From the American Memories Collection at the Library of Congress

Votes For Women - a new radio documentary
 

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Votes For Women  

August 26, 2010 will be the 90th anniversary of the date that women got the right to vote.  This is an appropriate time for us, as a society, to reflect on how the roles of American women have changed.  Votes for Women will show how women got the right to vote and tell those stories vividly to listeners so they can understand how these changes impact their lives today.

This hour-long radio documentary will explore, not only the legislative changes themselves, but also the societal attitudes that influenced those changes; the progressive movement of the early 1900s, the role that women were expected to play in Victorian times, how women organized to get the right to vote, and the techniques they used to get it. 

By weaving together oral histories of women who had firsthand experience in these events, excerpts from letters and speeches, comments from sociologists and historians, and music from the suffrage movement, Votes For Women will remind 21st century listeners that the rights that so many of us take for granted were not always there. 

"I’m delighted to have the opportunity to tell this story”, says Sleight-Brennan. “Radio has the ability to reach many thousands of people and it’s important for listeners to hear and remember historic events like this one. Most of the story will come from interviews I collected in the early 1990s with women who remembered and participated in the suffrage movement. These women are now gone, but their stories will live on in this documentary."

The documentary is funded, in part, by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The project producer is award-winning journalist, Sandra Sleight-Brennan

 

To Radio Stations: The show will be released on PRX. Here's the link: 

                                          http://www.prx.org/pieces/46925-votes-for-women

For more information, or to receive the show via a different platform, please contact the producer.

Good air dates for the documentary include:

August 18, 2010 The date in 1920 that the Tennessee legislature ratified the 19th amendment. (Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, making the amendment part of the Constitution.)  
August 26, 2010 Women's Equality Day. The day the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law.  
November 2, 2010 Election Day. The 90th Anniversary of women voting in national elections.
 
 

This documentary, Votes For Women, is created from several older documentaries that Sleight-Brennan produced in  the 1990s. Those documentaries; America's Women: A Legacy of Change; A Woman's Place; and Remembering the Suffragettes won a total of 8 awards for excellence. This new documentary allowed Sleight-Brennan to re-visit her archives and re-tell the stories.