America’s Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor

Winner – Grand Prize – Nellie Bly Award for Journalistic Nonfiction, Chanticleer International Book Awards

After being forgotten for nearly 130 years, the “Mother of Suffrage in Missouri” and her husband are finally taking their rightful place in history.

St. Louisans Virginia and Francis Minor forever changed the direction of women’s rights by taking the issue to the Supreme Court for the first and only time in 1875, a feat never eclipsed even by their better-known peers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Yet despite a myriad of accomplishments and gaining notoriety in their own time, the Minors’ names have largely faded from memory. In 1867, Virginia founded the nation’s first organization solely dedicated to women’s suffrage—two years before Anthony formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). Virginia and Francis were also the brains behind the groundbreaking idea that women were given the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, a philosophy the NWSA adopted for nearly a decade.

And their story doesn’t end there. After the court case, Francis went on to become a prolific writer on women’s rights and one of the first and strongest male allies of the suffrage movement. Virginia instigated tax revolts across the country and campaigned side-by-side with Anthony for women’s rights in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

America’s Forgotten Suffragists: Virginia and Francis Minor is the first biography of these suffrage celebrities who were unique for their time in being jointly dedicated to the cause of female enfranchisement. This book follows their lives from slave-holding Virginians through their highly-lauded civilian work during the Civil War, and into the height of the early suffrage movement to show how two ordinary people of like mind, dedicated to a cause, can change the course of history.

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Reviews

“Well-documented historical biography…an eye-opener of past social injustices to women in the United States. This book is a must-read so we can learn from our history, not be doomed to repeat it.” – Historical Novel Society

“An essential addition to the canon of women’s suffrage and first-wave feminism…documents one woman’s bold path to securing women’s rights, a beacon of hope for a world where no person is lesser than another.” – Chanticleer Reviews (5-star review)

“A most welcome addition to the expanding history of women’s suffrage.”- Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched

“Nicole Evelina has remedied [an] historic omission in her lively account of the Minor’s lives and their legal quest for equality… It’s a legal love story with vivid lessons for today.” – Elaine Weiss, author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote

More information on the Minors and additional insights that didn’t make it into the book are available at the Virginia and Francis Minor Memorial Institute.