INDIANAPOLIS — The latest release from the Indiana Historical Society (IHS) Press commemorates the centennial of women receiving the right to vote in the United States. We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana by historian Anita Morgan examines the struggles and triumphs of a myriad of Hoosier women banding together to seek equal rights with men at the ballot box.
Morgan’s book begins with the 1851 Indiana Woman’s Rights Convention in Dublin, Indiana, and follows the ups and downs of the suffrage fight, including the formation of the Women’s Franchise League in 1911; the efforts of the Legislative Council to obtain the vote; women’s support for World War I; the story of the 1917 partial-suffrage law and subsequent court battle; and the final passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
The book also includes new information on subjects that have been underrepresented in the past: the attitudes of Hoosiers of German descent toward suffrage, the role of African American women, and those women who worked against suffrage.
We Must Be Fearless: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Indiana is available through IHS’s Basile History Market and other places books are sold. For more information about the book or IHS Press, call (317) 232-1882 or visit www.indianahistory.org.