Few states witnessed a livelier or more dynamic campaign to win women’s suffrage than Illinois. Illinois suffragists amassed an impressive record, as Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women presidential suffrage and the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Who were the women behind these victories and how did they achieve them?

Join historian Leslie Goddard and meet some of Illinois’ most famous suffragists, including Mary Livermore, Frances Willard, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Grace Wilbur Trout.

Learn about the petitions, lectures, conventions, and parades they organized. Sometimes conventional and sometimes audacious, their struggle is full of colorful stories and poignant lessons for today.

As part of their new program, “Chicago Amplified“, WBEZ will air a recording of Leslie Goddard‘s Illinois Women and the Winning of Women’s Suffrage Road Scholar program which took place at the Joliet Public Library on March 12, 2006.

For more information, please contact Phoebe Stein Davis at 312.422.5580 or visit WBEZ.