Description
Book SynopsisA story of transgression in the face of religious ideology, a sexist scientific establishment and political resistance to securing women's right to vote
Trade Review"
Free Thinker is as vivid and arresting as its subject. And Helen Hamilton Gardener’s insistent argument, that American women were ‘self-respecting, self-directing human units with brains and bodies sacredly their own,’ still feels as urgent and as radical as it did a century ago." -- Jane Kamensky, Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University
"
Free Thinker is an incredible biography of far more than a fascinating woman…A must read for anyone looking for a nuanced view of the complicated legacy of the suffrage movement." -- Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America and South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration
"Suffragist Helen Hamilton Gardener is someone we need to know…Kimberly A. Hamlin’s careful research, unflinching eye, and storytelling gift reveal how Gardener’s path to the ballot was paved with ideas that ran from free thought and the science of ‘heredity’ to white supremacy.
Free Thinker makes plain how suffragists like Gardener left a legacy on voting rights that was uneven at best. We live with its vestiges until today." -- Martha S. Jones, author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America
