Social media can transform the solitary experience of writing a book into a joyous crowd-sourced event. I posted my excitement at doing this anthology on Facebook, asking friends what they’d like to see in the book. The generous outpouring of ideas helped shape the content of the volume you hold in your hands. A book became a movement.
Thanks to all my co-conspirators in this venture.
Elizabeth Vogt, the gifted editor who shaped the final product, honing the excess and enhancing the rest, moving me forward with a skillful combination of encouragement and patience. Publicists Rebecca Marsh and Sara Leonard, and marketers Lydia Hirt and Molly Fessenden. I am deeply honored for this work to be part of the Penguin Classics collection, under the courageous vision of publisher Elda Rotor.
Early on the brilliant, passionate young women in the Matilda Joslyn Gage Girl Ambassador for Human Rights program explained to me how to be relevant. If I didn’t get the lesson, it’s not their fault.
Thanks to the Honors and Women/Gender Studies students—smart cookies to a person—in my “History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement” class at Syracuse University, who have shaped my ideas and insights over the last nineteen years, and especially to the last group, who read the manuscript critically as a textbook, making invaluable edits.
To Rachel Hendricks, who began working with me through a field study with the St. John Fisher Executive Leadership program and quickly proved herself so invaluable that I hired her at the end of the study. “You probably won’t be able to find this but . . .” I’d email her, and a short time later the obscure primary source would be in my in-box. Like every true artist, she thinks it’s easy. Thank you, Rachel. This book, seriously, would not be in your hands without Rachel.
To my wonderful daughter Beth, who, as my personal assistant, took care of all the practical details of my life, clearing the path so I could write, and keeping me angry about the dreadful state of our country with daily updates that fueled my writing. To my irreverently funny son Dave, whose sharp wit kept things in perspective.
Thanks to Blythe Bennett, who continues the guiding gifts of clarity and love. My old friends and neighbors in the collective across the street, Karen Mihalyi, Cindy Squillace, Jack Manno, and Dik Cool, for feeding me with nourishing food and the wisdom from your years of dedicated, focused work creating a blessed community.
I am privileged that my closest colleagues are also my closest friends. Jeanne Shenandoah, Freida Jacques, Louise Herne, who, along with the many other Haudenosaunee women who continue to model the path to an egalitarian society and the continuation of life on Mother Earth, just as they showed the way to our feminist foremothers. Olivia Cousins, enthusiastically offering a platform for testing my analysis of the movement’s racism, and Betty Jacobs, who twice brought me to United Nations–related events to share the story of the Haudenosaunee influence on women’s rights. Michele Jones Galvin, who inspired with the spirit of her ancestor, Harriet Tubman. Theresa Corrigan, Bobbie Frances, Kath and James Fathers, Mary Ellen Kavanaugh, William Sunderlin, Phil Arnold, and Sandy Big Tree, who listened, discussed, and encouraged along the way. The synapse-popping sessions with Robin Kimmerer, Valerie Luzadis, Bill Wallauer, and Kristin Mosher, fueling our thoughts with great food.
Thanks to all my mentors who worked to school me in what to look for and how to think about what I saw. They are to be thanked for that which is good and true in these pages; I singly take responsibility for the warts.
Librarians, so many over the years, whose gift is bringing the world of words to our fingertips. One example, a placeholder for the rest, is Lisa Caprino, Reference Services Assistant at The Huntington Library, who transcribed and sent a letter when a copy could not be made without curatorial permission.
Michael Patrick Hearn, who generously shares his research finds—some of which are in this book—as a colleague and friend.
Friends and family and colleagues galore, a selection singled out. I ask the rest of you to forgive me for remembering your smart thoughts but neglecting to write down the instigator.
And to the Parkland students, who have inspired me, with your fearless and articulate calling out BS, to write from the very edge of what I know—and feel.