Elaine Weiss is a journalist, public speaker and author of three works of narrative women’s history: The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote and Fruits of Victory: The Women’s Land Army of America in the Great War, and, most recently, Spell Freedom: The Underground Schools that Built the Civil Rights Movement. She was an historical advisor for the broadway musical SUFFS.

Take it away, Elaine!

Photo credit Nina Subin

Spell Freedom and your previous books all introduce readers to groups of women working for a common cause. Do you have a favorite among the women you write about?

Ah, I guess that’s like asking a parent if she has a favorite child! But it’s true that as you live –for years –with the people you’re researching, you come to know them intimately–or at least as well as the records they left allow. So of course you forge a relationship with them, and bond with some more closely than others. That might be because you enjoy their company (at least on the page), or find their character especially appealing–or compelling– or their work more fascinating.
As you phrase it so well in your question, I do write about groups of women working for a common cause: the Land Army women designing a creative solution to food shortages during wartime; the suffragists forming sophisticated political organizations and mounting major electoral and lobbying campaigns to win the right to vote; and the citizenship school teachers who taught thousands of poor and unlettered Black citizens in the south to demand their rights. These are all 20th c women who are not well known, but manage to create their own organizations, take on national leadership positions, deftly navigate through hostile male terrain, defiantly prove what women can do. Each is strong and fascinating in her own way, in her own time–but I’ll admit that in each book I do have a favorite: either because I admire her, or because I despise her but find her such fun to write about. In Fruits of Victory it was master book binder turned Land Army general Edith Diehl. In Woman’s Hour it was suffrage leader and diplomat Carrie Chapman Catt; but also her nemesis, anti-suffragist Josephine Pearson, who is just so deliciously over-the-top. And in Spell Freedom it is my main subject, educator Septima Clark. They are all very complex women, which makes them great material.

What is the most surprising thing you learned doing research for your work?

I love the research phase of a book project, the discovery time, when you delve into the archives, scoop up material, and begin to recognize a character emerging, a story taking shape. In my books I deal with everything from government and organizational records to old newspaper articles, academic dissertations to physical objects to personal correspondence. I was surprised to discover that my heart beats faster when I encounter the personal letters–they are the most valuable, the most revealing sources. Especially the handwritten letters. Even though they can be hard to read: you have to get used to the person’s penmanship, their archaic spelling or phrasing–it takes more time to decipher than typed correspondence. But there are so many visual clues to the writers’ state of mind: the capitalization of certain words, the underlining, the exclamation points, even the scratch-outs and margin additions, or when they dash off something in pencil—all enable me to better understand the person writing these missives, at the moment they are writing.. It’s one of those “thrills in the archives” exploratory treasures.

Alas, the correspondence of many women has not been preserved–or has been intentionally destroyed. But in each of my books I’ve been able to find hand-written documents to deepen the story, including the extraordinary letters of Septima Clark to Federal Judge Julius Waties Waring and his wife Elizabeth in the 1950s and early ’60s, which allowed me to enter her world and follow her role in the movement. It’s sad to realize that historians and writers of the future won’t have handwritten documents to work with, as most of our communication is now digital on a keyboard. And–students are not being taught cursive writing at all the days, so reading penmanship will be like deciphering hieroglyphics for them.

What work of women’s history have you read lately that you loved?  (Or for that matter, what work of women’s history have you loved in any format? )

I loved the off-Broadway and then Broadway productions of SUFFS by Shaina Taub, which captured the human and political complexity of the woman’s suffrage movement so well. Full disclosure–I was one of the historical consultants to the production, but I became involved precisely because Shaina was so serious about the history, not just the drama, of the story. She did primary document research at the Schlesinger Library, read widely and deeply, and managed to humanize the characters, while distilling the thematic essence of the struggle. I recently watched The Six Triple Eight film about the women of the post office battalion in Europe during WWII, and greatly enjoyed seeing the service of these brave Black women finally brought to light (the film is based on historian Kevin Hymel’s 2019 article in a WWII history magazine). It’s the kind of “forgotten” story that I gravitate towards. And I’m looking forward to reading historian Martha Jones’ new memoir and historical exploration of race, The Trouble of Color.

A question from Elaine: Would you like to read more books about women’s history written by men? Why yes, or why not.

Just last week, a man asked me a question that I’ve been asked at least once every March: Why don’t we have a men’s history month? And my answer, as always, was that men’s history month comes twelve times a year.

If the goal is for women’s history to be recognized as mainstream history—and as far as I’m concerned that is the goal— then we need to have men writing women’s history. More importantly, we need to have men reading women’s history.

***

Want to know more about Elaine and her work?

Check out her website: https://elaineweiss.com/

****

Come back on Monday for the end of Women’s History Month and a whole lots of questions and one answer with Emily Van Duyne