2020 marks three historic milestones surrounding women and voting rights. In her new book, Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West, author Neylan McBaine narrates this extraordinary history through the eyes of the women of the West, who were the first to vote in the nation. In this podcast interview, McBaine describes the complex relationships of polygamy, politics, and suffragists, and how local Relief Societies in remote Utah towns united to secure the right to vote against tremendous opposition. Most surprisingly, these are stories are almost entirely unknown until now.
Music in the episode is an anthem of women's suffrage, written in 1910 by Ethel Smyth and Cicely Hamilton, "The March of the Women."