Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote

by Tina Cassidy

Hardcover, 2019

Status

Available

Publication

37 Ink (2019), 304 pages

Description

In this "heroic narrative" (The Wall Street Journal), discover the inspiring and timely account of the complex relationship between leading suffragist Alice Paul and President Woodrow Wilson in her fight for women's equality. Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC, in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. He is surprised by the modest turnout. The crowds and reporters are blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue in a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession "one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country." Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? weaves together two storylines: the trajectories of Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson, two apparent opposites. Paul's procession of suffragists resulted in her being granted a face-to-face meeting with President Wilson, one that would lead to many meetings and much discussion, but little progress for women. With no equality in sight and patience wearing thin, Paul organized the first group to ever picket in front of the White House lawn--night and day, through sweltering summer mornings and frigid fall nights. From solitary confinement, hunger strikes, and the psychiatric ward to ever more determined activism, Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait? reveals the courageous, near-death journey it took, spearheaded in no small part by Alice Paul's leadership, to grant women the right to vote in America. "A remarkable tale" (Kirkus Reviews) and a rousing portrait of a little-known feminist heroine, this is an eye-opening exploration of a crucial moment in American history one century before the Women's March.… (more)

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Rating

½ (6 ratings; 4.7)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Devil_llama
A history of women's suffrage through the lens of Alice Paul and Woodrow Wilson. Paul was a determined suffragette, and spent several years planning and carrying out pickets of the White House during the Wilson presidency. She was arrested a number of times, both in her early years in London and
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then in Washington D.C. She led one of the more assertive (many say aggressive, but it really wasn't aggressive; her pickets were silent sentinels who stood at the White House gate holding signs; the aggression was committed toward them) leaders of the suffrage movement, often annoying or angering those in the movement, and yet, reading this, it is hard to see that they would have won if they hadn't had her and her women. It seems likely we would still be politely asking for the vote if we kept on that track. It is a valuable history, only slightly marred by some odd syntax and occasional grammar oddities. Highly recommended.
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

304 p.; 6 inches

ISBN

1501177761 / 9781501177767
Page: 0.2491 seconds