Fighting for Women’s Rights: Suffrage Through Civil Rights
The Kansas City Public Library
Streamed live on Aug 26, 2026
Author Elaine Weiss explores American history’s untold stories in powerful, character-driven books of narrative history. She focuses her lens on the role of ordinary citizens — especially women — in bringing about social and political change in our democracy.
During this Women’s Equality Day event she discusses the fight for women’s rights and broader equal rights — efforts to live up to the promises of equality and self-government articulated in the Declaration of Independence — with details drawn from her award-winning books.
Elaine chronicled the suffragists’ long campaign for voting rights in The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote; explored the extraordinary stories of southern Black citizens standing up to defend democracy and regain their Constitutional rights in her most recent book, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement; and wrote of the women who redefined women’s work and patriotism during WW I in Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War.
Elaine is also a public speaker and media commentator and served as historical consultant to the Tony-award winning Broadway musical, SUFFS. She lives in Baltimore.
Co-sponsored by Women’s Equality Coalition.