Path Breaking

Book excerpt: Tenacious advocate for women's rights Abigail Scott Duniway offers her life story, describing the intense, decades-long struggle to attain voting rights for American women. Although the author recalls her own upbringing and ascendance to a position of leadership in the Women's Suffrage movement of the late 19th century, she is emphatically clear almost from the start that this nationwide goal was a team effort consisting of many talented people, male and female alike. Portraits and anecdotes of these figures, many of whom are now obscured by time, are present that readers may appreciate how rallying support behind votes for women was the combined work of many. Abigail describes having to doggedly persist against numerous stumbling blocks and personal difficulties; the notion of women voting was then a topic of great controversy, and she found herself shunned and sidelined for her campaigns. Although her state of residence, Oregon, had a generally progressive outlook and culture, it took many years of sustained protest and pressure to make votes for women a serious reform for consideration. Finally in 1912, Oregon approved an amendment for women's suffrage - Abigail Scott Duniway, by that time elderly, was present when Governor Oswald West signed the amendment into law.