This is the first of two lectures about the crucial final decade of American women’s campaign for the vote (1910-1920). In this talk, Sandra Opdycke will describe the revitalization of the suffrage movement between 1910 and 1916, including the growing success of the campaigns in individual states and the intensified push for a constitutional amendment on behalf of woman suffrage. She will discuss the obstacles the women faced, and the many strategies they adopted to put their message across, from grand suffrage parades to the posting of pickets at the White House gates.

Sandra Opdycke, Ph.D. is an historian. She recently published When Women Won the Vote, about the woman suffrage movement. She has also written books about the flu epidemic of 1918, the WPA of the 1930s, and Bellevue Hospital, as well as a biography of Jane Addams, an historical atlas of American women’s history, and several co-authored books and articles on social policy. She worked for a number of years at Hudson River Psychiatric Center, and later taught American History and Urban History at Bard, Vassar, and Marist Colleges. She serves as an occasional lecturer at the Center for Lifetime Studies in Poughkeepsie.