On August 26, Humanities New York (HNY) will premiere Amended, a new podcast commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment by deepening our understanding of this historic event.
Most Americans learn one specific version of the history of women’s suffrage: that a few bold, white women led a movement for equal voting rights and achieved victory 100 years ago when the United States ratified the 19th Amendment. That, we’re told, enabled all American women to vote. But history is never as simple as the stories we tell about it. After that historic milestone, more women could cast a ballot than ever before, and yet the fight for women’s equal voting rights was and still is, far from over.
Amended travels from the 1800s through to the present day to show a quest for women’s full equality that has always been as diverse, complex, and unfinished as the nation itself.
The host of Amended is Laura Free, a historian of women and politics. She is joined by other groundbreaking scholars whose work broadens our understanding of the struggle for equal voting rights. Guests Include Sharia Benn, Bettye Collier-Thomas, Martha Jones, Lisa Tetrault, and Judith Wellman. Through vivid storytelling, they highlight some important but under-recognized women who fought injustice based on race, citizenship status, and class, in addition to advocating for the rights of their sex. Together, they’ll talk about what’s been gained, lost, and still left to be done.
“As a white historian, part of my scholarly work has been to call out and interrogate the racism of some of the icons of the suffrage movement,” said Free, the podcast’s host. “But that work is only a small part of a broader project that so many historians are engaged in right now to recognize and lift up the voices that typical suffrage histories have marginalized or neglected in the past. I’m so glad to get the chance to be a part of a project like Amended that is doing this work. I’m also so excited to share stories about these amazing activists with our listeners.”
“We felt a huge responsibility to convey some of the complexity that is so often left out when we hear stories of women from history, so every writing and editing decision was painstaking,” said producer Reva Goldberg.
Amended will be available on iTunes, Spotify, Sticher, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, and other major platforms. Learn more about the host, guests, and project at amendedpodcast.com.
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