National Museum of the U.S. Navy

The women’s suffrage movement was decades in the making and came with many harsh setbacks. But it resulted in a permanent victory: women’s right to vote. How did the suffragists do it? One hundred years later, an eye-opening look at their playbook shows that some of their strategies seem oddly familiar. Women’s marches at inauguration time? Check. Publicity stunts, optics, and influencers? They practically invented them. Petitions, lobbying, speeches, raising money, and writing articles? All of that, too.

In recognition of National Women’s History Month, join authors, Rebecca Boggs Roberts and Lucinda Robb as they discuss some of the movement’s darker aspects—including the racism of some suffragist leaders, violence against picketers, and hunger strikes in jail.  Learn about key figures in the movement like Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, Ida B. Wells, Alice Paul, and others.   Their book, an International Literacy Association Young Adult Book Award winner is engagingly narrated by Rebecca and Lucinda, whose friendship goes back generations (to their grandmothers, Lady Bird Johnson and Lindy Boggs, and their mothers, Lynda Robb and Cokie Roberts).  It’s a unique melding of seminal history and smart tactics which captures the attention of activists-in-the-making today.  This program is presented in collaboration with the Director’s Action Group (DAG), Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

About the Authors:  

Rebecca Boggs Roberts has been many things, including a journalist, tour guide, producer, forensic anthropologist, political consultant, jazz singer, and radio talk show host. Currently she is the curator of programming at Planet Word. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, three sons, and a long-eared hound.

Lucinda Robb was project director for Our Mothers Before Us: Women and Democracy, 1789–1920 at the Center for Legislative Archives. The project rediscovered thousands of overlooked original documents and produced a traveling exhibit and education program highlighting the role of women in American democracy. She also helped organize the National Archives’ celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1995. She lives in Virginia with her husband, three children, one dog, and more than five hundred PEZ dispensers.