Episode 156: Dr. Thomas Dublin

They were women and they fought for the right to vote. Beyond that, every person documented in the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States has a different story to tell.

Dr. Thomas Dublin and a crowdsourced team of volunteers have worked diligently to collect those stories. The Dictionary, a free online resource, is a searchable database of biographical sketches telling the life story of three groups of women:

• Black women suffragists - many of whom migrated out of the South to find more opportunities yet were not always embraced by the wider suffrage movement.
• Members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) - the mainstream organization of the movement with thousands of members working across every state.
• Members of the National Womans Party (NWP) - formed by women impatient with the strategies and pace of change under NAWSA.

Dr. Dublin describes what it took to pull this database of materials together. A network of volunteers including historians, librarians, genealogists, and students combed through local newspapers, public records, and various primary and secondary sources. What emerged was a series of biographies that document the many faces of women in the movement in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Further Research

• Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States
• Find a Grave
• Chronicling America
• NYS Historic Newspapers
• African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington: by by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Find in a Library via WorldCat)
• The History of Woman Suffrage (vol 6)