"Distinguished historian Ellen Carol DuBois begins in the pre-Civil War years with foremothers Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth as she explores the links of the woman suffrage movement to the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War, Congress granted freed African American men the right to vote but not white and African American women, a crushing disappointment. DuBois shows how suffrage leaders persevered...

A leader of the women's movement, Carrie Chapman Catt continued the work of her predecessors and pushed state and federal governments to grant women the right to vote. She organized rallies, lobbied the government, and fought against the male establishment until she helped achieve the suffragists' goal: the 19th amendment to the U. S. Constitution.