Writer Louise Bernikow uncovers the long Suffrage Campaign in New York City, a place she says “where the urban landscape became a prop for incomparable political spectacle. The Statue of Liberty, the transit system, Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, parks and streetcorners– all became venues for a complicated, shifting alliance across lines of race and class, ending in a historic victory in 1917.”
Bernikow will be featured in a segment on the PBS show “History Detectives” that unearth the origins of a purple and gold “Votes for Women” banner found in an upstate New York attic. Bernikow is the historical expert who explain how the winning of woman suffrage in New York in 1917 was the product of a new generation’s activism and a tipping point on the road to the 1920 passage of the federal amendment.
The show airs Tues, September 20th at 8pm. If you’d like to join a national network of “Viewing Parties” in schools, clubs, historical societies, living rooms contact Bernikow at [email protected].