Tag: Roses and Radicals by Susan Zimet

#OnThisDay: 19th Amendment, 1920

I have heard it said that the 19th Amendment “gave” women the right to vote. The verb “gave” or “gives” is a slap in the face of all the women (and men) who risked their lives to have the right to vote.

Photo by LSE Library on Unsplash

It would be tantamount to saying that black people in the United States were “given” civil rights in the 1960s. No, they earned every one of those rights. The word “give” in all its tenses and forms insinuates that rights were bestowed as a gift. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In July, I read an excellent little book, Roses and Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote, by Susan Zimet. I told you a little bit about it in my August 4, 2026 blog post, Books I read (or attempted to read) in July 2026. I urge you to read that book.

Photo of front cover of Roses and Radicals with the head of the Statue of Liberty under the title.
Roses and Radicals, by Susan Zimet

The road to women securing the right to vote in the United States started before the nation’s founding. In 1776, Abigail Adams famously told her husband, John Adams, to “remember the ladies” as the Declaration of Independence was being contemplated and written.

Of course, John Adams did not take her pleas to heart (and probably paid for his foolishness in various ways for the rest of his life.) The Declaration of Independence states that “all men were created equal.” Today, we (well, most of us) take that to mean “all people were created equal,” but women were technically and deliberately left out of the Declaration. But I digress

As is told in Roses and Radicals, it took women down a very long and winding road to secure the right to vote. There were women’s rights conventions and campaigns throughout the decades from 1840 until the 19th Amendment was finally made part of the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Women were beaten and arrested for marching in the streets and simply for standing beside streets to protest the lawful discrimination that was holding them back from being all they could be. They had to fight for education, not just the right to vote.

That story cannot be condensed into a blog post. There’s just too much history – too much history that was never included in a single history textbook I ever read – for me to do it justice here.

It is an unbelievable story, akin to the story of how many centuries it took for people of color to get rights equal to their white counterparts in the United States. There is still racial discrimination that flies under the radar of the law. We see it every day. We also still see blatant racism in Trump wanting to plaster his name (no doubt, in giant gold letters) on the aircraft carrier that was already designated to be named in honor of World War II hero Mr. Doris Miller. Mr. Miller just happened to be black. His story of heroism during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is extraordinary. Trump, on the other hand, dodged the draft because he claimed to have bone spurs.

Back to the 19th Amendment…

Those of us born after 1920 cannot fully appreciate the sacrifices made by women (and by people of color) to try to get the right to vote in this country.

Photo by LSE Library on Unsplash

It astounds me to think that when my mother was born in 1912, women did not have the right to vote! The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not ratified until 1920. That’s just 33 years before I was born! I simply cannot get my head around that fact. To put that 33 years in perspective, 33 years ago today it was 1993!

And now, in 2026 in the U.S. we have people in positions of power, including the U.S. President, who are pushing for a so-called SAVE America Act which will make it more difficult for married women in our country to vote. It goes well beyond “voter ID.” A married woman – or anyone whose name today does not match their birth certificate – will be required to produce documentation of every name change they’ve had.

This is primarily targeting married women, regardless of what supporters of the Act claim. It is an alleged solution to a problem that does not exist: voter fraud.

Don’t be fooled! The real crime is voter suppression.

Janet

Never take your right to vote for granted!

Books I read (or attempted to read) in July 2026

I guess I was in worse shape in June and early July than I realized. I have stated in at least one blog that I enjoyed the novels I read in June because I hadn’t read a novel since January. I was surprised a couple of weeks ago to find a list of the books I read in May: The Creek, The Crone, and The Crow, by Leah Weiss; The Immigrant and the Outlaw, by Joy Neal Kidney; and The Astral Library, by Kate Quinn. It had slipped my mind that I enjoyed all three of those books in May, so I apologize to the three authors for my memory failure.

After having a very good month of reading in June, I had high hopes for July, but sometimes our reading experiences don’t meet our expectations on all counts. July turned out to be a mixed bag.

The River Knows My Name, by Kelly Mustian

Photo of a front book cover for The River Knows My Name, by Kelly Mustian. a blue river flowing between walls of bright green trees.
The River Knows My Name,
by Kelly Mustian

After reading The Girls in the Stilt House, Kelly Mustian’s debut novel in 2021, I kept hoping she would write another historical novel. She came through for us last year with The River Knows My Name. I finally got around to reading it in July.

As the blurb on Amazon states, it is “a haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets, and fierce and fragile love.” Set in the early 1930s in Mississippi and 1971 in North Carolina and Mississippi, Mustian has woven a story of intrigue, family loss and love, and how one decision can affect generations to come.

