Adult and Children’s Books, Films and Documentary
(circa 1920; women’s right to vote)

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Compiled by Steve Corbin, Co-Lead Organizer-Iowa Public and School Libraries- 19th Amendment Centennial Commemoration, Professor Emeritus of Marketing- University of Northern Iowa and freelance newspaper op-ed/guest columnist.
 

Adult Books:

1. Michael Burgan, The 19th Amendment: We The People-Modern America
    

2. Carrie Chapman Catt, Woman Suffrage and Politics
    

3. Eleanor Clift, Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment
    

4. Penny Colman, The Vote:  Women’s Fierce Fight
    

5. Winifred Conkling, Votes for Women: American Suffragists and the Battle for the Ballot
    

6. Robert Cooney, Winning the Vote:  The Triumph of the American Women Suffrage Movement
    

7. Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States
    

8. Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1890-1920
    

9. Brooke Kroeger, The Suffragents: How Women Used Men to Get the Vote
    

10. Judy Monroe, The Nineteenth Amendment: Women’s Right to Vote
     

11. Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Evelyn Brooks-Higginbotham and Martha Prescod Norman (editors), African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965
     

12. Rebecca Boggs Roberts, Suffragists in Washington, DC: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote
     

13. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, Six volumes: 1881-1922
     

14. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920
     

15. Sally Roesch Wagner, Sisters in Spirit:  Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influences on Early American Feminists
     

16. Sally Roesch Wagner, The Women’s Suffrage Movement
     

17. Mary Walton, A Woman’s Crusade:  Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot
     

18. Elaine Weiss, The Women’s Hour:  The Great Fight to Win the Vote

 

 

Children’s Books, ages 4-8:

1. Claire Rudolf Murphy, Marching With Aunt Susan:  Susan B. Anthony and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage; illustrated by Stacey Schuett
    

2. Tanya Lee Stone, Elizabeth Leads the Way:  Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote; illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon
    

Children’s Books, ages 5-9:

1. Ann Malaspina, Heart on Fire:  Susan B. Anthony Votes for President; illustrated by Steve James
    

2. Mara Rockliff, Around America to Win the Vote:  Two Suffragists, A Kitten and 10,000 Miles; illustrated by Hadley Hooper
    

3. Linda Arms White, I Could do That!:  Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote; illustrated by Nancy Carpenter
    

4. Dean Robbins, Miss Paul and the President: The Creative Campaign for Women’s Right to Vote
    

Children’s Books, ages 5-10:

1. Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, Ballots for Belva:  The True Story of a Woman’s Race for the Presidency; illustrated by Courtney Autumn Martin
    

Children’s Books, ages 6-9:

1. Walter Dean Myers, Ida B. Wells:  Let the Truth be Told; illustrated by Bonnie Christensen
    

2. Doreen Rappaport, Elizabeth Started All the Trouble; illustrated by Matt Faulkner
    

Children’s Books, ages 6-10:

1. Kirsten Gillibrand, Bold and Brave:  Ten Heroes Who Won Women the Right to Vote; illustrated by Maira Kalman
    

Children’s Books, ages 7-10:

1. Nikki Grimes, Chasing Freedom:  The Life Journeys of Harriet Tubman and Susan B. Anthony, Inspired by Historic Facts; illustrated by Michele Wood
    

Children’s Books, ages 8-12:

1. Deborah Hopkinson, What is the Women’s Rights Movement?; illustrated by Laurie A. Conley
    

2. Pamela D. Pollack and Meg Belviso, Who Was Susan B. Anthony?; illustrated by Mike Lacey
    

3. Anne Kamma, If You Lived When Women Won Their Rights

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Children’s Books, ages 8-14:

1. Ilene Cooper, A Woman in the House (and Senate): How Women Came to the United States Congress, Broke Down Barriers and Changed the Country; illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley
    

Children’s Books, ages 9 and up:

1. Kerrie Logan Hollihan, Rightfully Ours:  How Women Won the Vote
    

Children’s Books, ages 10 and up:

1. Ann Bausum, With Courage and Cloth:  Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote
    

2. Deborah Kops, Alice Paul and the Fight for Women’s Rights
    

3. Susan Zimet and Todd Hawak-Lowy, Roses and Radicals:  The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote
    

Children’s Books, ages 10-14:

1. Sue Macy, Wheels of Change:  How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)
    

Children’s Books, ages 12 and up:

1. Penny Colman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony:  A Friendship that Changed the World
    

Children’s Books, ages 13 and up:

1. Winifred Conkling, Votes for Women!:  American Suffragist and the Battle for the Ballot; this book is also listed in the “Adult Book” category
    

Children’s Books, ages 14 and up:

1. Jules Archer, The Feminist Revolution:  A Story of the Three Most Inspiring and Empowering Women in American History:  Susan B. Anthony, Margaret Sanger and Betty Friedan
    

 

MEDIA

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Children’s Documentary, ages 9 and up:

Not for Ourselves Alone:  The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

Master documentary filmmaker Ken Burns created this film in 1999 using stunning black-and-white archival footage that shows both the excitement and the challenges civil rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony faced almost a century ago. Actors Ann Dowd, Sally Kellerman, Julie Harris and Amy Madigan provide commentary.

 

Children’s Film, ages 10 and up:

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PBS Home Video:  One Woman, One Vote

 

Adult and Children’s (age 13 and up) Film:

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Suffragette (2015)

This stirring film shows the painful struggle of British women as they fight to get the right to vote two years before American women. Many activists were fired from their jobs, learned jujitsu to protect themselves, were even thrown in jail and force-fed through their nose if they went on hunger strikes. The movie stars Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter with Meryl Streep as real-life civil rights leader Emmeline Pankhurst. 

 

 

Iron Jawed Angels:  Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way (2004)

With modern music and dazzling cinematography, this film stars Hilary Swank as Alice Paul, the real-life suffragette and women’s rights activist who was one of the main leaders in pushing for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that would allow American women to vote. Margo Martindale, Vera Farmiga and Anjelica Huston also star.  N-O-T-E:  due to a harsh, though realistic, force-feeding scene, the film is recommended for teen and adult viewers

 

 

 

What really happened: Votes for women (about women’s suffrage in New Zealand)

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The Divine Order (about women’s suffrage in Switzerland)
 

On a day that marks 100 years since women got the right to vote here in the UK, it is worth being reminded that for many countries such results came much later. The Divine Order takes as its subject matter the suffrage movement in Switzerland, where women got the right to vote in 1971 – more than 50 years after the equivalent right had passed in the UK. Unlike Suffragette, this film takes a lighter, feel-good approach to the suffrage story.

The film catapults its protagonist Nora (played by Marie Leuenberger) from quiet and dutiful housewife to leader of the town’s suffragette movement, picking up various characters – including a feisty old widow and an Italian restaurant owner – along the way. Unafraid to add humour, the film is both amusing and inspiring. A reminder that the most powerful and significant political movements are often underscored by everyday, local and individual acts of rebellion

https://umich.kanopy.com/video/divine-order

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+divine+order
 

Shoulder to Shoulder (1974)
 

A ground-breaking BBC television series about the history of suffrage through key personalities – such as the Pankhursts.

It traumatized a generation with its graphic detail of the horrors of the forced feeding of hunger strikers in British prisons.

The Annie Kenney episode follows the career of the former mill girl who started work at the age of 10 and was the only working class woman to become a leader of the Votes for Women movement.