Vanguard: Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, Insisted on Equality for All

RESCHEDULED! We weren't able to have our discussion on May 2, so you have a whole extra week to read this one before the club conversation.

On Sunday, May 9 at 1 pm, join the DC Feminist Book Club on Zoom for a casual, critical conversation about 'Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All' by historian Martha Jones.

This book is about the history of Black women's activism for suffrage and about U.S. democracy at large. This women's history is absolutely essential for understanding 21st-century voter suppression and the resistance movement against it.

The organizer will email the Zoom meeting link to members who RSVP'd ahead of the get-together the night before. We recommend you use AirPods or earbuds with a microphone, or a headset.

Newcomers and guests are welcome!

[Find online]

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/vanguard-how-black-women-broke-barriers-won-the-vote-and-insisted-on-equality-for-all/9781541618619

WorldCat: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1227309533

[Description]

In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women’s movement did not win the vote for most Black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own.

In Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in the United States. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons.

From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of Black women — Maria Stewart, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, Stacey Abrams, and more — who were the vanguard of the fight for women’s rights.

[Excerpt]

Download the first 25 pages to sample through the publisher: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/martha-s-jones/vanguard/9781541618619/

[More]

Conversation between author Jones and journalist A'lelia Bundles (notably Madame CJ Walker's great-great-grandaughter) about the book, sponsored by the U.S. National Archives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ic4pnvy8A

Interview between Jones and The New School's Dr. Claire Potter: https://publicseminar.org/essays/how-black-women-fight-for-our-democracy-kamala-harris/