Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women's Suffrage

by Linda Steiner (Contributor), Carolyn Kitch (Editor), Brooke Kroeger (Editor)

Suffragists recognized that the media played an essential role in the women's suffrage movement and the public's understanding of it. From parades to going to jail for voting, activists played to the mass media of their day. They also created an energetic niche media of suffragist journalism and publications.
This collection offers new research on media issues related to the women's suffrage movement. Contributors incorporate media theory, historiography, and innovative approaches to social movements while discussing the vexed relationship between the media and debates over suffrage. Aiming to correct past oversights, the essays explore overlooked topics such as coverage by African American and Mormon-oriented media, media portrayals of black women in the movement, suffragist rhetorical strategies, elites within the movement, suffrage as part of broader campaigns for social transformation, and the influence views of white masculinity had on press coverage.

Contributors:
Maurine H. Beasley, Sherilyn Cox Bennion, Jinx C. Broussard, Teri Finneman, Kathy Roberts Forde, Linda M. Grasso, Carolyn Kitch, Brooke Kroeger, Linda J. Lumsden, Jane Marcellus, Jane Rhodes, Linda Steiner, and Robin Sundaramoorthy

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 9, 2020

About the author

Linda Claire Steiner (born January 3, 1950, is a professor at Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland. She is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Journalism & Communication Monographs, and sits on the editorial board of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Reviews

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This edited volume examines the suffrage movement focusing on how suffragist and anti-suffragist utilized different media outlets to advance their respective agendas and how the media represented the movement. To its credit this volume includes multiple essays that address the failure of white middle-class suffrage leaders to work with women of color -- a topic that has received only minimal coverage by scholars. It also includes essays that focus on African American publications' representation of the suffrage movement. However, the essays, like many edited volumes, are not all of the same quality and some are written so dryly that they are difficult to wade through. So although the research is solid and the volume makes some modest contributions to the existing literature, most likely the non-academic reader would not find this volume appealing.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Illinois Press for the chance to read this review in exchange for a fair and honest review.

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This edited volume examines the suffrage movement focusing on how suffragist and anti-suffragist utilized different media outlets to advance their respective agendas and how the media represented the movement,. To its credit this volume includes multiple essays that address the failure of white middle-class suffrage leaders to work with women of color -- a topic that has received only minimal coverage by scholars. It also includes essays that focus on African American publications' representation of the suffrage movement. However, the essays, like many edited volumes, are not all of the same quality and some are written so dryly that they are difficult to wade through. So although the research is solid and the volume makes some modest contributions to the existing literature, most likely the non-academic reader would not find this volume appealing.

[Briar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really really wanted to enjoy this book. It sounded so interesting when I saw it on Netgalley that I couldn’t resist requesting it and was delighted when I was sent a copy. I knew very little about the fight for the vote in the USA, but although I know more now, I’m sad to say that I don’t think the knowledge was worth the effort it took to get it.

Don’t get me wrong, the information in the book was really good and obviously well researched. I was particularly interested in chapter 3, which was about how the women’s suffrage movement in Utah differed from other places because they had already had the vote for some time. Chapter 4 also had very interesting content, about black women suffragists and their publications. Again, chapters 5 and 6 compare how different publications covered the suffrage issue, including how they talked about black women’s suffrage specifically, and I loved learning about that.

But the big problem with Front Pages, Front Lines is its readability, which, frankly, is poor. All the essays are written in a very academic style and it’s incredibly dry, sometimes incomprehensible. I have a bachelor’s degree and am pretty well read, but I’ll be honest with you: I struggled with this book. There’s jargon scattered throughout. Some of the authors are better than others about this (one, excitingly, even explained what they meant when they used a particular piece of jargon!) but there were quite a few places where I just didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about, and others where I managed to work it out it took a while.

It’s not just the jargon though, it’s the whole style of writing. I feel bad criticising the writing when the authors have clearly all put a huge amount of work into their very important studies, but it’s just so boring. The writing is flat and monotone, the sentences are long, the words feel heavy. It’s hard to concentrate and despite the fact that the content is good and important, it doesn’t feel interesting. There’s no incentive to carry on reading when you have to force yourself through every sentence.

All of this isn’t the authors’ fault. Academic writing is often like this, and of course there are types of research which are difficult to make engaging. But this isn’t one of them! This should be interesting stuff; it’s content that people are going to want to read and find out about, and I find it infuriating that academic conventions mean that authors are forced to write in this turgid, tedious way which makes their books and articles horribly inaccessible just so that they can get and keep jobs. Ugh. Research and new knowledge are important and as many people as possible should be able to read them. This is a real bugbear of mine and has been ever since I went to university and discovered that it was a Thing.

Now that I’ve got out of the way – and it’s a huge, huge problem with the book – I’ll reiterate that there’s lots of great information which could be interesting, and maybe will be if you’re good at reading incredibly boring writing! It was nice to see a significant amount of page time given to the specific challenges that black women had in their fight for the vote, because, as it is today, white supremacy was woven into the very fabric of society. I also liked the acknowledgement that black people are often deliberately prevented from voting by various means even today; that these problems are not merely a thing of the past.

I was surprised, though, to find that there was no mention of Native American women in this book. Because Front Pages, Front Lines claims to be a book that aims to be inclusive in talking about different populations who were fighting for the vote, and took care to include plenty of research on black women’s challenges in particular, I expected that Native American women would also be part of it. Knowing even the little I do (as a Brit) about the way Native Americans were treated by the colonisers – and are still treated now – I really can’t think that it was easy for them to gain the right to vote, so why isn’t there even a passing mention in this book? Is it a complicated subject that needs a book of its own? But in that case why is this not explained? It’s possible that I’m making false assumptions based on little knowledge, of course, but I did find it surprising.

It’s hard to say whether I recommend this book or not. I was excited about it, and I’m glad to have learned some things, but ultimately it turned into a chore to read rather than a pleasure. If you do decide to take the plunge, I’d strongly recommend skipping the introduction and the first chapter, which are the worst of the lot and nearly made my whole brain melt.

Read all my reviews on my blog: https://thewearybookcase.home.blog/