History Smashers: Women’s Right To Vote

Get out the Vote! 

Kate Messner’s History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote,  illustrated by Dylan Meconis, is an inspiring and timely history of the centuries of struggle that women waged to vote in America.

When we think of the Suffrage Movement movement and the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, most of us think of Susan B. Anthony. Did you know that there were millions of women that wrote, spoke, marched, picketted, boycotted to earn the right to have a voice in our democracy?

In the end, the story of women’s fight for the right to vote is a much messier one than history books like to share. Let’s smash that old story! Here’s the real deal…”

The history of white feminism and intersectional feminism is long and complicated. Many people are unaware that, though women from different backgrounds all sought the right to vote, they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. For example, white suffragists, often failed to advocate  equally for women of color have the right to vote.  History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote masterfully teaches the important voting history of America from many different angles, giving voice to the stories of marginalized groups of people who all too often go untold. 

One fifth grade student immediately recognized the parallels in the history of women’s suffrage and what is going on in our world today. She noted many similarities in the protest efforts and counter-efforts in the Black Lives Matters movement and the Suffrage Movement. Reading History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote, helped her to understand the current climate of social injustice in the context of history. She felt strongly that students in fourth through eighth grade should learn from Messner’s history smashing writing. Click to hear this student’s interview!

History Smashers: Women’s Right to Vote would be a wonderful nonfiction read aloud. It should be incorporated into social justice book clubs with students and added to independent reading bins. It incorporates primary and secondary sources, highlights diverse perspectives, and teaches all of us why it is so important to exercise our right to vote!