Author: Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer M.
Title: Winning the West for Women: The Life of Suffragist Emma Smith DeVoe.
Publisher: Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
Dr. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal examines the tactics and cultural contexts of Western women's political activism - showing the differences with those of women activists in the East. According to Emma Smith DeVoe's memoir, at the age of eight, she first heard Susan B. Anthony speak on women's rights in 1856. She worked with Anthony for women's suffrage during the 1890 South Dakota campaign, and in 1892 she worked as a fundraiser for the NAWSA in Iowa. In 1905 Devoe moved to Tacoma WA and in the next year she was elected president of the Washington Equal Suffrage Association. Ross-Nazzal describes the Western "still-hunt" strategy and how they worked to persuade men to support women's rights, abjuring the kinds of public rallies and political tactics used in the East for the cause. An interesting twist is that when DeVoe is finally given a salary by the NAWSA for her organizing work, her status lowered in the eyes of her peers. Ultimately, DeVoe led Washington suffragists to victory in 1910 and Washington became the fifth state in the nation to grant women their constitutional right to vote. DeVoe then founded the nonpartisan National Council of Women Voters across all the western states which had a large impact on the ratification of the 19th Amendment in Washington.
Watch the U WashingtonPress video about the book on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPLnFiZBHug
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