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Coffee With an Author: Elisabeth Griffith, author of Formidable!

  • Buxton Books 160 King Street Charleston, SC, 29401 United States (map)

Buxton Books is proud to host Dr. Elisabeth Griffith for Coffee With an Author to discuss her book Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality. This is a free, in-store event. Please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com to reserve your spot!

On Friday, April 21 join us in the bookstore for coffee and conversation with professor, author, and women’s rights activist, Dr. Elisabeth Griffith!

Dr. Griffith will be sharing a cup of coffee with us and chatting about her book Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality! Dr. Griffith’s book and author talk at this past year’s Charleston Literary Festival was a favorite among attendees, and we are so excited to be working with her again for this event.

We are sure to have a great morning catching up with her, getting lots of books signed, and hearing about the very important work she’s doing!

If you have dreamed of having coffee with your favorite author, now's your chance!

Doors to this event will open - and coffee will be out - when the bookstore opens at 10:00 am. This is a free, in-store event. Please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com to reserve your spot!

About Elisabeth Griffith:

Elisabeth Griffith earned her PhD from The American University and an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College.  She has been a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia Teachers College. 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 has written forThe New York Times, The Washington Post, and professional journals.  She is currently teaching courses in women’s history at the Smithsonian Associates and Politics & Prose. She is the author of In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which was the inspiration for Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, Not For Ourselves Alone.

About Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality:

The Nineteenth 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.

Formidable chronicles the efforts of white and Black women to advance sometimes competing causes. Black women wanted the rights enjoyed by whites. They wanted to protect their communities from racial violence and discrimination. Theirs was not only a women’s movement. White women wanted to be equal to white men. They sought equal legal rights, political power, safeguards for working women and immigrants, and an end to confining social structures. There were also many white women who opposed any advance for any women.

In this riveting narrative, Dr. Elisabeth Griffith integrates the fight by white and Black women to achieve equality. Previously their parallel struggles for social justice have been presented separately—as white or Black topics—or covered narrowly, through only certain individuals, decades, or incidents. Formidable provides a sweeping, century-long perspective, and an expansive cast of change agents. From feminists and civil rights activists to politicians and social justice advocates, from working class women to mothers and homemakers, from radicals and conservatives to those who were offended by feminism, threatened by social change, or convinced of white supremacy, the diversity of the women’s movement mirrors America.

This is a free, in-store event. Please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com to reserve your spot!