Hands up, please, if you believe that 100 years ago—on August 26, 1920—women were given the right to vote.
If you raised your hand, be prepared for a civics lesson.
Women were never given the right to vote. Rather, they fought for it. Take New Jersey’s own Alice Paul, who struggled, suffered and, more than once, nearly lost her life to win the vote for women.
The hard-fought battles by the dynamic Mount Laurel resident and millions of other suffragists are compellingly documented in The Vote, a four-hour, two-part PBS miniseries premiering at 9 pm July 6 and 7.
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Narrated by Kate Burton, The Vote, an installment in the PBS series American Experience, features the voices of Mae Whitman, Audra McDonald, Laura Linney and Patricia Clarkson.
Writer, director and producer Michelle Ferrari—an Emmy winner for her writing on the American Experience documentary Seabiscuit—promises that the series “offers a great many revelations” about the women’s suffrage movement. Archival stills, film footage and ephemera gathered from more than 100 sources underscore “the truly extraordinary lengths to which suffragists had to go in their quest for political equality,” says Ferrari.
Whitman, who stars as Annie Marks on NBC’s Good Girls, gives voice to Alice Paul, whom Ferrari describes as “a fearless, implacable, single-minded young woman who was prepared to put everything on the line for a cause she believed in. A true revolutionary.”
The Vote will be available for streaming at PBS.org and on the PBS Video app.