HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Author Barbara F. Berenson joins us this week to discuss her book Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers. She’s also the author of Boston in the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution, and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston: Hub of Abolitionism. In the interview, she tells us about the critical roles that Massachusetts women played in the fight for women’s right to vote and step fully into the public sphere.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/168/

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Barbara F. Berenson is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School who retired from her position as Senior Attorney at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in June 2019. ​In addition to researching and writing, she serves on the Boards of Boston By Foot and the Royall House & Slave Quarters.

More resources about the centennial of suffrage:

• A companion site for the book.
• Massachusetts and the 19th Amendment, from the National Park Service.
• The city of Boston’s suffrage centennial portal.
• A compendium of Massachusetts resources and events.

On Thursday, January 30, author Christina Wolbrecht will be appearing at the Boston Athenaeum to discuss her book A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage. Here’s how the Athenaeum describes the event:

How have American women voted in the first 100 years since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment? How have popular understandings of women as voters both persisted and changed over time? In A Century of Votes for Women, Christina Wolbrecht and J. Kevin Corder offer an unprecedented account of women voters in American politics over the last ten decades. Bringing together new and existing data, the book provides unique insight into women’s (and men’s) voting behavior and traces how women’s turnout and vote choice evolved across a century of enormous transformation overall and for women in particular. Wolbrecht and Corder show that there is no such thing as ‘the woman voter’; instead they reveal considerable variation in how different groups of women voted in response to changing political, social, and economic realities. The book also demonstrates how assumptions about women as voters influenced politicians, the press, and scholars.

Christina Wolbrecht is professor of political science, director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, and Mr. and Mrs. C. Robert Hanley Director of the Washington Program at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of A Century of Votes for Women: American Elections Since Suffrage (with J. Kevin Corder), Counting Women’s Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage Through the New Deal (with Corder), and The Politics of Women’s Rights: Parties, Positions, and Change, as well as articles on women as political role models, the representation of women, and party positions on education policy.

The talk begins at 6:00pm, and advanced registration is required. It’s free for Athenaeum members and $15 for non-members.