42 pages • 1 hour read
The Woman's Hour
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Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “To Nashville”
In mid-July 1920, Carrie Chapman Catt is traveling to Nashville, Tennessee, to champion the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote in the United States. Handpicked as Susan B. Anthony’s successor to lead NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association), nicknamed the “Suffs,” Catt has been fighting the war for women’s voting rights for thirty years. Tennessee is the battleground state that will allow passage of the amendment or kill all hopes of its ratification.
Another woman, equally motivated, is speeding toward Nashville at the same time as Catt with the intention of derailing the amendment. Her name is Josephine Pearson. “As president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage […] Josephine was the proud leader of the Tennessee Antis” (11). Steeped in white supremacist ideology, Pearson fears that women’s suffrage will open the door to African-American rights and end the Southern way of life forever. She has made a deathbed promise to her mother to continue the fight against suffrage, and she intends to keep her word.
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