Elisabeth Griffith - Formidable : American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920-2020

Formidable

American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920-2020

Elisabeth Griffith

An Essential History of the Struggle by Both Black and White Women to Achieve their Equal Rights.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Elisabeth Griffiths Formidable is an essential history of the 100-year struggle between 1920 and 2020 by both Black and white women in America to achieve their equal rights. Griffith surveys the successes and setbacks that remained relevant and pressing across the century: voting rights, racial violence, health care, reproductive rights, working conditions, education, race and gender discrimination, electoral office. Through her comprehensive survey of the people, events and movements that marked this history, she highlights the women, and men, who were both pushing for change and those who resisted it. The final outcome of that struggle is not yet decided.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, Presidential candidate

In her new book Formidable, Elisabeth Griffith does a remarkable job bringing to life Act II of American womens struggle for equal rights. And what an intriguing cast she pulls together to bring these stories to life. In the century following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which expanded but did not complete the struggle, Dr. Griffith introduces us to American women of all racial, class and sexual identities who danced, frolicked, argued and trudged across the country in an intriguing, often-bitter, sometimes joyful, and never-ending parade. Youll read their stories and weep, gasp, applaud, and shout out right on, sisters!

Adele Logan Alexander, PhD, author of Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragists Story from the Jim Crow South and other works of African American and womens history

Just as fascinating as the struggle for women to vote is the fresh new focus on what the ensuing one hundred years has brought. Griffiths compelling narrative casts new light on victories but also persistent fault lines in the quest for equality across the social landscape. The portraits in Formidable pave the way for the inspiring work going forward. Based on her important scholarship of the last century, historian Elisabeth Griffith brings a fresh focus to what American women have done in the one hundred years since the Nineteenth Amendment passed. Formidable is a vibrant journey that leads authoritatively toward the challenges that still slow the road to equality.

Ann Compton, ABC News White House correspondent covering seven presidents

Elisabeth Griffith is a consummate storyteller, combining research and riveting narrative to keep alive the political and social struggle for equal rights by American women front and center. Readers will be caught up in the heroism and resilience of this diverse cast of characters. Elisabeth magnificently covered the early campaign for suffrage, from Seneca Falls to 1920, in her first book, which helped to make our film about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. AnthonyNot for Ourselves Alone. Now she carries that story forward to 2020, as Black and white women confront yet another set of obstacles and objectives.

Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker

Social change is slow and stumbling. For women, especially women of color, its been a struggle to reach political equality. Formidable tells about those strugglesthe players, the losses and the winsthat lead us to today. For those of us who demand political equality, its important to understand where weve come from to appreciate where were going. No defeat need be permanent. No victory is final. But change will come.

Ellen Malcom, founder of EMILYs List

Elisabeth Griffith offers an unprecedented survey of the womens suffrage movement that masterfully intertwines two parallel crusades for justice, those of Black and white women. Beginning with the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment and concluding with the 2020 presidential election, Formidable explains the complexities, nuances, and challenges of the fight for womens equality over the last century. Weaving together the separate and sometimes competing aspirations of Black and white women, Griffith provides the missing link in a crucial story of womens rights in contemporary America. Finally, we have one book that brings together American women in their many dimensions and complexities in one informative and compelling narrative.

Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of Politics & Prose Bookstore, former chief speechwriter to Hillary Rodham Clinton

As the author of Freedoms Daughters, the first history of women in the U.S. civil rights movement, Im delighted to endorse Elisabeth Griffiths illuminating new examination of the seminal roles that Black women and white women have played in this countrys never-ending struggles for equal rights. As Griffith notes, much has been written about the separate movements for womens equality and Black equality. But the interconnections between the twoand the complicated, often tortured relationships between the Black and white women involved in these battlesare topics that have not received the attention they deserve. The same is true of the close ties between misogyny and racism, meant to repress both women and Black people in defense of white male prerogativesa particularly timely subject today.

Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of eight works of history, including Freedoms Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970

Taking the Nineteenth Amendment as a starting point instead of a finish line, Formidable explores the first hundred years of the struggle to complete the unfinished business of womens suffrage: womens equality. A keen and witty observer of American history and politics, Griffith seamlessly weaves together diverse stories of women both familiar and unheralded, and takes an unflinching look at the role of race, class, and religion. Epic in its scope and detail, Formidable tells the vital story of the last century of womens activism in all its messy, imperfect glory.

Rebecca Roberts, author of The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World

In Formidable, Elisabeth Griffith offers a fascinating and necessary supplement to the standard history of the American Centurya narrow narrative usually centered solely upon on the actions of men. Formidable is the story of American womens political lifeand strifein the century following the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, giving us a panoramic view of womens role in the causes and conflicts of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This colorful, character-driven tale features an extraordinary cast of women leaders and activistssome famous, some who need to be better knownworking towards equality and empowerment, and promises to expand our understanding of not only history, but also the issues and forces confronting women today.

Elaine Weiss, author of The Womans Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

If there were ever a moment to look at where American women are, the hurdles we still face, and where American women have been, the challenges weve overcome, this moment of reckoning is it. In the aftermath of Me Too, Breonna Taylor and the election of Vice President Kamala Harris, there is an urgent need to examine how we got here. Who were the women and what were the forces that brought us to this day? No one is better qualified than Elisabeth Griffith, expert and author of womens history, educator, and a political activist herself, to chronicle the fits and starts, the highs and lows, that led American womenall American womento where we find ourselves in 2021. Her book is a gift to all of us who lived through any part of the past century or who want to understand it.