Suffragists fought hard for the vote. They also knew that gaining access to the ballot was not the end of the struggle for political representation. This week Amended host Laura Free introduces a special episode from Civics 101, a podcast about how democracy works, to help us understand what a vote really means. The United States is a representative democracy. The idea is that we’re a government by the people (we vote officials into office) and for the people (the officials in office are supposed to represent our interests). But Civics 101 hosts Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice learn that […]
Archives for September 2020
Amended Bonus Episode:“Truth Is of No Color” from And Nothing Less
The scope of women’s political history is so vast that it can’t be covered by one podcast. This week Amended host Laura Free introduces a special episode from And Nothing Less, a seven-part series from the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and PRX. This episode is more than a story about women’s rights. It’s a story about civil rights. And women like Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell understood that the suffrage fight was as much about race as it was gender. Hosts Rosario Dawson and Retta speak with some great guests you’ll recognize from Amended—like Martha Jones and Lisa […]
Lampooning Political Women
By Alison K. Lange. For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images—whether illustrations, engravings, photographs, or colorful chromolithograph posters. Some of these pictures have been flattering, many have been condescending, and others downright incendiary. They have drawn upon prevailing cultural ideas of women’s perceived roles and abilities and often have been circulated with pointedly political objectives. An excerpt from Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement In the mid-19th century, female reformers faced an impossible task as they advocated for rights and aimed to maintain a […]
Amended Episode 3: “Of Rights and Wrongs”
Episode Show Notes & Transcript After the Civil War, many abolitionists and women’s rights activists saw an opportunity to team up and advance equality for all. African American author and orator Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was hopeful, too. But she also knew that politics and prejudice could shatter this tentative alliance, with devastating consequences. She wasn’t about to let that happen without a fight. To help tell Frances’s story, host Laura Free meets up with Sharia Benn, a writer, researcher and theater artist who has spent a decade portraying Frances for public audiences. Laura also spends time with historian Bettye […]
Amended Episode 2: “Any Woman”
Episode Show Notes & Transcript The right to vote was only one of many demands that women made prior to the Civil War. Zooming in on another priority, the right to bodily autonomy, changes our understanding of who was at the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights. Host Laura Free, a historian of women and politics, travels to Baltimore, Maryland, to spend a day with legal historian Martha S. Jones. They visit the Homewood Museum, a 19th century mansion once owned by a family of enslavers, to grapple with its legacy of slavery and sexual violence through the story […]
