History Happy Hour

History Happy Hour: Votes for Women: The 19^th Amendment and Its Legacies in Florida with Dr. Evan P. Bennett

Florida women played an important role in the passage of the 19^th Amendment. The amendment’s guarantee of voting rights for women, meanwhile, reshaped Florida politics, even though the state did not ratify it until a half century after its enactment. In this lecture, Dr. Evan P. Bennett will discuss the work of Florida women like Ivy Stranahan, Mary McLeod Bethune, and others in supporting woman suffrage and the 19^th Amendment and reflect on what women’s political activity has meant for the state.

Evan P. Bennett, Ph.D., is professor of history at Florida Atlantic University and director of the Voting Rights History Civic Literacy Project. He teaches courses in Florida History and the History of Voting Rights. He is the author of Tampa Bay: The Story of an Estuary and Its People (2024) which received the Silver Medal in Florida Non-Fiction from the Florida Book Awards and the Stetson Kennedy Award from the Florida Historical Society.