"Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” Written by suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women’s rights activists used this rallying cry to demand voting equality. But the suffrage movement included far more voices and perspectives than these two well-known names: throughout the fight for women’s right to vote, generations of diverse activists demanded full access to the ballot box. Hosts Rosario Dawson and Retta guide us through this seven-part series, bringing us the stories we didn’t learn in our history books. And Nothing Less is a production of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, the National Park Service, and PRX. It is the official podcast commemorating 100 years of the 19th Amendment and women's constitutional right to vote.
And Nothing Less listeners, you’ve heard Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony’s stories from a historical perspective. Now, get to know them as people in this play-turned-podcast about their 40-year relationship as friends and sometimes adversaries. Search for “The Agitators: The Story of Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass” wherever you get your podcasts.
The episode title is a line from a speech Susan B. Anthony gave a few months before she died in 1906; she didn’t live to see the 19th amendment added to the Constitution in 1920. But the 19th amendment wasn’t -- and isn’t -- the end of the voting rights story. Pictured with this episode: Zitkala-Sa, who fought for Native Americans' right to vote after 1920. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
Suffragists needed three-fourths of the states on board to get victory for the whole country. But that meant winning over the south, where zero states were in. Pictured with this episode: Carrie Chapman Catt, who came to Nashville to manage the strategy on the ground.
It wasn’t just the United States -- women around the world were fighting for their voting rights, and they weren’t so polite about it. Pictured with this episode is Alice Paul, who learned from suffragists in Britain, and brought some of their techniques back home. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
From New Mexico to New York, there were women separated by language, culture, religion, and citizenship, but united by a desire for equality. Pictured with this episode: Mabel Lee was a Chinese immigrant and figure in the New York Suffrage scene; she was also the first Chinese woman to receive her Ph.D. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
This is more than a story about women’s rights. It’s a story about civil rights. And women like Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, our pictured suffragist this week, understood that the suffrage fight was as much about race as it was gender. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
Susan B. Anthony invented women’s suffrage, right? At least that feels like we were taught in school. The truth is much more complicated: Native American women had rights long before white settlers arrived. And, during the suffrage movement, Anthony actually faced a rival organization run by Lucy Stone (our suffragist pictured with this week’s episode), with different priorities about how suffragists and abolitionists should work together. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
To understand what the suffragists were up against, we have to look at why men -- and even some other women -- didn’t want women to have the right to vote at all. For more on the people and stories mentioned in this episode, visit go.nps.gov/suffragepodcasts.
Subscribe now. Rosario Dawson and Retta trace the untold stories of women’s fight for the vote.
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
