Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement

by Cathleen D. Cahill

We think we know the story of women's suffrage in the United States: women met at Seneca Falls, marched in Washington, D.C., and demanded the vote until they won it with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. But the fight for women's voting rights extended far beyond these familiar scenes. From social clubs in New York's Chinatown to conferences for Native American rights, and in African American newspapers and pamphlets demanding equality for Spanish-speaking New Mexicans, a diverse cadre of extraordinary women struggled to build a movement that would truly include all women, regardless of race or national origin. In Recasting the Vote, Cathleen D. Cahill tells the powerful stories of a multiracial group of activists who propelled the national suffrage movement toward a more inclusive vision of equal rights. Cahill reveals a new cast of heroines largely ignored in earlier suffrage histories: Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Carrie Williams Clifford, Mabel Ping-Hau Lee, and Adelina Nina Luna Otero-Warren. With these feminists of color in the foreground, Cahill recasts the suffrage movement as an unfinished struggle that extended beyond the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

As we celebrate the centennial of a great triumph for the women's movement, Cahill's powerful history reminds us of the work that remains.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, American History, The United States Of America, Race, Womens

376 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2020

Reviews

[Laura L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review. I found this to be very interesting and well written, it told the reader about parts of the sufragest movement that aren't as well known about. I would highly recommend to anyone interested in women's history in America.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an important corrective to the classic narrative of white women suffragists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book provides many valuable vignettes about the activism of nonwhite women in different parts of the suffrage movement, but importantly this isn't a "and by the way, other people were involved too" story. Cahill also uses the stories about nonwhite women's activism to recast the more familiar stories of white suffragist activists as they debated how to position themselves in relation to women of other races and their political concerns and rhetoric. This also helps to highlight how much the politics of suffrage differed between states and regions even though it is often thought of as a national issue because of the 19th amendment. Would love to see more systematic analysis of different women's groups that have often been excluded from classic histories of suffrage, but this history is a key starting point

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement by Cathleen D Cahill does so much more than tell the reader how these women of color worked to secure the vote for all women. This also highlights the very important need for those not being included in the writing of history to write their own histories and document their own struggles and successes.

I came to this book to help fill in the many gaps in my understanding of the history of the suffrage movement and was rewarded with a rich and detailed history of what should likely be called the suffrage movements as told primarily through several important women of the time. This is told with both moving narrative and startling facts. If this were all the book accomplished, I would have been pleased with it.

But Cahill shows how, when what history treats as the success of women's suffrage occurred, there were still many women left on the outside looking in. Their work was not finished and they realized their stories were not being told in either contemporaneous activism or in the writing of the history. yet again, the combination of race and gender was erasing these activists from the picture as surely as Stalin erased people from his version of history. So these women kept working toward their goals and documented every step of the way.

We now are largely aware of the interlocking systems of oppression that operate in society, yet to a large portion of white readership and even academia, this is a fairly recent acknowledgement, maybe about 1980s or 90s. But these women, and all people of color, have always known that there is not one single element of society that can be isolated and solved to make life better. They must be approached together as a whole, even if at a given moment one aspect takes center stage. Recasting the Vote shows how each woman worked for improving the lives in their communities on more than one front.

I highly recommend this to any reader who wants to better understand either the suffrage movements or how activism must both work on multiple problems while always documenting and keeping their history alive. I will definitely be rereading this and will also be looking more closely at some of the wealth of sources in the notes and bibliography sections.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Kelly Hodgkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Recasting the Vote”, by Cathleen D Cahill, is in four parts divided by time periods: 1890-1913, 1913-1917, 1917-1920 and 1920-1928 and focuses on five women of colour: Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Mabel Ping-Hau Lee, Nina Otera-Warren, Carrie Williams Clifford and Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin and their contributions to the suffrage movement during this critical time. Each is a woman of colour and culture, their heritage forms who they are and their approach. It also means they experience and fight racism. Whilst this additional element should, perhaps, have been obvious to me, it was unexpected and heartbreaking. These women fought so many battles on so many fronts, sexism, racism and then enduring a world war, their journeys are inspiring.

In addition to the five leading ladies, Cathleen weaves in many more women of the time including the leading white suffragettes. It is an elegantly told history of America through the eyes of women and highlights the key movements that have led to today’s high tensions around the building of America and the place of different races in it. The five ladies represent the Native American, the Spanish American, the Chinese American, the Mexican American and the African American. Each shares how their countries originally come to be in modern day America and the impact racism had in shaping their lives.

