Leaders Who Mobilized for Change transitions from the 19th century to the 20th, when a new generation revitalized the stalled suffrage movement and expanded its human rights vision. Activists with urgent causes to support don’t have time to read dull history textbooks. Fortunately, American suffragists lived radical lives that were in no way boring. Instead of droning on like an encyclopedia about dates, meeting minutes and genealogy charts, Ask a Suffragist books discuss relationships, strategies and activism, focusing on stories that are particularly relevant for modern feminist activists, whether for inspiration and emulation or to avoid repeating past mistakes. Each chapter considers a question today's feminists might ask the great feminists of the past, celebrating diversity instead of neatly pointing readers into one right way of living. The passionate, inspired and flawed people who started the movement often disagreed with each other.
April Young Bennett began studying the lives of suffragists to inform her own activism. She has campaigned for better state and federal laws addressing the wage gap, healthcare, education and juvenile justice and for gender equity within her modern-day patriarchal religious community. As an organizer of the Ordain Women movement, she led hundreds of women and men in marches and demonstrations that attracted national attention. April helps feminists of different faiths share ideas and collaborate toward common goals at the Religious Feminism Podcast. She blogs about Mormon feminism at Exponent II, an organization that began during the second wave feminist movement, named after a nineteenth century Mormon suffragist newspaper.
