In 1911, leading English suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst visited
America. Unlike other suffragette leaders, who spent their time in
America among the social elite, Pankhurst wasted no time getting
right to the heart of America’s social problems. She visited
striking laundry workers in New York and female prisoners in
Philadelphia and Chicago, and she grappled firsthand with shocking
racism in Nashville.
This book gathers
Pankhurst’s writings from the year-long visit, in which she reveals
her shock at the darkness hidden in American life, and draws
parallels to her experiences of imprisonment and misogyny in her own
country. Never before published, these writings mark an important
stage in the development of the suffragette's thought, which she
brought back to Britain to inform the burgeoning suffrage campaign
there.
