With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote

Grade 7 Up–Bausum peels back the layers of the story of the women's suffrage movement, exposing grit, fiery determination, and radical tactics. After covering the importance of familiar names, she devotes the bulk of the book to the events of 1906 to 1920, when a new group of young women emerged who were willing to truly suffer for suffrage. The movement split into two camps–Carrie Chapman Catt's larger National American Woman Suffrage Association working conservatively to gain the vote state by state, and a smaller, more contentiously radical organization, the National Woman's Party led by Alice Paul, focusing on a federal amendment. Bausum highlights the tension between these factions in well-documented detail and casts it against the greater picture of controversy within and surrounding the national and state governments, as well as World War I.