In 1912, Mabel Lee, a teenaged immigrant from China, led a New York City suffrage parade on horseback. Ineligible for U.S. citizenship due to anti-Chinese immigration policy, Mabel nonetheless spoke out for American women’s political equality. She envisioned a world where all women had the right to vote—and she wanted white suffragists to pay attention to the discrimination and racism faced by Chinese American women. In this episode, producer Reva Goldberg travels to Chinatown to meet with Reverend Bayer Lee, who honors Mabel’s legacy as the pastor of the church community that Mabel and her parents dedicated themselves to building. […]
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 1: “Myths And Sentiments”
Episode Show Notes & Transcript How do we tell the story of the (unfinished) struggle for women’s voting rights? Who gave us the dominant suffrage narrative? And who gets left out? Our host is Laura Free, a historian of women and politics. She reflects on the suffrage story she learned as a child, one that centers a few white women. She speaks with historians Bettye Collier-Thomas and Lisa Tetrault about the work they’ve done to show there is much more to the story. Next, Laura travels to Seneca Falls, New York, site of the 1848 women’s rights convention, with historian […]
