You include the names of so many women organizers who played not just big roles, but small roles on the road to suffrage. Some of these stories have been actively lost to history. How did you decide which of those voices to sort of elevate?
Cass: Well, toward the end of the book, where I focus on the Civil Rights Movement, some of the most prominent characters are Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. I chose these women because they come from very different socioeconomic backgrounds and they were both leaders in the movement in different ways. Ella Baker worked to empower students to organize across the South and help communities help themselves. Ella Baker was also involved in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and worked with Fannie Lou Hamer. I had to include Fannie Lou Hamer because her testimony at the DNC convention is one of the most powerful speeches of the Civil Rights Movement.
Of course it was also very important to me to include Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Sojourner Truth to show that Black women were working for voting rights all the way back in the mid to late 1800s. And then Mary Church Terrell and Mary Brunett Talbert were important to include because of all the organization they did at the turn of the century. Mary Church Terrell also stood up to Alice Paul for not advocating for Black women who weren’t allowed to vote after the amendment was passed. And of course Zitkála-Šá had to be included because I think it’s really fascinating how complicated her relationship was to voting as a Native woman.
It was really important to me to show that voting rights were fought for by many people from all over the country through multiple generations. I did not want to focus on only a few people because that seems like it misses one of the most important things about how these movements function. They require group effort. The cult of personality that is so prevalent in our culture is kind of antithetical to these movements and yet we continue to celebrate well-known individuals. It’s easier to choose a figurehead than to celebrate all of the people who put in the work at once. I really wanted to try to celebrate them all.