The 19th Amendment was an incomplete victory. Black and white women fought hard for voting rights and doubled the number of eligible voters, but the amendment did not enfranchise all women, or even protect the rights of those women who could vote. A century later, women are still grappling with how to use the vote and their political power to expand civil rights, confront racial violence, improve maternal health, advance educational and employment opportunities, and secure reproductive rights. In her book, Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920-2020, Dr. Elisabeth Griffith recounts the roles of Black and White women as change agents and social justice activists and chronicles their efforts to advance sometimes competing causes.

Dr. Elisabeth Griffith is an author, activist, academic, historian, and authority on women’s lives, past and present. Her biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, In Her Own Right, was named “one of the 15 best books of 1984” and “one of the best books of the century” by the editors of The New York Times Book Review and “one of the five best books on women’s history” by the Wall Street Journal in 2009. In March 2020, Oprah magazine recommended it for women’s history month reading. It inspired Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone, on which she served as a consultant.

Dr. Griffith earned her doctorate in history from The American University, a master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins University, and a BA with honors in history from Wellesley College. In 1977 she was a Kennedy Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard and in 2001 a Klingenstein Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University. Elected to the Society of American Historians, she is listed in the Directory of American Scholars.

Dr. Griffith has spent her career working for women’s rights as an activist and an academic, teaching women’s history at the secondary and college level and serving as the head of a girls’ school. She has written for the New York Times and the Washington Post and currently teaches courses in women’s history at the Smithsonian Associates and Politics & Prose.

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