About the Author

Marjorie J. Spruill is Distinguished Professor Emerita from the University of South Carolina, well known for her work on women and politics from the woman suffrage movement to the present. Spruill is the author or editor of six books on woman suffrage including the first edition of One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement (NewSage Press), the companion volume to the PBS documentary One Woman, One Vote. Most recently, Spruill wrote Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics (Bloomsbury 2017). In this book, she addresses the rise of the modern women's rights movement to a peak period of success, the mobilization of social conservatives in opposition, and the impact on American political culture. Other edited works on suffrage include VOTES FOR WOMEN! The Woman Suffrage Movement in Tennessee, the South, and the Nation (University of Tennessee Press). Spruill is also the author of New Women of the New South: The Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States (Oxford University Press). She also co-edited a two-volume textbook on the history of the American South and two multi-volume anthologies about the "lives and times" of women in South Carolina and Mississippi. Spruill was the historical consultant for the HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels and has been an advisor to several museums, including the National Archives for its exhibit, "Rightfully Hers," celebrating the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Spruill's work has been supported by fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a research award from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. She spent a year at the National Humanities Center. During her career, Spruill was a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, Vanderbilt (where she was an Associate Provost) and the University of South Carolina. Recently retired, Spruill lives in South Carolina where she continues to write and consult on a variety of projects.

Reviews

One Woman, One Vote has been indispensable to me as I've worked to learn so much of the history that I'd not been taught about the nation and its centuries-long struggle toward full enfranchisement. --Rebecca Traister, Author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger--Rebecca Traister "Author, Good and Mad"

The fight for woman suffrage got under way in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, but it took another 72 years to win the right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. To celebrate the 75th anniversary of that event, Spruill, an associate professor of history at the Univ. of Southern Mississippi, has gathered 19 thoughtful essays to tell the story of the women and the strategies that won the vote, put in context by her particularly cogent introduction. Linda K. Kerber examines the Constitution's implicit exclusion of women, explaining why suffragists saw the need for a constitutional amendment. Alice S. Rossi's classic essay A Feminist Friendship enlivens the 51-year link between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Andrea Moore Kerr looks at a splinter group of suffragists who actively campaigned to prevent newly freed black men from getting the vote before women, particularly ironic for a movement that had its roots in the abolition movement, while Rosalyn Terborg-Penn surveys the contributions of African American women. Beverly Beeton details progress in the West, beginning with Wyoming's enfranchisement of women in 1869. And Armageddon in Tennessee by Anastasia Sims relates the drama that unfolded when the amendment passed the Tennessee legislature by a single vote cast by a 24-year-old whose mother had adjured him to be a good boy and vote for suffrage. Photos not seen by PW. / Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Composed of well-written, scholarly essays selected and introduced by historian [Marjorie Spruill, this work is the companion piece to a PBS special commemorating the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. It analyzes both positive and negative aspects of the long, complex struggle for suffrage.The writers emphasize the economic, racial, and cultural divisions that split the movement repeatedly. While extolling the courage of Susan B. Anthony, the pragmatism of Carrie Catt and Jane Addams, the militancy of Alice Paul, and the working-class sensibilities of Harriet Stanton Blatch, they also decry the pandering to racist elements that virtually excluded black women from the national movement, the embarrassments of the Kansas campaign and the Woodhull scandal, and the nativist bigotry that colored the last years of the suffrage fight. This excellent, affordable book should be part of every public and academic library.
Rose Cichy, Osterhout Free Lib., Wilkes-Barre, Pa. / Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--Rose Chichy "Library Journal"

Marjorie Spruill's new edition of One Woman, One Vote is a welcome and timely addition to the expanding body of literature on women's gradual political empowerment. At a time when women have expanded their political influence, when the U.S. not only has its first and long overdue female vice president, Kamala Harris, when the organizing efforts of women of color, especially in Georgia, have shifted the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, and President Joseph R. Biden has appointed the first female-majority Cabinet in history, it's only appropriate that we have this updated re-examination of how we got here, edited by Dr. Spruill with the critical contributions of dozens of other scholars of the domestic and international woman's movement.--Adele Logan Alexander "Historian and Author of Princess of the Hither Isles: A Black Suffragist's Story from the Jim Crow South"

Students, scholars, and lay readers alike will be grateful for the clarity with which this book tells the story of the woman suffrage movement in the United States. An important book and a useful one.
--Kathryn Kish Sklar, Distinguished Professor of History Emerita, State University of New York, Binghamton--Kathryn Kish Sklar "Professor of History Emerita"

Suffragists were the voting rights activists of their day. This revised and expanded edition of One Woman, One Vote tells the story of that hard-fought victory, warts and all. At a moment when questions of gender, race, and citizenship are center stage once again, the history of the women's suffrage movement remains timely and relevant--and a really good read.--Susan Ware "Historian and Author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Rich to Vote"

The study of the woman suffrage movement has flourished since the first edition of the anthology One Woman, One Vote appeared during the celebration of the Nineteenth Amendment's 75th anniversary. Marjorie Spruill's expanded second edition, published as part of the commemoration of the amendment's Centennial, is a deeply satisfying and essential update, attending as it does to the campaign in the South, the international context, and the first hundred years of women voting. As with the first edition, the suffrage story told here will be compelling for both students and general readers.--Louise W. Knight "Historian and Author of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action"