Cathleen Cahill
Walter L. Ferree and Helen P. Ferree Professor of Middle-American History and Acting Director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center
Cathleen’s recent book, Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement, came out during the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. She highlighted the suffrage activism of Black women, Asian American women, Native American women, and Latinas, whose contributions are rarely celebrated as part of that history.
“I see my research as addressing one of the key questions of our democracy—how has our nation lived up to its ideals of equality and justice for all? That is a noble goal that we have often failed to attain, but my work also reveals the inspiring stories of people who have fought hard to bring us closer to achieving it. I work to bring those stories to light in my classroom and to a wider public audience in order to demonstrate the vision of what our nation can be in the future.”