Why did Evie appear at Nell’s house when they were young children and Evie never left? What did Evie’s hidden birth certificate reveal?

This is a dual timeline novel, which you know is not my favorite format, but I stayed with it because the characters and the plot drew me in from the beginning. Mustian did a masterful job of telling a complicated story of secrets, the passage of time, “where there’s a will there’s a way” perseverance, the love a mother has for her child, and how family isn’t necessarily based on biology.

I highly recommend The River Knows My Name, and I hope Kelly Mustian will gift historical novel fans with many more novels.

John of John, by Douglas Stuart

Photo of the front cover of John of John, by Douglas Stuart. Title and author name are in large print in front of a sunset background.
John of John, by Douglas Stuart

After watching an online interview of Douglas Stuart, I eagerly awaited my name reaching the top of the waitlist for John of John at the public library.

I have had the privilege of visiting the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. I have spent some time on the Isle of Lewis and visited the Isle of Harris. They are wild and stark and incredibly beautiful!

John of John, by Douglas Stuart is set on Harris. The author does a great job of giving you the setting. The moon-like starkness, the incessant wind coming off the Atlantic, the sometimes-rough ferry crossing of The Minch – the body of water between the mainland and the Outer Hebrides. The houses, the crofts, the weavers of Harris Tweed (which is also made in cottages on Lewis), the single-track roads, the sheep, the Gaelic native language, and the conservatism of the Free Presbyterian denomination (which is quite different from the Church of Scotland) are all brought to light in this novel.

The setting is almost a character in the book because to give the landscape and climate justice, one has to be immersed in it to truly appreciate the story.

The protagonist is John MacLeod, son of John MacLeod, son of Iain (John in Gaelic), son of Iain MacLeod. Young John has left the island to go to art school. He has gotten caught up in the fast life (life everywhere is “fast” compared to life in the Outer Hebrides) in Edinburgh. His father calls him home to care for his ailing maternal grandmother.

The younger John is not keen on the idea. The life he has lived on the mainland as a gay young man will surely upset his devout Free Presbyterian father to the point that he expects his father will disown him. How long can he keep his homosexuality a secret from his father.

But his father also has a secret.

If you are sensitive to “F-bombs,” you might not enjoy this book. I accepted them as apparently being part of the homosexual scene in which the younger John lived. Not that all homosexuals casually use this language, but it was part of the make up of the younger John – probably as part of his rebellion against the strict religious home in which he had been raised.

I tired of the story after 150 pages. There were other books I wanted to read, so I returned John of John to the public library. Kudos to the author for transporting me to the Outer Hebrides for a few hours.

Roses and Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women Won the Right to Vote, by Susan Zimet

Photo of front cover of Roses and Radicals with the head of the Statue of Liberty under the title.

This book caught my eye when I was at the public library the week of July 4th. It was part of a display the librarians had assembled of books pertaining to the 250th birthday of the United States Declaration of Independence and related patriotic books and history books.

The book prompted me to pause and contemplate the incredible sacrifices the women (and a few men) made throughout the first fourteen decades of our country’s history to work toward the passage of a Constitutional Amendment that would make it unlawful for any state in the union to prohibit anyone from voting based on their sex.

I will write more about the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution in my blog post on August 26 – the 126th anniversary of the ratification of that amendment.

Roses and Radicals is a relatively small book of barely 150 pages, including the bibliography and index. I thought it would be a quick read.

Sprinkled throughout the book are sidebar-like sections within chapters that tell the stories of individual including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, Lucretia Mott, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Victoria Woodhull, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida B. Wells, and Edith Wilson. A book could be written about each on of them.

Roses and Radicals begins with the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840. Elizabeth Cady Stanton accompanied her husband, who was a convention delegate. But her story began when she was five years old and her last brother died. Her father said to her, “Oh my daughter, I wish you were a boy.”

In response to that remark, she was determined to be the son her father had lost. That path served to show her how difficult it would be for a woman to fulfill the burden her father had placed on her because women were so restricted by law and society norms. Fathers held legal rights over daughters and husbands held legal rights over their wives and children.

But, getting back to the anti-slavery convention in 1840… The wives of delegates and the women delegates were not allowed on the main floor. They were relegated to a balcony. The women were so incensed that they began laying plans during the convention. If people from around the world could meet to work for the abolition of the slavery of Africans, the women concluded that they could organize themselves and fight for the rights of women.

The book tells how each of the women I named in an above paragraph worked for the equality of women, women’s rights in the eyes of the law in the United States, and ultimately for women to have the right to vote. It gives little-known details of how women worked behind-the-scenes as well as marching in the streets to secure women the right to vote.

Janet

Too many books. Not enough time. Not enough bookcases. Never take your right to read – or your right to vote — for granted.