The suffrage movement is often thought of as that, one movement forward through time, but this book highlights just how many strategies were tried including the ones that failed. The British came with their opinions, success in China contributed a different approach, the African American had some success in gaining rights and that influenced their approach and so on. Many movements from multiple cultures across a continent over decades experienced small and big wins before achieving their eventual goal. There were many disagreements and a lot of politics behind it all too. What we see as the right to vote had a lot more going on to win it! And when it was won, a new fight began to expand what it meant: to see women as men’s equals, and that’s still our fight today. It’s rather sobering to think that over a hundred years later, I could use the same lines of rhetoric as these ladies to encourage equality but it encouraging to see their perseverance did pay off, they got the vote eventually!

The back cover summaries this well, this is an “unfinished struggle”. We have made gains but we are not done yet. Fascinating, moving, insightful, this book is all that but it is also a call to fight on for women’s rights, much work remains. It’s a five out of five on the enJOYment scale and highly recommended!

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book about recasting the vote is dealing with the women of color who also worked at and just as hard as white women to get the right to vote for all women. For me growing up with a grandmother who went to college but was only allowed to study a few subjects and was given a certificate, not a diploma like her male students I always knew it was a struggle, just because she was white she still struggled because of her husband my grandfather who kept her down because of the difference of men and women from the time that they came from.
Also growing up in California and being into history I read about the struggles of Chinese, Hispanics, Native Americans, and of course African Americans I am glad that the research by this author is given all of these women and the decedents there just due. It is just a shame that with all that these strong women did that women are still fighting for equality in the workforce everywhere. I would also wish more people women especially young would read this book and see that working together gets more done than tearing each other apart, as a father of 4 daughters I don’t like when I see women bashing each other I hope that they could see what they can accomplish when they all work together. The work the author put into this was intensive and it shows and made this a very good read. I received this book from Netgalley.com I gave it 5 stars. follow us at
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[Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borrowed this book on a whim from the library. Thought it would be a good reads--we hear a lot about the Suffrage movement and the outcome. But as the way much of history has been written, the focus has been on certain people, faces, names. Turns out there were many more women (Black, Indigenous and of color) who were also involved in the fight for the right to vote.

The author profiles these women: (Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa), Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Carrie Williams Clifford, Mabel Ping-Hau Lee, and Adelina Nina Luna Otero-Warren as listed on Goodreads) and tells us a bit about their life stories, how they got into the fight, and how they did so in their communities.

Overall I would say it was useful, but really dry and a slog to read. These names and this context is very important (I had never heard of these women, I don't think) but also think that this was a tough approach (profiling many individually) to do. Wouldn't be a surprise if this showed up in a class setting, though.

Useful as a reference or a class, but I'm not sure a layperson would find this as compelling.

Borrowed from the library and that was best for me.

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and gave a lot of insight on suffragists whose names are often overlooked! Schools had never taught me the impact of women of color in the suffragist movement. I am ashamed to admit that it had never even crossed my mind as a woman of color myself until my history teacher only briefly mentioned the intersection of the suffragist movement and the abolitionist movement one day. This singular comment inspired my essay for my IB History of the Americas class in high school—and this book carried my research! What I appreciated most about this book was the fact that it touched on Asian and Native American perspectives as well, which were rare to find, at least for a high school researcher with no access to paywalled scholarly articles. This book covered everything from the “basic” history of the suffragist movement and the background of each suffragist to the effect of the 19th Amendment on each racial group. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this topic, whether for research or pure interest! This broad range of perspectives deserves so much more attention!!

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley — a huge thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley! Recasting the Vote could be argued to be revisionist feminist history, but truly it focuses on the often ignored and marginalised voices of WOC during the Suffragettes movement. This book was charismatic, had excellent use of sources and meticulous research, and did a great job in showing a non-white feminist perspective on the first 'official' feminist movement in history. This book would be excellent for research on the topic and to gain a better world-view of intersectionality and feminism during the period.

[Christina Nunyas · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazingly thorough! Admittedly a dense read with stacks of citations. If you are looking for a light, bubblegum read you will hate it. If you want to strap in and learn about some badass BIPOC women who have been erased from history - and develop a desire to find the poltergeist of Alice Paul and punch her in her racist face - READ THIS BOOK!

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading about a different group of activists than usually are written about. I will assign this in a grad class sometime in the future.

[Sally Kenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot. Some suffrage histories include African-American women but rarely have we learned anything about other women of color. Very interesting who comes to speak for groups and how.

[Megan Darby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. Very well organized and dense.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement is an essential read for anyone interested in women’s history, the history of voting rights in the United States, Indigenous history, or the history of other under-represented groups. Cathleen D. Cahill brings to light the little-known contributions of Native, African-American, Asian, and Latina women to the struggle for voting rights in America. Cahill combed multitudinous sources to paint robust portraits of these women, including Native activists Laura Cornelius Kellogg, Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, and Zitkala-Ša, African-American voting rights advocate Carrie Williams Clifford, Chinese-born activist Mabel Lee, and Latina activist Nina Otero-Warren, among others. Read my full review here.