. For the past 100 years, suffrage history has been marginalized and narrowly focused on a few white leaders. But recent scholarship has upended the standard narrative of suffrage, which starts with the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention and focuses on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This webinar will incorporate new research on suffrage, highlighting sex and race. Drawing on the book Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020), we will consider how the sexual double standard motivated activists, how the 19th Amendment got through Congress, and how racism shaped the suffrage movement and its legacy.