My first article, published in 1970 in a movement journal entitled Women: A Journal of Liberation, was focused on the first historical figures that c… - Ellen DuBois

My goal here is to make it clear that the campaign for women's suffrage was part and parcel of every era of American history. It wasn't something happening over here. In the beginning, it was part of the radical changes surrounding the campaign to end slavery. In the middle, in the late 19th century, it was part of a very conservative historical period and in the early 20th century it was an important part of the progressive movement. It can't be told separate from American history.

By the middle of my second graduate year, I was committed to writing the history of early woman suffrage, which became my first book Feminism and Suffrage, as my doctoral degree. I had two professors: Christopher Lasch (while recognizing my ability, disparaged the topic) and Robert Wiebe (an historian of American democracy, gave me great support). I soon connected with two senior women doing women’s history, Anne Firor Scott and Gerda Lerner, and with about a dozen other young scholars, all graduate students, following their women’s liberation inclinations into history.

Rose remembered Tom Paine, who was in danger of being forgotten for his radical hopes for the American Revolution. In a similar spirit, we remember Rose, in honor of those aspects of her vision of a free womanhood that have not yet been realized and that continue to inspire. To remember our ancestors is an act on our own behalf as well as theirs.